Amsterdam

I went back to my room and met my new roommates. There was a young lady from Russia that was absolutely shocked that someone from America knew a little bit of her native tongue. There was also a gentleman from Egypt that was the upper bunkmate that chatted with me as I packed my bag to leave the next day. I said my goodnights and then went to sleep.

In the morning before I had my final breakfast on the roof, I ran into the Australian that did the wardrobe change on her walk of shame back to the room. I smiled and nodded. I grabbed my stuff and headed to the tram to go to the airport. I arrived with no problems. Well, except for one. I needed to use the restroom and all the stalls were occupied. A fully-abled Italian Army soldier came out of the one for people in wheelchairs so I went and made use of it. Suddenly about two minutes later, someone started banging on the door. I asked them to wait a few minutes. When I was finished, I opened the door to find a young man in a wheelchair. He began yelling at me in Italian and pointing at the sign then pointing at his chair, like that scene from the only episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm I ever saw. I shrugged my shoulders and got out of his way. He slammed the door still cursing me.

Getting back into the terminal, “There are no rules, like check-in at an Italian airport,” was a quote that went through my mind. Even though the airport was tiny, it was like the entirety of Florence showed up to go somewhere. Nothing was clearly marked and everyone was yelling and gesticulating. I was finally able to figure out where I needed to go to check-in, then it was off to security. Somehow, I jumped the line and was able to quickly find my seat and be done. We took off and I was on my way to Amsterdam.

Getting closer to the airport, I saw a whole bunch of wind turbines and surmised about the Dutch and their windmills. I landed at the airport and took the train to the city center. Unfortunately, my hostel was not very close so I had to hop another regional train to get out to where I needed to be about 20 minutes later. It was close to a university or something, but I needed to walk a few winding paths through campus to find it. I arrived, checked in, locked up my stuff, and headed back out to the city. I got a multi-day unlimited public transportation pass which would get me all around the city.

It was early afternoon and I was hungry so I went down one of the main thoroughfares of the city and had myself some Flemish fries with mayo. Now, I am not a fan of mayonnaise. Remembering my time back in Spain when my contemporaries used to drown their fries in them, the bile rose a little bit. But it was not overpowering and frankly, the experience was a pleasant one. I then decided to take a little walking tour with Rick Steves again, as I had no time to waste.

The highlights of this tour were multifold. The first was that I saw St. Peter’s Church. When the Protestants took over the government in the 16th Century, Catholic churches were converted to Protestant churches, and Catholics were no longer allowed to worship openly. But, the Dutch people being rather tolerant, allowed them to worship in private establishments. It was a common sight on Sunday morning to see a few hundred people file out of someone’s home. There was also the practice of having hidden churches or schuilkerken. If I did not know exactly where to look, I would have passed right by it. I entered the doors to a little foyer which then gave way to a high ceilinged two-story church. It was amazing and a testament to human ingenuity. 

After seeing some more sites and being surprised as I was learning from Mr. Steves about the drug laws of Amsterdam, I walked through another narrow passageway to an oblong courtyard and arrived at the Begijnhof Chapel.  The port of Amsterdam had visitors from every corner of the world for centuries, so this was nothing unusual. The chapel served as a meeting place for the English speakers of Amsterdam for them to pray. This was no different for a group of ragtag misfits that escaped England due to harsh persecution in 1620. And so, before they got on their little boat to cross the Atlantic in the hopes of new religious freedom, it was in this church they prayed. This group of misfits was known as the Pilgrims.  

I then let Mr. Steves guide me to a few more interesting places. The first was the Winston Hotel. Rumor had it that there was a young screenwriter that had holed himself up in this hotel for three months while he feverously wrote a complicated, non-linear screenplay where talk of Amsterdam, mayonnaise, and Royales with Cheese would make its way into the cultural zeitgeist.

Finally, I walked around the Red Light District. Apparently, it got its name from the red lanterns that the young ladies carried in the mid-1600s to provide enough light to show off certain bodily accouterments while hiding others in its hue; like rashes, boils, and acne. It was in this fashion that they invited the many sailors of the world for horizontal refreshment. Lanterns gave way to lights, then to neon. 

