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Amsterdam, the Netherlands
With a certain reluctance, we surrendered our perfect apartment in Brugge and made our way to the train station, where we caught the train to Antwerp to transfer to the Amsterdam train. On this, the first day of school back in Fort Bragg, our trip to Antwerp was enlivened by a class of loud, unbiddable 9-year-olds giving their keepers headaches. | ||
 on the Amsterdam train |
The Amsterdam train looked like a Woodstock reunion. It was crowded, and the baggage racks were chock-full of backpacks; the average age on our car appeared to be about 24 (after we got on) and there was no predominant language. After the clean, smooth rides we'd had in Belgium so far, this hot, dirty, rattly car was a shock ... but why waste good rolling stock on this mob? |
We arrived in Amsterdam at rush hour, and the square in front of the station was awash with scurrying people, racing bicycles, clanging trams, and roaring busses. No sign of an ATM, and clear signs that one required special tickets to ride the trams and a special card to use the phones. Right away it was clear that Amsterdam is Special. We found a weasel, got money, a phone card, uncertain directions about how to find our hotel ... and launched ourselves into chaos. |
 Centraal at rush hour |
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When we found our hotel, we were sorry. It was wholly unsuitable, a hot closet with three lumpy beds, a supposed refrigerator that fell into parts when I tried to slide it away from the wall to see how to turn it on, and a bathroom one had to back into. The website lied. If we were going to be able to develop any affection at all for Amsterdam, we would need better accommodations. At the tourist Information down town I had seen a line of perhaps a hundred people waiting to be helped to find rooms, so we knew it would be up to us. And, based on previous experience, we assumed we'd find the right place, first thing in the morning.
With a variety of bad maps and a couple of guidebooks, we ventured out to try to decode Amsterdam's concentric canals and bewilderment of transportation. At first, this seemed like a place you'd need to be born in to feel comfortable. Bicycles rule -- only baby carriages the size of small Mercedes seem to have higher priority on the street -- and woe unto you if you inadvertently step into a bike lane. Compared to London, where the traffic merely comes at you from the wrong side, this is bedlam! Lowly pedestrians are safe only on narrow islands cluttered with parked cars and crotch-high anti-parking bollards. Or in bed, if you have suitable rooms, which we didn't. Nevertheless, the heartbeat of Amsterdam was unmistakably exciting, and had all our hearts pumping and our eyes widened, and not just in terror that we'd get run over by a whizzing bicyclist.
I am happy to report that we found our way around, made a list of likely looking hotels, reassured each other that they couldn't ALL be full, had a superb Indonesian dinner, a scoop of Ben and Jerry's, and were in fair shape when we resigned ourselves to our home-for-a-night-only. |
 Canal cruise view |
Next morning before the sun really hit the pavement, we were checked out and promised a room in a reasonably priced four star hotel nearby. Feeling a bit battered by travel and a poor night's sleep, we rewarded ourselves with tickets on the hop-on-hop-off canal bus, and spent a long morning cruising the canals and admiring the architecture. |
Unlike Brugge, where the canals are artifacts of busier days, the canals of Amsterdam support a constant flow of working vessels and pleasure vessels, plus a large flotilla of houseboats. At the stately pace of boats, we began to get a sense of the ebb and flow of traffic in this great city. The basic assumption seems to be that everyone has a right to do whatever they feel they need to do so long as it doesn't unreasonably impede what others need to do. This assumption seems to be buffered by competence and confidence on the part of all participants. |
 a city of working canals |
 17th Century Warehouse architecture |
It is probably fair to say that Amsterdam popularized materialism, and a large majority of its houses started life as warehouses for holding the goods brought from around a rapidly enlarging world: Chinese china, Indian sculpture and spices, African ivory and woods, coffee, chocolate ... Built like Belgian houses to a standard width along the whole street of canal, each building is distinguished by color, the form of the roof, and architectural detailing. Inside, these narrow tall houses are fitted with tortuously steep stairways, so inhabitants still use the hook above the topmost window for delivering furniture or even groceries. |
Amsterdam picked up where Brugge left off when its harbor silted up. The unapologetic commercialism continues even though the warehouses have been converted. Amsterdam also invented upward mobility, and commerce based on novelty created a large number of very wealthy families, who built trophy homes along the more fashionable canals.
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 Merchant's mansion
Canals were added as the city grew -- by a factor of four in the fifty years between 1700 and 1750 -- but the growth was planned and orderly at the large scale even as it encouraged its residents to build distinctive homes, in part due to the lack of a house numbering system. Deliveries might be made to "the house of the two lions." |
Present-day Amsterdam is surprisingly car-free. There are wide streets with serious traffic, but like Brugge, the drivers seem to be patient as well as purposeful, and yield graciously to pedestrians.
Not so the large and impatient circulation of bicycles. Embracing energy efficiency with a vengeance, this humanitarian city has embraced human-powered speed to an alarming degree -- a conscious over-correction to encourage bikes?
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 multi-level bike parking structure |
Slowing down for just a moment anywhere, however, and extraordinary stories play out on the straats and grachts (canals). While resting after an expedition, Rochelle and I watched a lady (?) in a red silk nightgown and black tenies expertly tie up her gondola at a dock, polish its already sleek blackness for a few moments before installing herself near a lamp-post expectantly. Expecting whom? We didn't stay to discover...
 A city of intense individualism |  |
 a houseboat named Rajpootana |
Given the elegance of the warehouses-turned-flats, one would have high hopes for Amsterdam's houseboats, and there are a few jewels among the floating debris. Few floaters show the style or attention to detail of the terrestrials.
