I’m in Amsterdam with seven Seattle friends, including The Stranger’s web editor Amy Kate Horn, and the only thing all of us can agree to listen to on the houseboat where we’re staying — a mixed CD made for the trip didn’t play in the player, the Fugees was shot down, Depeche Mode was untenable, I don’t have a stereo hook-up for my iPod — is that Nirvana great hits/”You Know You’re Right” CD, which someone brought. We’ve listened to it a couple times now. Like a Seattle roadshow.

Then, weirdly, late, late last night, I was walking down Roken toward Dam Square and I passed a neighborhood bar rocking out to a very familiar song. What do you know — a little ditty called “Lithium” by a little band called Nirvana. The chorus of which goes, in part:

YE-AAAA-AAAAA-EE-AAH
YEA-AAH—EEAH YEAAAAAA-AAAAAH
YE-AAAA-AAAAA-EE-AAH
YEA-AAH—EEAH YEAAAAAA-AAAAAH
YE-AAAA-AAAAA-EE-AAH YEAH YEAH
YEA-AAH—EEAH YEAAAAAA-AAAAAH YEAH!

The Dutch, to this day, like people around the world, LOVE this part of the song when it plays loudly in a crowded bar in the middle of the night. Out in the street, passing by, I was loving it too. And (embarrassingly) I was singing. I sang the lyric as, “I love you/I’m not coming back,” shouted it actually, and thought of Seattle.

I’m coming back. I swear.