Population: 751,000
After what may only be called an endurance marathon of travel by plane, metro, train, and foot, I finally made it to my first stop: Amsterdam. Bustling city, full of tourists, and I was soon to find out why. I have a tendency to overwrite when I leave journal entries, so for all our sakes I'll try to stick to main events and leave commentaries aside. First main stop: Anne Frank House, on Prinsengracht. The secret annex is unfurnished, as Otto Frank wanted it to always remain, so there's not a whole lot to see, but to set foot in the same rooms as Anne was enough. A very simply museum, it did not try to overwhelm you with information, and quotes of Anne's etched in the walls helped evoke feelings of sympathy and sadness at their cramped lifestyle. Sizewise, the annex compared to a normal flat of today's standards, really not a hole in the ground, but small for eight people. An additional section of the museum, for kids groups I think, had this room with comfy cushions to sit on and a big screen that showed controversial events and each chair had a buzzer next to it to vote or share your opinion. For example, the miniclip showing when I was there was about anti-Israeli demonstrations in Amsterdam following the takeover of Gaza, and the film asked if you thought the demonstrations should be allowed to continue in light of the fact that some protestors shouted anti-Semitic slurs against the Israeli people.
Onwards, to the Tulip Museum. The tulip has a lot of history. It comes from East Asia and the Manchuria region originally, was first exulted by the Sultan of the Ottoman empire for its beauty and became a symbol of the eternal, then came to Amsterdam via the botanist Clusius of the Ottoman Empire. Used for trade, the tulip market brought enormous revenue and the most famous tulip, the Semper Augustus, sold for the value of a house (It was very beautiful, red and white striped). In 1637, during Holland's Golden Age, the tulip market collapsed and bankruptcy subsumed most of the wealthy population of traders. Other interesting fact to note: the tulip's name comes from a mistake- the Dutch thought it was named after the Eastern turban, also called tuyban, for its shape, but in its original language the Turks called it just "lalé." (As an aside, the title Dutch also came as a mistranslation, as the Spaniards when invading in the 16th century were looking for the Germans (Deutsch) but pronounced it incorrectly. Dutch is a derivative of German, so it sounds very similar).
I also visited the Rembrandt House, in the old Jewish District (it was all torn down and ransacked during the Hunger Winter of 1944), the Jewish Museum built inside the former Old and New synagogues, a vintage-esque flea market called Waterlooplein, the largest floating flower market in the world on Singel canal, the bloenmarkt, and the Torture Museum, which just had medieval torture instruments and short explanations and woodcut pictures depicting their use, all in a dungeon style darkened stone corridor. My hostel was right in the Redlight District, so it wasn't hard to experience that firsthand. Summary of Redlight: crooked alleyways opening onto main avenues filled with people at cafe tables looking out onto the canals, and in said alleyways you pas storefront windows lined with rich colored curtains that unveil one woman per window, wearing lingerie and high heels, face covered with makeup, waiting for the next customer. Some women were eating potato chips, one was on her phone, and it was just strange to stare at a window where the goods were people, offputting to American values that eschew slavery, the sex trade, grossly open promiscuity as in the case here. On a tour our guide said the women have to pay to rent the windows for an eight hour time shift, and they charge around 70 euro for fifteen minutes. Most women stay about three years on average, but one woman had been working there for forty four years and was now 72!! And the thing is, most of the women I saw were probably in their thirties or up, but most were not striking physically, I mean you wouldn't see them posing on the cover of a magazine anytime soon. Redlight was also a lot of sex shops, porno shows, nightclubs, gay and straight, and erotic massage parlors.
