Nothing beats an impromptu stop for a milkshake with your fourteeen-year-old niece, which is just what transpired on my last visit to Amsterdam. We’d both already had dinner, so when I proposed ice cream we drove around for a bit before realizing none of the little ice cream places took American Express before settling on a chain that made milkshakes (according to Emi, Five Guys did a decent job, so I was game – and Route 30 has come a long way since the days when Dunkin Donuts was the shining star of stops in Amsterdam).
We sat in the window of the shop, each of us reminiscing about Polar Freeze – an ice cream memory we both shared from our respective childhoods – and I realized we fluently spoke the same language: the frivolous, heartbreaking, all-important and all-too-nonsensical language of a teenage girl. My tongue was a bit rusty, but I quickly found the rhythm, the gravitas and the drama of it all, punctuated by a few squeals and the occasional giggle.
This was my homeland, and it was good to be back.
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