I arrived in Amsterdam on Thursday afternoon and have decided that it is my favorite city so far. No offense to Copenhagen, but here is cheaper, more diverse, and still beautifully historic. I am here until Wednesday when I will head to Paris. Pieter Bohen graciously contacted his cousin for me, so I am staying in his and his girlfriend's apartment.
I spent Friday and Saturday night in a different place, a type of retreat/conference center in a rural area near Utrecht. I was attending a "climate training weekend" so to speak, during which about seventy environmental activists from various groups in the Netherlands such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, 350, and Fossil Free Netherlands branches gathered to discuss and learn from each other. There were trainings about action planning, effective communication and leadership, "social permaculture", and more. The whole weekend was in Dutch but almost everyone also spoke perfect and English and could therefore switch whenever I was part of a small conversation. I am amazed at how selfless they are in terms of languages; at one point I was sitting at the table quietly while a Dutch conversation was taking place, I spoke to someone in English and all of a sudden another person said "Oh my God you speak English, that is so rude of us I'm sorry." I insisted that it was okay, I am perfectly content with not quite understanding, but he kept repeating that it was not okay. This just struck me because I don't imagine an American acting the same way at all. It is almost expected of everyone to speak English in addition to Dutch, not to mention the perfection with which these young adults can speak the language. Furthermore, most well educated Dutch also speak at least one other language, most likely German or French.
Anyway, there was one training session in English called "the Art of Hosting" about how to be a leader without being overpowering and being able to open up the space for everyone to communicate and contribute however much they want. Over the weekend I met lots of new faces because at a gathering of people which such similar interests it is so easy to start up a conversation. Most of the activism discussed was focused on the Fossil Free movement; university students described some of the projects they are working on in their branch, explaining the effort to switch their university's bank because of it's huge investments in oil companies like Shell. Divesting from oil companies is the goal of most actions these groups are organizing at the moment.
I am glad to have had the opportunity to learn about environmental activism in the Netherlands, and excited to have contacts for the future. I know, however, that I don't 100% believe in this type of work; I don't think fighting companies because they are doing the wrong thing is the best way to solve global warming. I want to be an engineer because I don't believe it is possible for a country to be completely fossil free, although someday we might not have a choice. Rather, I believe in many different, creative, personalized solutions as well as collaboration with entities that could stand to reduce consumption.
It was also nice to get the brain juices flowing faster for a few days :)
PS sorry, I took absolutely zero pictures there.
PSS If you haven't seen, I added a page called gallery in which there are more photos than just the ones in my posts :)
