What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it's all About???

Indoor soccer, Amsterdam Style

Imagine this: a sports complex, like many in America, complete with no end of exercise machines, free weights, a basketball court, dance/yoga rooms, indoor soccer field, juice bar, beer bar, smoking room...

Yes folks, you read it here first - I shouldn't have been surprised, but when I accompanied my friend (who, coincidentally, I had met in Belize) to his Amsterdam indoor soccer game, I was aghast to find the health-conscious employees jovially serving Heinekin beers alongside banana-orange-strawberry smoothies !

The atmosphere absolutely rocked...when these people say they play hard and party hard, they're not kidding! The players showcased a high level of play (not surprising for a country which takes it's football seriously), after which they cheerfully took showers and went into the smoking section of the eating/drinking area (which, for the record, was posh in a comfortable, understated way) and discussed the game over beer, cigarettes, pot, and (to be fair) some sports drinks as well!

It was just so different than the indoor locales where I've played in the US - have I simply been to the wrong places? Was it just Friday night? I'm not sure! One of the best parts about it was seeing the teams sit alongside each other and share beers, etc, despite being true competitors on the field...the sociologist in me wants to say that having the bar area (even if people are not drinking alcohol, just as a cool social area to chat after the game) was conducive to a general atmosphere where the value of the game was seen in perspective...of course, the other side of the coin is that when you add the adrenaline and endorphins from physical activity to the sometimes-violent effects of alcohol, I'd expect you might get some people who would get more aggravated about an incident in the game.

At the end of the day, all I can say is that it was an interesting experience for me, and one which I think translates well to this sort of medium! When travelling, there's a tendency people often have in generalizing one experience to mean "how they do it in (x) country," and comparing that to what they have at home...I found myself fighting generalizations such as those when I was at the sports complex as well as later in the night, when I went to a birthday party, which really wasn't that dissimilar from many low-key parties on the weekends at Vassar...I tried to get away from the whole, "Hey, things are the same here!" or, "Hey, things are different here!" thing, but i suppose at the end fo the day our brains just want to generalize! I'm happy to have been given glimpses into the everyday life of a twenty-something in Amsterdam rather than the more typical tourist experiences I've had there previously. | posted by Cheryl, 11/06/2005 09:24:00 AM