It’s 5.11PM, and I’m in my extremely central apartment in Amsterdam. Located in the middle of the red light district and Chinatown, it’s almost too perfect: the combination of bicycles, mopeds, rainbow flags and girls behind clear doors bathed in magenta light paints a very stereotypical picture of Holland’s capital.

Yet I feel the real Amsterdam reveals itself in the Jordaan, away from the live sex shows, plethora of coffee shops and streets of tourist booking centres. Life is good - people are relaxed, following the pace set by the flow of their interweaving canals. Unique boutiques are scattered amongst brilliant cafes and all types of businesses, encapsulated by housing on the above levels. The facades lean ever so slightly towards the street, the substantial number of decades taking their toll on historic foundations.

The thing I love about the Dutch is their matter-of-fact directness. Don’t let slightly broken English fool you - this isn’t an inability to achieve subtly in a second language. Rather, it’s a personality trait that permeates through life in The Netherlands - friendly, direct, and supremely open and accepting. It’s brilliant and endearing.

Winter apparently brings about an increase in suicides (this, I doubt, is unique to Holland). My train yesterday terminated at an early station because a poor guy had thrown himself in front of one of the trains further up the line. Earlier that week, the city I was visiting had a university student jump from the 11th storey of his student accommodation to end it all. I was told the story of a local newspaper who had (mostly) stopped covering suicides due to a copycat effect particularly effective in the colder months. Coming from a climate that rarely dips into single digit temperates, this is unfamiliar and troubling. 

I marvel at the ability of the vast majority of Dutch to be able to speak such fluent English, while still retaining their own language. It was put to me by a friend that they Dutch “have no choice…we have to be fluent if we want to engage with the world”. The learning of a second (or third, or fourth) language must do wonders for general levels of intellect. At home, students simply aren’t pushed hard enough - there isn’t that same level of necessity.

In other news, I’ve managed to cock up my laundry, the Dutch controls leading to my downfall. I can look forward to the majority of my clothes about two sizes smaller than what they started as, once the washer permits me to open the hatch.

Tonight marks the halfway point of my trip. I’ll next venture over to the Austrian Alps for 6 days, before spending over 10 in Denmark for Christmas. Back to London for New Years, and the Oxford, Bath and maybe Paris before heading home. My dash back to London for NYE is a result of my unwillingness to spend any more time alone. I’d like to pretend that I’m this adventurous, independent traveller but in reality I’d rather spend my time with friend.

An interesting conversation I’ve had with people is “do you think you’ll always live in your country?”. Responses generally fall into either:

• A deep and abiding love of one’s homeland, allowing for the possibility of a few years working abroad, but with return always certain, or
• The questioning of identity, values and ‘fit’ within the home country, with the ambition to search for somewhere else, or
• The globetrotter, who entertains the experience of not having a ‘home’, being a true citizen of the world.

My time travelling, both this year and last, reaffirms what I have at home. While I’d like to pretend otherwise, ultimately at this stage I’m firmly in the foremost category.

All you who have not loved her,

You will not understand - 

Though earth holds many spendours,

Wherever I may die,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly

-Dorothea Mackellar, ‘My Country’, 1904.

• People in London are ridiculously good looking. I don’t know what it is…it definitely isn’t the water (which is rubbish)
• I long for there to be a British standard on which side of the path/escalator one is expected to gravitate towards. Driving is on the left (and for this, the civilsed world thanks you), but patrons on the Tube must stand to the right, people on the street can’t decide and constantly dart in and out of each other, and it’s all together silly.
• London is amazing. Very exciting, constantly surprising, undeniably cool without trying to be.
• Starbucks is everywhere, spreading their cancerous flavour of burnt Arabica beans to all conceivable locations. But, they offer a dependable wifi connection so eh.
• British accents are adorable. My favourite quote was from Oxford St, London were a middle aged woman proclaimed “Oh darling, If he continued mumbling on I was going to have to kill myself!”
• The ‘miserable whinging Brits’ stereotype is very much a myth: they seem remarkably resolute considering the miserable weather.
• I still can’t convert pounds to AUD in my head.