My ID:  7:46am, Monday, 03 June 2002:  Schiphol Airport

EasyJet flight EZY862 from Edinburgh

The first thing I noticed as my EasyJet flight from Edinburgh began its approach into Schiphol Airport was the sheer mass of the Port of Rotterdam, one of the world’s biggest and busiest container ports.  Having always been interested in transportation and logistics, I imagined where each of the containers below—just orange and blue specks—had been a few weeks earlier and would be in another few weeks.  A few minutes later I was walking through cavernous Schiphol trying to figure out how to get to Amsterdam, where I would first set foot around 8:30 on a lazy Tuesday morning.

After arriving at Centraal Station, I made a beeline for the most fascinating and surreal target on my list—the Red Light District!  I remember being shocked that some of the girls were “open for business” at all, being about the least social time of the entire week.  I didn’t have the best feeling, based primarily on my romantically idealized preconceived notions heading in, and I made haste to see target No. 2—Anne Frank’s House.