While it was a good first day in Amsterdam, I headed back to the hostel, making sure I got my fair share of domestic Heinekens before my return. I got a wrap for dinner and settled into my room. For the next day, I had an appointment with Mr. Van Gogh.

I got up early and headed to the Van Gogh museum. Even though there was a line around the block, I was one of the first people inside. I got my audio guide and set out. It was an incredibly modern museum with many paintings as well as virtual exhibits. It had everything for everyone. There was a display called Dreams that walked the visitors through Van Gogh’s sunflower period. Apparently, he was driven to drunkenness and exhaust whilst working in Paris, so he moved south to a warmer climate. It was there he was inspired by sunflowers. So much so that he began painting a lot of them. He used his money to buy his yellow house, which he wanted to turn into a studio for like-minded artists. Only Gaugin would come. They would have electric conversations, but eventually, Vincent succumbed to his madness and this is when he cut off his ear. Speaking of, I am not certain if it was a joke or I was just demented, but the many, many cues for people to raise their audio wands to listen to the guide explain a piece were stickers on the ground containing one single severed ear. 

I learned many things at this museum. Van Gogh was born in 1853 and did not start painting until he was 27, encouraged and subsidized by his brother Theo, an art dealer. He died at 37, shooting himself in the chest in a field and dying two days later. His works Wheatfield With Crows and Wheatfield With Thunderclouds were a few of his last pieces, giving credence that he knew his time was close to an end. After his death, his friends began talking to art critics about how good his works were. But it was not until Theo died that his widow Jo van Gogh-Bonger that the greater world began recognizing his work. Over the course of his 10 years of painting, Van Gogh made 800 pieces. While they were notable of much greater scale, another giant of Dutch painting Rembrant, only made 300. 

One of the more interesting aspects is that the body of his work had a slow progression from darkness to light that seemed to be the inverse of his life. He had many quotes peppered around the museum such as, “It is difficult to know oneself – it is also not easy to paint oneself.” One of the things I was thinking about was a study I had read about people with bipolar disorder had a sensitivity to bright colors, especially yellow. One would only need to see a few of his pieces to know that he did not see the world the way the rest of us did. But he also had an astute understanding of his place in it. “As an artist, one is merely a link in a chain.” And seeing how his museum was a perfect synthesis of old media and new media, “I believe in the new art, in the artist of the future.”

After a few hours at the museum, I jetted back to the hostel to grab a few things I wanted to mail. When I returned to the city center, nobody could give me a straight answer as to where a post office was. After wandering around aimlessly, someone pointed me to a store that sold stamps and handled packages. I walked into a card shop and behind the counter was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Radiant blue eyes like the cresting Arctic sea ensconced in a face that was of some bronzed goddess of antiquity. Her modestly cut neon green dress, containing her gentle curves was a beacon. Or a warning. I am sure that every man has experienced something like this at some point, but I saw our entire lives together played out: our first kiss, our marriage, our children and us growing old together. Snapping out of it, I asked her for two large envelopes to mail the goods I had picked up. I purchased some stamps and began affixing them to my package. She gasped when she realized that she had given me stamps for the Netherlands and not international. We began doing a joint arts and crafts project, her head perilously close to mine. We started taking off the old stamps and affixing the new ones. I asked her her name, and she told me it was Ingrid. I joked that this was a clever ploy for us to spend more time together. She laughed.

Unfortunately, I missed my afternoon walking tour, so I decided to go see Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I had some time to kill so I went over to the Rembrandtplas and had my first Amsterdam Heinekin draft. It was exquisite. I always had a soft spot for Heinekins as it was what my mother drank and was really the only beer we ever had in the house. I got a little dinner from a supermarket then went to watch the film. I liked it. Even though it had the saddest happy ending. 

After the film, I walked around the Red Light district some, smiled at the ladies peddling their wares as they smiled back and beckoned to me. I headed back to the hostel, had a nightcap while I talked with one of my clients before I went up to bed. When I walked in, I saw a man about my age in a bed clutching a full-sized teddy bear and thought to myself, “Hey, whatever gets you through.”   

