(Saturday, Sept. 26) Our innkeepers, Hans The Incorrigible Joker, and his lovely wife, Loes, have gone to Switzerland for a week to visit their daughter, so our Hostess with the Mostest this morning was Queenie, who made sure that we had a “pancake” (crepe to the French and Americans, blintz-sort-of-to-deli-owners) in addition to the croissants, other pastries, fruit, cereal, and juices offered from breakfast.
Today, Albert “Ab” Walet, our more-French-Than-Dutch, local tour guide was at our hotel at 10:00 am to take us on a personal tour of the part of Amsterdam most familiar to its inhabitants, but less visited by tourists. We went by the two most famous museums (both just a block or so from our hotel), the Van Gough (pretty obvious whose works you’ll find there) and the Rijksmuseum (the Old Masters of Dutch painting, such as Rembrandt and Vermeer), the latter covered with scaffolding (why is Europe always “under repair” wherever we go?) in the area known as the Museum Plein. The weather was beautifully sun and probably in the high 50’s or low 60’s as we started out, a perfect day to go on a walking tour of a major city.
Albert explained that the Netherlands, a staunching Calvinist-Protestant country, placed a high value on saving, rather than spending, money, and so its people developed into a pragmatic, and a rather outspoken (some might say “opinionated”) society. As a result, the Dutch had a lot of “street smarts”. Why try to physical expand your land area by fighting wars to expand your borders, when you could just drain the sea and create more dry land? Why fight your neighbors and expend your assets, when you could play them off against each other? Why kick out the commerce-savvy Moors as the silly Spanish did, when you could welcome them and their “networking” connections which would profit your trading empire?
As a result, tiny little Holland became a major player on the world stage with colonies scattered here and there, particularly in the area between what we think of today as South East Asia and Australia. The influence of this empire, and the success of the Dutch East Indies Company, is apparent today when you stroll through the Albert Cuyp Markt fifteen or so minutes walk from our hotel. Fresh poultry, fish, and produce is on sale, along with spices from the East and Mediterranean, incense, clothing, watches (“knock off” Rolexes?), food to go (Satay and French Fries --- what a combo!). A former Catholic church in the market area has been converted into a casual restaurant with Moorish motifs on one side and Hebrew lettering along the ceiling on the other side in the Dutch spirit of “Why don’t we get along and prosper instead of killing each other?” approach to life).
Albert, a sociologist by training, admitted that the Dutch have conflicted views on “illegal” immigration, civil rights, and a multitude of issues, just as do other members of the European Community and the U.S. and other parts of the world. But people here tend to be more tolerant of other points of view, and even though regulations and laws have multiplied as elsewhere, enforcement of these laws tends to be more relaxed in the Netherlands. For example, you can smoke marijuana here even though in at least some U.S. states doing so might land you in jail. The Dutch attitude is that if it’s okay to be a drunken sot at a U.S. college, what’s wrong with a little MJ shared between friends?
In the U.S., you can buy Amstel Light Beer, but few Americans are probably aware that the major river that runs through Amsterdam is the Amstel. Ship locks still exist on the river and can easily be seen by walking over the pedestrian-only “skinny bridge”, but after a major inundation of the city in the early 1950’s, tidal flow from the ocean up the river has been virtually eliminated and the locks are now a historical oddity.
We passed by the Hermitage Museum and Albert said it was too bad that a special exhibition was being displayed because the usual collection of important paintings assembled by the Tsarists was not on display. Not far after than we came across a controversial memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, a rather ordinary looking stone monument that most tourists would probably bypass without a second glance. Although the Dutch pride themselves on supporting the Jews during WWII, some think that no enough was done to protect them from being carted off to the Nazi death camps. As Albert said, in the Netherlands, as in other countries, as least two perspectives are taken on any important political or social issue.
While in the U.S. we tend to equate new buildings and land development with “Progress”, the Dutch have another take on land use. In the 1970’s, they experiment with modern government buildings along broad boulevards in Amsterdam, but quickly decided these projects were not in the public interest. Today, much of the city looks as it did 200-300 years ago, partly because economic decline meant fewer dollars for replacing the old with the new, and partly because the Dutch were smart enough to relocate new 20th and 21st century office buildings and commercial development to highway areas outside of the central city, something we noticed when we came into the old town area by train from Frankfurt on Thursday.
After spending three hours walking from the 19th century “outer city” to the heart of the old town with Albert we reached “Dam Square, the focal point of Amsterdam. He went off to meet his next tour group, we looked at the size of the crowd (10 million or more --- too many to mingle with at any rate), turned tail, and headed back to a calmer neighborhood. We took a right at the first canal, the Oudejizids Voorburgwal, walked its end, took a right, and plopped down at a canal-side table on the smaller, intersecting Grimburgwal canal. We discovered this was a prime spot for “boat people” watching.
After using the café’s “WC”, I saw guests for a wedding carrying gifts march up the street past our dining spot. A man in a cut-away “morning coat” (presumably the Best Man) stepped into an open “captain’s brig” or dory type vessel tied to the canal wall, followed by a young lass (no doubt the Flower Girl) and a lovely woman in a blue dress (which she hike up to her navel in order to board the boat, cast off the bow line, and hoist the fenders aboard, exposing, to Cindy’s observations, must more of her femininity that I saw) and broad-brimmed “Easter hat”. My guess is that they were either to ferry the bridge and her father to the church, or to carry the “Happy Couple” away following the ceremony. Tour boats and locals in their own vessels, out enjoying the fine weather, passed up and down the canal while we leisurely finished our meal.
Consulting our map, we plotted a course back to our hotel, were swept along with a tide of humanity near the edge of the Flower Market, swam to safety on an adjacent main thoroughfare, then found ourselves walking past art galleries and high-end shops Newe Spiegel Straat, turning into a intersecting street full of pizza and “Grieke” restaurants and other eateries serving bad food to tourists, before reaching the heavily traveled Leidsestratt where we took a rest and snack break at a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream parlor. We spent a little time at the plaza at Leidse Plein listening to a brass marching band play, then strolled through have of the Vondel Park in order to get back to our hotel.
Cindy took a nap while I caught up on my trip notes. We did a brief Skype video call to our friend Mary back home, and then headed off in search of dinner. Thursday night we spotted a little bistro-brasserie on the “Gucci” shopping street a block from our hotel, and decided to give our weary feet a rest by dining there. The food wasn’t good, but we had a quiet table with “Peeny” the pussycat as our table mate, the liquor was good and plentiful (more Dutch gin and French wine and cognac), then ambled the block back to our room.
While typing up today’s adventures around 11 PM, I heard loud popping noises. The Netherlands was being invaded, terrorists were attacking Hotel Fita, or fireworks were being shot off (the most likely explanation, either though I couldn’t see any pyrotechnics looking out of our hotel room window).
As I finish this post, the weather forecast for Amsterdam on Sunday is for fair skies and temperatures in the high 60’s. If that holds, we’ll probably hop a train and head to Haarlem or one of the other nearby communities and look for a calmer, more restful and unpopulated place to spend part of our last Sunday in Europe.
