For breakfast, I have that fine Turkish yogurt on a toasted brotje with some of that excellent artisanal cherry jam I picked up at the Noordmarkt last Saturday. I really must see if I can find Turkish yogurt when I get back to San Francisco.

I realize now that I should have been giving a few more specifics about routes I've taken for folks who track stuff on maps. So I'll start now. The usual route I take from Rina's at Spuistraat 72 (they put the street number after the street name) to the Cyberlounge is to go south on Spuistraat, cross Raadhuisstraat and then take the second right onto Oude Spiegelstraat and go straight ahead across the bridges over the Singel, the Herengracht, the Keizersgracht, and the Prinsengracht.

Then I veer into Elandsgracht, which has been filled in and, since it is no longer a canal, if you ask me ought to get its name changed to straat. I have never understood the naming conventions here, but what seems to happen is that once a name is given it sticks even when it is no longer appropriate. Rina explains that it's a question of the status conferred by a canal address. Once a gracht, always a gracht.

Usual fairness department: Now that I think about it, the only time street names get changed in California is when we rename them for some contemporary political figure after a pig symphony of squealing from folks who don't want their street renamed to anything else, much less the name of the honoree. And yes, as much as I loved Cesar Chavez and supported his cause, I still say "Army Street". It's been only fifteen years or so.

But yes, the Cyberlounge is located at the very end of Elandsgracht, just a door before Lijnbaansgracht, well, actually, just a door before the eponymous straat on this side of the gracht which in this case really is a real gracht with actual water flowing through it. My plan after I leave the Cyberlounge is to simply follow the street named Lijnbaansgracht in this great gentle arc until the gracht beside it empties into the Singel gracht and the street goes over a bridge onto the Haarlemmerplein. Then I'll simply cruise down the Haarlemmerdijk until it becomes the Haarlemmerstraat watching for the Albert Heijn that's out there somewhere because across the street from it is Rina's favorite fish store. No problem at all. Can't miss either one.

And don't. And discover that the store is named Volendammer Vis Handel and is a branch of my favorite fish store over at the Albert Cuyp Markt. Ha! Two great minds. Well, at least two great fish eaters.

Later over to Edward's, where we talk about literature. In previous conversations, I have broached the subject in an attempt to get some recommendations for Dutch literature, especially works that have been translated, but our conversations flow so freely and exhibit such spontaneity that pursuing a specific goal is difficult.

This time I'm determined. Furthermore, I take notes. Edward speaks highly of Cees Nooteboom and recommends Rituals, both as a novel and as a movie. He likes Marcel Möring and mentions In Babylon. He seconds Hans' brother Rob's recommendation of Gerard Reve and W.F. Hermans, although without Rob's enthusiasm. And finally, he discusses Harry Mulisch, who he admits through clenched teeth is unfortunately the finest living Dutch writer.

I have been bringing up the name of Harry Mulisch for several years now, ever since I read his astonishing The Discovery of Heaven, and I have not heard a single nice word about this man. Not one. He is universally (at least in the Netherlands) despised, found disgusting, or at very least felt to be ludicrous. And everyone with whom I have spoken (and this includes folks who do not do much reading, especially of "literature") has his favorite Mulisch anecdote. Oh, the charges I have heard!

Almost everyone starts with the arrogance, that Mulisch will be the first person to tell you that he is the Netherlands finest writer...ever, probably the world's foremost writer. And then the supreme sexism, that he profoundly regrets having had to spend so much of his time writing, otherwise he could have brought incredible pleasure to even more thousands of lucky women.

Skipping over all the rest, I'll record the complaint against him that impressed me most. The other day at a gay bookstore, a young man, who like so many of the incredibly helpful Dutch was going way out of his way to help me, leveled the Ultimate Charge: In school, he had been forced to read Mulisch and worse yet, study his work. Oh, say it's not true, Harry. And look, I'm sorry, but somebody had to tell you.

But we've been at the sublime too long. Now let's get down in the dirt. Let's wallow in the foul garbage. Yes, het vuil. What do we do with it? Well, on Tuesday and Friday in the early morning (and to Amsterdamers there is redundancy in that phrase) a truck comes down Spuistraat and an orange-clad crew grab bags of trash and individual larger items and toss them in. Where are the garbage items? At the designated spots, at the huisvuil markers every fifty meters or so (and I have to say that there are few words in Dutch harder to say than huisvuil. Two ui phonemes in one little word meaning "household garbage".)

And where do you put your recyclables? (As of now confined to paper and glass although you can get an €0.25 refund at the store for certain plastic beverage bottles, and metals are screened out of the routine trash.) You put them a few steps away in the designated underground bins, which are periodically emptied in the most spectacular fashion. A big truck with a crane arm comes around, grabs the top of the bin, lifts it straight up out of the ground, swings it around over the truck, and somehow triggers something that makes the bottom abruptly open and shower the contents into the truck. Pretty dramatic the first time you see it, and this one is right out in front of the Cyberlounge, so I got to see it many times.

Some writers give you travelogues with pictures of museums. I go for stuff that's harder to find elsewhere. Screens out the excessively sophisticated.