Since I did not have a lot of time to waste and wanted to see the sights of Amsterdam, one place that was very high on my list was the Anne Frank house. The problem was that it was high on everyone’s list. Lucky for me, I was a bit smarter than the average bear and was able to hack their site to make sure I was the first in line to buy a ticket. 

Anne Frank had become almost synonymous with the Holocaust, putting a human face on it. Born on 12 June 1929, Anne and her family moved from Frankfurt, Germany to Amsterdam in 1934, after the Nazis took power. They did not flee far enough. By 1940, Hitler’s armies were spreading across Europe and occupied the Netherlands. By 1941, the Franks lost their German citizenship and were officially stateless. On January 20th of 1942, the Nazi higher-ups convened at a shore house on Lake Wannsee outside of Berlin and decided on the method of the Final Solution to their Jewish question in occupied territory. Persecution increased, as well as corraling them to ghettos to be sent to concentration and extermination camps. The Franks hid in the office where Otto Frank, Anne’s father worked. It was here where Anne and her family hid for close to two years until they were reported to the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. The family was arrested, split up, and sent to different concentration camps. Anne and her sister Margot were sent to Auschwitz but were then transferred to Bergen-Belsen. It was assumed that they died of typhus in February or March 1945. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive. He returned to Amsterdam and found that his daughter’s diary had been saved by his secretary. He then fulfilled her dream of becoming a world-famous writer by publishing it in 1947.   

I showed up at the allotted time as there were a lot of people and the space was small. The tours were divided by tens, so everyone in my timeslot filed in. I am not going to lie, the image that I had of Anne Frank and her family was that they were crammed in a tiny one-room attic. It was a lot more spacious than I realized with a few rooms and multiple floors. They really made use of the space and the continued ingenuity of Amsterdam architecture of narrow buildings that ran deep astounded me. They talked about her life and that of Jews in The Netherlands. In the guest book, I simply wrote ‘2A.’

Keeping up my World War II theme for the day, I headed over to the Resistance Museum. It chronicled the Dutch Resistance during the war. The Dutch politicians surrendered to the Germans too easily for the likes of freedom-loving people, so they stymied their war effort at every opportunity. My only issue was that it appeared that the darling of cinema, the Dutch Audrey Hepburn, was left out of the history of the museum even though she was probably their most famous partisan. But oh well.

I hurried back to the hostel to get changed into my good clothes. I had someone to meet. I headed back to the main train station and was told to meet in front of the piano at the main entrance. I had some time to kill so I recorded a message to my twin nephews as it was their birthdays. I found the piano and was standing there, and standing there, then all of a sudden, a woman asked me my name. I knew who she was. I had finally met up with my Polish fare from Uber in New Orleans, Magda. We didn’t recognize each other and had been standing next to each other for a good 10 minutes. We hugged and then headed to a bar to have some beer. I presented her with a little bottle of vodka from her native Warsaw. I could see the elation dance in her eyes. She then suggested we go to dinner at a restaurant that was considered incredibly famous due to its barbeque. It was pretty good. We talked about America and Poland, moving for work, and everything in between. After dinner, she showed me some sites and we went to a music fair that she mentioned in one of her emails. We watched the opening and I walked her to her tram. We embraced and it ended up being a pretty good night. She is a real sweetheart and a reminder that there really is a wavelength between certain types of people. I had kept another promise.   