The tour books and tour guides delicately skirt one key issue. "Most houseboats have water, electricity, telephones, even cable TV..." What about the, um, sewage. "The water in the canals is refreshed three times a week." Oh. Let's try not to fall in... |
We attacked the Van Gogh museum first thing one morning, but not before the place was over-run with like-minded early birds. It's a surprisingly undistinguished place with a very disappointing collection, but it does a great job of selling itself, and so eclipses the Rijksmuseum in terms of visitorship. Too bad for the tourists. The Rijksmuseum is fabulous and the later Van Goghs are all out at the Kröller-Müller Museum out in the Hoge Veluwe... |
 Van Gogh's crowded bedroom click to see some Dutch Van Goghs |
 Dam Square |
Standing in the middle of Dam Square looking toward the Queen's house, it seemed as if several weeks' worth of international trains had debouched their populations directly into this melting pot. The weather was perfect for hanging out, and Amsterdam, despite its high latitude, is a perfect place for hanging out. In a word, mellow ... despite whizzing bicycles and all the accoutrements of a big city. According to the Queen, the secret ingredients are simple: tolerance. |
In addition to the bikes -- I wasn't ready to try riding one yet -- Amsterdam has a nearly perfect system of trams and, although we didn't need to ride them, busses to complement Holland's near-perfect rail transport system. Trams are a singularly civilized way to travel, and with their strip-cards and honor-system for payment, they simplify and accelerate the movement of great hoardes of people with very little fuss ... and very cost effectively. Of course, such a system requires density and cooperation. |
 tramming home from downtown |
 View from our hotel window
Looking out our hotel window, or walking the nearby streets, we were in a small, elegant pocket just about a block away from the hustle and rush of the Leidseplein, one of the three or four centers of activity in Amsterdam. Also near us, and on our route to the museums just a few blocks away, Vondel Park interjects a civilizing flavor of trees and grass. |
Our second hotel, The Vondel Park, was a wonderful, supportive, safe place to stay in a restful neighborhood barely three blocks away from the third floor dungeon in which we started our Amsterdam stay. In a neighborhood of Victorian-era wanna-be Amsterdam houses, its try harder spirit, and that of other buildings in the neighborhood, created a very pleasant surround for us.
detail of the Victorian facade |
 small carving at Rijksmuseum |
The Rijksmuseum is almost cluttered with Great Art -- Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer. Vermeer's hint of impressionism to come calls to me, but as always, small almost insignificant treasures catch and hold my eye and wonderment. We visited an amazing Art Nouveau collection in a remote basement at the end of a maze of Dutch crystal and china. Trade brought new materials and art forms resulting in unique pieces -- here's a cola nut intricately carved by a northern European craftsman into a portable 3-dimensional religious show-and-tell. |
The treasures in the museum are fleetingly interesting, but the dynamic city and its tolerant, free-wheeling people are endlessly fascinating. It's exciting to feel oneself become, as if by absorption, a denizen of this place.
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 The Rijksmuseum from Museumplein |
 warehouses with hooks |
We all walked and walked -- often Chad kept walking until late at night -- because it is a BIG city, with something interesting going on in every street, plien, and gracht. There's a flavor of individualism, undoubtedly fostered by the pervasive attitude of tolerance, that's intriguing and a little unsettling when considered in the context of anonymous and joyless American cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City...
one man's floating garden on a busy gracht |
 across the Dutch flatlands by train |
We had to WORK to get to the the Kröller-Müller -- a tram, a train, a long wait (missed the hourly bus by two minutes), a bus, a walk, then the museum. |
I need another page to enthuse about the Van Goghs in Holland ... and a great Vermeer and even a striking Metzinger ... but the unanticipated pleasure of the the Kröller-Müller Museum was its lazily meandering sculpture garden, including a wealth of Barbara Hepworth's work, and the two knock-out martian pipe dreams portrayed here. The golden martian -- didn't get the sculptor's name; too taken with the play of light on around the piece.
the Kröller-Müller sculpture garden
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For me, the thrill of the waterborn mushroom was the children playing with their perception of it by dragging sticks through its reflecting pool. The museum, while popular, manages somehow to feel uncrowded, and to give space for a personal experience of the art.
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Just for grins, and to get a sense that we'd gotten our money's worth, we took a bike ride through the reforested sand dunes of the Hoge Veluwe National Park on one of their free white bikes. Then we reversed the process -- walk, bus, train (just caught by 2 minutes!), tram, and finally rewarded ourselves with a well-deserved cuppa and a piece of Godiva chocolate cake at the American Hotel before returning to the Hotel Vondel to meet Chad for dinner. |
back across the Dutch flatlands by train |
 sunset lingers over a gracht |
One of our guide books advised, "In Amsterdam, plan for bad weather" but we were very lucky. Just as we settled at our dinner spot for our last evening, the heavens opened, and we watched the folks sitting beneath umbrellas beside the gracht scurry for a spot indoors. By the end of dinner, the sky had cleared and the streets felt fresh. Chad headed for center city, and we wandered a street of antique stores and across a Prinsengracht, where the lingering northern dusk and houseboat lights were painting a shimmering picture. |
After six days, we all felt a sense of the city, and being absorbed by it. No longer were we surprised by whizzing bicycles, and we watched with amusement as newly arrived tourists took positions unknowingly in harm's way. Are other european cities like this one? Well, there's only one way to find out ... |
 even the water wants to be an impressionist |
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 traffic flow |
Ding-a-ling! Don't stand in the bike lane! Look out for that trolly! Chad's explaination of traffic flow in Amsterdam | |
a page unwritten:
Michael on tolerance and traffic in Amsterdam |
 traffic pattern in Leidesplein | |
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© 2001-2002 by Caspar Institute. All Rights Reserved. | |