Then there were the coffeeshops, which were not unique to Redlight but spread out throughout the city. I say coffeeshops, not cafes, because in the coffeeshop of course you can't buy coffee, just pot. Pot's actually illegal on the books but tolerated because the police don't want to fill their jails with potheads and instead want to focus on crime and hard drug usage, which they have gotten down to a minimum. No one's been arrested for marijuana use in 31 years. So coffeeshops, little hole in the wall joints brimming with marijuana smoke and a smell that wafts outside to the passersby, most decorated in psychadelic colors with funny names. You see people rolling their own joints at the counter in the window and blowing smoke rings. Every year they have the Cannabis Cup where people go around to all the coffeeshops and test the marijuana, then at the end of the week they rate each shop on the product, service, atmosphere, etc. One of the most famous coffeeshops I saw was called Dampkring (smokering), and it was featured as the meeting point for George Clooney and Brad Pitt and the Russians in Ocean's Twelve. On the tv screens they roll the clip endlessly.
So for the history buff in me, my favorite part of the trip was the free walking tour that I took one afternoon, where I learned all I could possibly ever want to know and more about Amsterdam. We walked through the Amsterdam Historical Museum and saw paintings from the Golden Age (circa 1650-1750), most of militia groups that had posed for their giant company portrait, we walked through the Begijnhof, a quiet strip of canalhouses ringed around a courtyard where French single religious women (though not nuns) came to escape hardships in the later 19th century and the area is now still for single religious women with certain financial limitations, though you wouldn't know it just walking through. We learned about the city's layout and the Dutch feats of engineering (houses are on a slant, with these wooden bars at the top used for a pulley system to lift furniture and such into the top regions of the houses since the stairwells are often extremely thin and narrow), and saw the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company, starting point for capitalism, now part of the University of Amsterdam's library. Amsterdam underwent major basic changes under Napoleon's brother Louis' rule in 1796, where every house got a number instead of a gablestone, these beautiful little painting-like designs inlaid above each entrydoor, most of which are still there since the buildings are original from the 1500s, and each person got a surname. Our tour started in Dam Square, the main square where the Royal Palace is located and across from it the National Monument, built of white stone. It's not very pleasing to the eye, it's just one big slab of stone standing vertically and then some figures at the base, honoring those who died in World War II. Likewise, the Royal Palace is huge but in need of some cleaning as it is very dark and soot and grime have sort of overtaken it. The Queen stays there only one night a year: May 4, on the country's day of remembrance, the day it was liberated from Germany in World War II, and every other night she is in the Hague. Amsterdam is the only European capital where the seat of government is not there, because in medieval Amsterdam and the Golden Ages Amsterdam was not run by royalty but rather by burghers, wealthy aristocrats, and the tradition of citizens coming first is part of their culture; hierarchy dismays the average Amsterdamer.
So we saw a lot more too, but my favorite sites were the churches. They are all from medieval times, and have been added on to in several installments so they appear to be mish mashes of bricks and stones rising in overlapping towers. My favorite was the one right in the center of Redlight: the oudekerk (Old Church). The oldest church there, dating from 1200. It's very beautiful and not imposing, really, you just arrive at it while walking down the alleys and boom, you're standing and looking up at this bell tower inlaid with gold on an elaborate clock and sundial (all of the belltower clocks were inlaid with gold or silver, and most had been dyed a rich color of blue or green that contrasted with the dark colors of the buildings themselves). I also liked Westerkerk (West Church), which was literally the building right next to the Anne Frank House. The other cool thing about churches was that a lot of them are not still churches but rather public functionary buildings, like Oudekerk is a concert hall now. Next to my hostel was Nieuemarkt (New Market), another cool building that was of red brick and had lots of towers so it was very circular. It used to demarcate the city's border when it had city walls, but then became a building for guild meetings and each tower corresponded with a different guild. The square around it was site of public executions for a while, and today it's shops and restaurants. That sounds like it's pretty big, but actually it's not a huge building, neither were the churches. I mean they were big, but they all fit in, not like say the Royal Palace which was just that: palatial. Oh yeah, and on our tour we walked over the tallest point of Amsterdam, surprisingly just 1/2 meter above sea level (on top of one of the bridges over a canal.) The entire city is literally submerged, but it's not sinking like Venice. Our guide said Amsterdam is very tolerant because the common enemy is the sea, so no matter what your creed or race once you're there you have to work together to keep out the sea. There were a fair amount of cats sulking around restaurant areas (not wild cats, there weren't any of those) and the cats kept the mice and rats away since they were more likely to gravitate towards below sea level stockrooms.