Having seen almost everything I wanted to see in Amsterdam, I woke up and wanted to try to get to Eindhoven, Utrecht, or to The Hague, but the tickets were ridiculously expensive. I instead opted for the walking tour that I had missed. I arrived just in time. Willem, our guide, took us through the Red Light district where all my questions were answered: a) the women are a mix of Dutch and foreigners, all were licensed and medical care was available b) they were all independent contractors. We also learned that the Old Church, a rather large landmark in the Red Light District, was built up with sailors paying Sin Taxes. Later on the walk, we learned the Chinese brought opium to The Netherlands and that’s when people got hooked on heroin. So, to find a solution, the Dutch borrowed the term of places where they sold opium in the orient as “tea shops” and allowed people to start selling marijuana in “coffee shops.” He then said there were three Dutch rules to live by: be discreet, don’t bother other people, tax it. He said their tolerance stemmed from when they were still battling flooding here. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a great migration of workers from there. To keep sex work from ending up under mafia control, the government acted quickly to regulate, codify and protect the workers. To put it succinctly, the Government became the biggest pimp in the Netherlands and drove out all the competition. They offered safe places to work, relative modesty, free checkups, and even daycare. There was also a cute story he shared about the children of Amsterdam. Someone decided to interview a few kids to see if they understood what was happening in the Red Light District. When one little boy was asked, he said he knew exactly what was going on. The interviewer pressed for the answer. He said that men go to see these ladies, and they both take off their clothes, and they go swimming in the pool in the back to relax. 

Another thing Willem shared was that when the Dutch see a problem, they fix it. Too many men after too many Heinekins were drowning in the canals with their flys open. So, discreetly, throughout the Red Light District, the government put up private stalls along the canals where men could micturate without fear of drowning.  

The tour ended and I got some Pissing Statue fries with mayo. I’m so disgusted with myself for it, but they were just as good as the others. So I headed back to the hostel for a nap then headed back out to the Red Light District. Only this time, Rick Steves had a completely different audio tour, and frankly, he is not as much of a square as I thought.

If you knew Mr. Steves as I did, you would see him as some stuffy older guy that could expatiate on churches and historical sites in a unique but kind of annoying voice like it was his business, which it was. However, I gained a whole new respect for him as he let his freak flag fly and shared about all his favorite haunts in the Red Light District, including one bar that allowed patrons to eat a banana held by the proprietress, but not in her hands. There was also another place he recommended where a woman holding a pen, also not with her hands, wrote postcards as well as the numerous live sex shows. He did share some rules for enjoying the Bourbon Street of Europe, and the biggest was that there were to be no photos of the working girls in their little cubicles. 

I walked around some more, bought my brother-in-law his little bottle of alcohol then headed back to the District. Let’s just say I was popular with the blonds with boob jobs each waving and trying to entice me to spend my money. I thought about finding one that I would pay for her time just to talk, but 50€ was a little out of my price range just for a chinwag. I walked through a few smoke shops, just to see them. While I would have loved to do what the Romans did, I did not think it was a good idea to be high and alone in a city rife with tourists. Also the hostel had a zero-tolerance policy on any drug use. I decided then to have a drink at one of the oldest bars in Amsterdam, In ‘t Aepjen. I took the train home and quickly fell asleep.

I woke up the next day, my final in Amsterdam, and packed up my room. I left my suitcase at the hostel that gouged me for storage. Everywhere else had been free. This was 20€ for four hours. Anyway, I hopped on the train and headed for the Rijksmuseum to see some Rembrandts. No one told me life was going to be this way. There were some Vermeers too. One of the more interesting things was there was a plate from a Dutch explorer that was left nailed to a board on the Western Coast of Australia, 200 years before the British got there. 

It was interesting to see remnants of the Dutch’s Golden Century. There were a lot of paintings, but they did not shy away from the rather unsavory parts of their history. The museum featured a “play” crown that they were going to give to the king of now Benin who regulated the slave trade. There was also a section of plaster face masks that were made of people from Indonesia, another Dutch colony. And how could an American forget that before it was New York, it was New Amsterdam? As a matter of fact, it was the Dutch that gave the American colonial settlers from England their first pejorative, Yankee. To them, everyone from England in the New World sounded like they called themselves John Cheese. Pronouncing the J like a Y in the Dutch language, and there you go.

After marveling at Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, which was being partially restored, I left the museum and decided to try and take a peek at the Pilgrim Church that I could not see before. Services were still going on, so I waited until they ended then made my way to the vestibule. The granny patrol was warding off tourists. I could have lied my way in, but I decided not to do it in a house of God. I did however get a good view through the door, had my fill, then turn around and left. 

I caught the train back to the hostel, got my luggage, and headed to the airport. Check-in was an absolute nightmare, especially after I confused the times after multiple bookings. I hopped on the plane and an hour later, I was in Scotland.