Hey All,
As part of our program, we had to create a unique walk or "mis-steps" project which we conceptualize and enact in Amsterdam. Below is the overview and reaction to my walk.
Title: Bi-Polar Hydrophobia
Duration: 2 hours, composed of eight 15 minute segments.
Concept: For those who don't know, Amsterdam is a city of canals. Nearly every street corner you stop at in central Amsterdam has a canal visible in at least one direction, as you can see by this map.. I was trying to get into the mindset of someone who was completely hydrophobic (afraid of water) and what it'd be like to take a walk through Amsterdam. After further thought, I realized that if I just walked while being afraid of water, I'd just end up far from the center eventually and there'd be no water to be afraid of. To combat this problem, I then put myself into the shoes of a person suffering from multi-personality disorder, wit one personality that is extremely afraid of bodies of water, and the other that is very fond of water and stays near it at all costs. The transition between the two characters happens every fifteen minutes. When the change occurs, I either do my best to get as far away from canals as I can, or ambitiously seek out and follow any canal I can. At the end of every period, I take a series of photos to document how successful I was in either being near or away from water.
Reaction: I have to say, this walk was one of the more eventful and enjoyable walks I've been on during this trip. I started at the Noordermarket about fifteen blocks west of Centraal Station in the role of the personality who loves water and followed the Prinsengracht down for 15 minutes, then switched personalities and started running until I couldn't see water any more.
After a while, I realized that it was rather impossible at some areas to go anywhere without coming to a canal, where I decided that it was ok to cross a bridge while in a state of hydrophobia, but I had to do it while running and it had to be in the exact center of the bridge. While this wasn't a problem for the larger bridges because they all had nice big medians between the two lanes, this was a problem for some of the bridges which were one lane and rather long. I tried my to time my run over the bridge to work with traffic, but unfortunately was forced to obstruct traffic twice. Once it was just for the last few feet of the bridge, but the second time I was about 5-10 feet onto the bridge when a car turned to cross it from behind me. It was too late to turn around, as doing so would require me to stand at the edge of the bridge or jump over the car, both of which I was unwilling to do. So I crossed the bridge as fast as possible with the driver behind me quite upset and yelling at me.
Also, on another pedestrian bridge, the very center of the bridge was unfortunately a bike path. Again, I tried my best to time it bikes, but as I was running over the bridge, this bike came out of no where and hit me pretty much dead on. The biker was ok, though rather upset. The collision knocked me over, but after checking myself briefly, I decided that it wasn't harmful, but just shook me up a bit.
This new approach to a walk made me explore the city in a brand new way. The fear of water made me go down many small alleys that I usually don't travel through, and found out that several of them are quite beautiful. Also, while following canals I found some very interesting scenes and aspects of the canals. The most notable scene involved a group of four middle aged men standing in a small semi-circle at the edge of one of the canals. They were all staring down into the canal, where a few feet away from the edge a series of air bubbles were coming up from the bottom. While I'm sure it was just a group of guys coming home from work and noticed some anomaly in the canal producing air bubbles, the sense that I just walked into the scene of a mob hit was just too great, and I resisted the temptation to pull out my camera and just walked past them as fast as I could.
In conclusion I'm very glad that I went on this little walk, as it let me experience many things that I just didn't have the drive or mindset to experience before. Also, if you are, in fact, hydrophobic, I would probably not look into moving to Amsterdam in the near future.
.:August
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