Anyways, the next day I went out of the city centre to Vondelpark, just a nice green area, and to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum (National Museum). The Rijksmuseum was being renovated so I couldn't see all of it, but I did see the famous "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt. It must be two stories tall and two stories in width, it's really huge, and it's sort of become a national treasure, by virtue of its history with the city (which we learned on our tour but I'll spare you the details). Later on that day I went to Rembrantplein (Rembrandt Square), and there was a statue of him and then at eye level there were castiron metal reproductions of all 21 figures in the Nightwatch, they call in Nightwatch 3D. Some Russian sculptors made it their pet project. It was almost too many statues in one square, you couldn't really appreciate them all it seemed like they were just thrown down next to each other, but it was still cool. During the day I went by train to Utrecht for half a day. I didn't really have a plan or know what to see so I just walked around. It's a university town and there were lots of students and a busy shopping district, and it has a few main canals that are larger in width than those in Amsterdam. There were paths alongside both edges of the canal with little underground houses whose doors you could just see, but you could walk next to the water whereas in Amsterdam you were always three or four feet above water level. Other than that, the town itself wasn't very impressive, just a sleepy little urban area. Utrecht was given a bishopric in 777 and so it has been a Catholic town, known for its Cathedral Tower built starting in 1300, and that was the main site of the city I guess. It was this huge, absolutely huge tower that you could walk through via an archway at the base, but the tower itself clearly dominated the skyline. Next to it was the Domkerk (Dom Church), a really big church with flying buttresses that reminded me of Notre Dame. The most interesting part of Utrecht was that parts of the church and what used to be the bishop's gardens are being restored, and I watched bulldozers partake in said excavation, but for the most part it's been left as it was hundreds of years ago and the half-decayed state is very natural. Instead of having a red rope prevent me from walking somewhwere or having glass encasing the artifacts, I could actually touch the statues in the church. A lot of the statues of the saints carved into the walls had their heads gone as a result of the Reformation fo 1580 and iconoclasts, and it almost seemed better to see them like that than to have them restored to their original setting (although this coming from a non-Catholic).
I guess the Dutch aren't particularly known for their cuisine (the national dish is some sort of mashed potato), but in Amsterdam they have found ways of infusing other country's dishes as their own specialties. Pancakes, vlaamese friet (French fries served in a paper cone with a dollop of mayonnaise or sauce on top), stroopwafels (sugary waffles with chocolate on top), were all delicious. There were also a ton of pizza by the slice places, but I figure that's just part of the international flavor of the city and the need for "munchies" (oh yeah, the other big thing here is mushroom shops, called smartshops, where you can buy magic mushrooms). For all of the hype about legal drugs, Holland actually ranks 7th in Western Europe for marijuana use, with Spain and then England capturing first and second respectively. It's mainly tourists that indulge.
I liked Amsterdam, not as much Utrecht, but I wouldn't really say it was a picturesque city. It's more of a functional, urban center, the charm of those little alleyways and canalhouses isn't as prominent as it could be, because everything's still in use for modern day whorehouses or regular houses or marijuana shops or pizza parlors. But it was certainly a unique city in that respect. I didn't have to go hunting for history, because every two steps there was something of significance. I just needed a guide to explain it to me, because there weren't any plaques commemorating the historical significance so prevalent in the city centre. So with Amsterdam toured out, I'm off to Brussels. I was told it's a little bit of a disappointment, but we'll see. The major hikes with all of my luggage are really draining, but fortunately not all of my travels will be done with over a hundred pounds of luggage!
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