Back To Basics

May 10, 2002-Amsterdam
(photo:Amsterdam)

We drank tap water for the first time in a month today. It felt really good to be able to wash my toothbrush and slosh without having to pour from a bottle of mineral water. I don’t remember my impression of Amsterdam in 1974, but today it’s a dirty city with stunning architecture and scenery. The canals and the streets are littered and trash containers are overflowing. There are pressing crowds everywhere and our hotel is fully booked. It’s nearing the end of the tulip festival and they’re having a flower show that happens only once every ten years. We’re skipping that and will go to the traditional tulip fields tomorrow. It’s certainly spring here and the trees and grass are that refreshingly new green.

Aside from continuing sticker shock (a Pepsi here is $2.50 and in South Africa it was $0.40), we’re contending with pedestrian, vehicular, and bicycle traffic coming at us from entirely the wrong direction. It was one thing for David to get bumped by a bicycle in Agra, but he came close to an encounter with a tram that would have left him with more than a ripped pocket. Bicycles can swerve. Trams are fixed on tracks and it’s the people who have to do the maneuvering. This is a city that has mastered the art of fitting everything into a small space. It’s amazing where entrances to buildings pop up. I wonder if there’s really habitable space on the other side of those miniscule doors. The scrunching of buildings and living space is more amazing given the size of the people. We’re not short and found ourselves straining to see over people standing in front of us at the Rijksmuseum. There were also a lot of French tourists in the museum. There were so many I thought there might be an exchange program going on and that there might be a lot of Dutch at the Louvre. I remember touring the Rijksmuseum in’74, but David has no such recollection. I even remember careening around corners towards closing time and following arrows in an attempt to find Rembrandt’s famous Night Watch. We managed to see that and a lot more today and had time to use an audio guide. What I did notice was an absence of security. There were few guards in the galleries and no alarms or barriers to keep the spectators even at arms distance from the art. It wasn’t unusual for someone to point out a detail on a painting while almost touching the canvas.

We napped again after the museum and went in search of a late night dinner. Daylight Savings Time is so nice. We didn’t have it on the Gold Coast and missed it. It was lovely to stroll around the canals and old buildings at 8 PM in daylight. We started out looking for Thai food. We miss our Wednesday night Thai dinners with the Bruces. We ended up with Greek food instead. It wasn’t even average, but we did get to talk to a young couple who had just arrived in Amsterdam from Akron. They were incredulous when we broke into their conversation after hearing them mention N.E. Ohio and Cleveland. We left the restaurant feeling unsatisfied and needed a sure thing for dessert. We peered into MacDonald’s and I decided to use their rest room since it was convenient. They had a woman sitting outside the toilets collecting 50 cents each to go in. It didn’t matter if you were a customer or not. I think it was to keep riff-raff out. She didn’t so much as lift a finger to hand out towels. She was just a toll collector. We eliminated Febo’s, an automated cafeteria-style place where food is displayed behind glass doors. You put a coin in to open the cubby and get the food. We ended up at Ben and Jerrys Ice Cream. It filled the bill. They also have Haagen-Das. I wonder if the Dutch think it’s indigenous.

I cannot tell you how upsetting it is to see Amsterdam in such a sorry state. It’s as if there was a garbage collectors strike. Besides the trash bins overflowing, dog owners aren’t careful about what they leave behind, and one of the many drunks we saw threw up on the sidewalk in front of us. I think they need former New York Mayor Guilliani to shape up this city.

Toby