Back from Amsterdam

I took me about 21 hours via train, plane, bus, and subway to get from Amsterdam back to St. Petersburg. I stumbled into my apartment around 7am, and woke up around 12:30. It was impossible to sleep on the overnight bus from Tallinn. For the first half, my left leg was being broiled by the radiator on the floor. The second half was equally unbearable due to the seats themselves, which must have been designed for Guantanamo prisoners. By the time I got off, I was rambling delirious to myself in an English accent, repeating my justification for not telling the driver about my seatmate, who I was convinced had died in the bathroom.

Oh, Amsterdam was great by the way. Everybody rides bikes or trams, and together with the canals and convoluted alleys they create the impression of a cluttered, spidery city, full of nooks and crannies for experimenting with completely legal things like weed and prostitutes. All I can say is thank goodness our government protects us from evil. I nearly went wild in the absence of its fatherly hand.

I like to try to end my posts with something I found online. Here's an article from the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz called "Shattering a National Mythology" http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html. Now that national identity is widely seen as an invented concept, it was only a matter of time before somebody took on Jewish nationalism.