Wednesday, 14 September, 2022 – The one time…okay, the two times, I looked at my phone to see where Elias was today, he was in Westerpark. He was there in August, I know, but I have improved my mapping skills since then, and I think he was pretty close to here, today.
By “here,” I mean, Bakkerswinkel Westerpark Amsterdam. It’s a bakery food truck.
Oops. No, it’s not. It is a nice restaurant, set inside the park with, in addition to indoor seating, maybe a window where you can order food from outside. But food truck, it’s not. In August, I also did not realize that Westerpark is a neighborhood, as well as a park.
When it looked like Elias had been in the park for a lot of the day, I suddenly had the thought that the hostel is not really intended to be a place to sit and relax. Elias is sharing a large-ish room with several people, sleeping in a bunk bed. It makes sense that he would spend a lot of time outdoors. He did say the weather was beautiful, which explained why so many people were outside, sitting in the park.
As I thought more about it, there is probably nothing out of the ordinary for Elias to be spending time outdoors, while the weather is so nice. I mean, the citizens of Amsterdam are taking advantage of nice weather to sit out in the parks until late at night. Maybe that also is what comes of living in smaller homes and having so many pretty places to sit and relax. There’s benches and tables scattered all over, lots of them.
We have parks nearby, here in Prairie Village, and they are always busy, always filled with families playing on the playgrounds, kids riding their bikes around, practicing on the baseball field, fishing in the little pond, or dodging the geese and/or goose poop.
Unlike Westerpark, in Prairie Village, there’s a sign at the parking lot entrance telling us the park closes at sundown. Which means: There are no lights in the park so if you want to walk here after dark, you’re on your own. I know, it’s unfair, petty even, to compare Prairie Village to Amsterdam, but I wonder if we would foster a little more community feeling if we had the park to go to, to spend time outside, instead of sitting on our own back porch, looking out on our vast backyard.
I don’t know what Elias, or Ian and Kelsey, did today, but I hope it was a good day.