TheTraveler

Dateline: Amsterdam - From an Expatriate's Travel Journal

By Stephanie Shattuck

We had to leave Turkey in order to get our passport visas renewed, and so we decided to trade the call of the muezzin for the ringing of church bells, and the chaos of Istanbul (population 14,000,000) for the tranquility of Amsterdam (population 700,000).

The first thing we did when we arrived at Centraal Station was to lug our backpack to a neighborhood coffee shop called Paradox for tostis (grilled cheese sandwiches). The shop is a local hangout and we were the only tourists. After tostis and orange juice, it was time to see the “other” menu. We had heard a local order some grass named “She”, and figuring that the locals should know best, we ordered, “Two cappuccinos and a joint of She, please.” Wow, the locals must be more accustomed to this stuff, because two puffs and we were so high, we could hardly stay on top of our barstools. We played crazy eights for about an hour to catch our snap before we went out in search of a hotel room.

In hindsight, it might have been better to find a room first and then sample Paradox’s finest herb. We walked around for hours, enjoying the clear, brisk, Amsterdam weather, before we found a place that we could afford that had a room available for six nights. Actually, it turned out to be a very nice place to stay. The Hotel de Looier is located on a quiet side street in the neighborhood of the Jordaan. There were few other
tourists in the area, and none of the rowdy crowd that congregates closer to the Red Light District, singing “Hey Jude” at the top of their lungs at 3:00 a.m.

After checking in and resting a bit, we decided to go to the Anne Frank House, which is open until 9:00 p.m. During the day, there are very long lines to get in. However, after 5:00, the lines disappear and you can
spend more time looking with less jostling. They have preserved much of the house, including the bookcase that covers the stairs leading into the Annex, where Anne and her family and several others lived in
constant fear of discovery.The movie magazine cutouts that Anne put on the walls are still there, covered by Plexiglas. The rooms are so small, it is hard to imagine 8 people living there for 2 years, never being able to go outside, having to be completely silent all day lest the warehouse
workers below hear them and get suspicious. They also have Anne’s original diaries, letters written by Otto Frank, Anne’s father, and the cards
from the death camps listing the dates of death for everyone who lived there except Mr. Frank. It was very sad and very moving. They have videos of interviews with the helpers, such as Miep, talking about how
difficult it was to bring the ones in hiding enough food and yet how they felt they had no other choice. They saw what was happening all around them and knew that Anne and her family faced certain death without
their help. The bravery and goodness of the helpers was really overwhelming, and I found myself wondering if I would put my own life at risk to save Anne and the others, had I been in Miep’s shoes.

The next day we awoke bright and early and spent the day at the Van Gogh Museum. His paintings are arranged chronologically, and it was fascinating to see the deterioration of his mental health through his paintings. It was also stunning to see “Room at Arles” and “Sunflowers” and “Irises” for real, having seen so many reproductions that don’t do them justice. My favorite paintings were his attempts at Japanese art. I had never seen these before and they were beautiful and whimsical and unlike any of his other works. After we left, we walked through Vondel Park (People’s Park), a lovely urban park with lots of little lakes, meandering walkways, beautiful willow trees, numerous statues, a few cafes and many beds of daffodils. We sat on a bench and watched the people parade past us, riding bikes and pulling troops of kids in little wagons.

The next day, we decided to take a break from the museums and just wander around town. Amsterdam is such a beautiful city. We enjoyed looking at houseboats floating on picturesque canals, flanked by 17th and
18th century houses. We climbed to the top of the bell tower of the Westerkerk (or West Church, finished in 1631) and were rewarded with fabulous views of the city. Rembrandt is said to be buried here somewhere.

We walked through the Red Light District where the prostitutes behind their windows looked impossibly bored, and the whole area was rather depressing. We went to the Hortus Bontanicus (the 1638 botanical
gardens) and lingered for quite a while looking at the tropical flowers because they were beautiful, also it was really cold outside and it was like a sauna in the greenhouse. The gardens started as medicinal gardens and many of their more exceptional specimens, including a coffee plant smuggled out of Ethopia whose clippings spawned the Brazilian coffee empire, were gathered by members of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th and 18th centuries.

That evening, we went to a neighborhood bar and saw free live jazz. The group was billed as “chamber funk” (whatever that means). There were four musicians: keyboard, drums, bass guitar and saxophone. The bar was small and there were at most twenty people in the audience, but these guys were amazing. Their music was very progressive and complex, and they were tight. It was the perfect ending to our meandering day.

The next day we went to the Rijksmuseum and we stayed all day. You could easily spend a week there and not see it all. We spent most of our time checking out the Dutch masters. The museum wasn’t very crowded, and we had the luxury of sitting on a bench and admiring paintings like Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch”, listening to our audio guides and noticing the details and the nuances of his style, especially compared to
other painters of the same era. We had recently read two fiction books about Vermeer (“The Girl with the Pearl Earring” and “The Girl in Hyacinth Blue”), and it was very fulfilling to see 3 of his 34 paintings “in the flesh”.

We took a tour of the Decorative Arts section of the Rijksmuseum, which has furniture, tapestries, and dollhouses. Apparently, in the 17th century, part of a bride’s dowry was a dollhouse-sized canal house, complete with tiny little furniture and silver tea sets and even wallpaper and carpeting. They were elaborately decorated, and one of them was so tall that we had to walk up some steps to see inside the top floor.The next day, we decided to get out of town and see a little of the countryside. We took a bus to a town called Aalsmeer, where they hold the world’s largest flower auction. Every day they auction a million flowers out of these enormous warehouses. The publicis allowed entry only on specially built catwalks
above the frenetic action on the floor. The auction rooms are like theaters, with a conveyer belt in the front where the flowers to be bid on pass by. In front of the room are two giant clock-like devices for bidding. Instead of the hours, the clock face has fractions of euros as its intervals. When a new tray of flowers comes into the room, the clock starts at
the highest monetary value. If you want those flowers, you press a button to stop the clock at the amount you are willing to spend per stem. Highest bidder gets that container of flowers, and they are tagged with
the bidder’s number and sent into the warehouse to be
shipped somewhere in the world that very day.

The warehouse itself was unbelievable. There were so many flowers, and so many workers, each of whom was driving a little car with 8 or 10 wagons of flowers attached to the back, sort of like the airport luggage
carts on the tarmac. We only got to tour one warehouse, and there are five more, each filled with flowers and workers and bidders. It is quite an
elaborate operation, and world flower prices are established there every day. The flower guys work 24 hours a day, and they looked like they would puke if they saw one more damn sunflower, but we had a great
time peering down at all the action.

That night, we saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company do the Complete Works of Shakespeare in 97 minutes. It was a very silly show, but it has been so long since we have been able to see theatre in English that we
really enjoyed ourselves. If any of you have seen it, we were chosen to be the Muppets. How embarrassing!

Our last day in Amsterdam came all too quickly. After breakfast, we decided to tour one last place, the Van Loon House, built in 1672, this canal house has been owned by one family since that time. It has been preserved and restored so that visitors get a glimpse into what life was like for the very wealthy Dutch a few hundred years ago. There were bedrooms with four-poster canopy beds which matched the wallpaper which matched the upholstery on the chairs. There were sitting rooms and drawing rooms and a pretty little garden out back. The houses look so small from the street, but this place was enormous on the inside. A little much for my taste, but it was interesting to see how the upper crust used to live.We really did not want to say goodbye to Amsterdam, and had a hard time making our way back to the train station. It was a relief to be someplace so organized and clean for a while.

Although we love the chaos of Istanbul, it was also nice to have modern plumbing and to be able to speak English and have everyone
understand us. For all its partying reputation, Amsterdam is a very civilized and beautiful place and we can’t wait to go back for another visit.

Stephanie Shattuck

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