Amsterdam - maybe part one, maybe complete - stay tuned!

I have been trying unsuccessfully to get to Amsterdam since 1969.

The background:

In 1968 I was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in the former West Germany 

View from my room in the Barracks
at Hof - apologies for the quality

– a town called Hof, a little place on the border of the former Czechoslovakia and the former East Germany. I had used a lot of my leave (vacation days) before I should have, opting to spend the long breaks between training programs at home rather than doing what was called “casual duty” on base. Casual duty was anything but casual – it included KP (kitchen patrol) and picking up and “field-stripping” cigarette butts – nearly everyone smoked in those days. This meant something that I had not properly calculated. 

On a day trip to Kulmbach and great beer!

I would have to wait until new leave days accrued before I could take any in Germany. We did shift work in Hof and after 12 days’ work we had four days off. So I was able to take short trips, one to Munich, another to the German Alps, specifically to Garmisch-Partenkirschen, where the U.S. had created a large place for its soldiers to get R&R (rest and recuperation, though for us it was more recreation) in a beautiful setting; and one dismal failure of a try to get to the German Grand Prix. We were well on our way there, but one of the guys in the car got so sick we could not continue, We turned back and got him to the doctor. I DO remember seeing the Rhine and sleeping on a featherbed in a loft in a small Gasthaus and getting one of my best night’s sleeps ever! We stayed there on the way – if only I could remember where it was! But it’s probably a Best Western now.

I took this shot on the way to the German Grand Prix
to which we never got

Anyway, to make a short story long, I was unable to take a large block of leave for nearly a year and a half. I was assigned to Germany for three years, so no problem, right? Right (-ish)! Three friends of mine, Phil Pippo, JC McGlaughlin and I’m ashamed to say I do not remember the name of the third) planned a long leave which would take us through Europe! Including, and in fact especially to AMSTERDAM!

But there came to pass a sudden need for more Russian linguists back in the U.S. at NSA (the National Security Agency – home of “secret poopie,” as we called it) – and guess who got picked? If you guessed Dottore Gianni you are certainly correct!

So I was bundled back to the U.S. I had started a theatre group on the base,

Jack and Karin on stage

 and I'd miss that. I lost a German girlfriend – Karin Fritz, who spoke nearly unaccented English, though she sounded more British than American – she had learned “Oxford English” – and with whom I was deeply smitten. Our first date was in a cold church listening to Mozart's Requiem -- cheery start, yes? I even cast her in a show that the Hof Little Theatre did. I really believed I wanted to marry Karin. I’m not sure she was ready to take that step with me, in fact I understand that she replaced me with another American beau shortly after I left for the States. Such is life. So it goes. And other such drivel…

But more importantly I got no chance to go on what passed as the “Grand Tour” with three other American airmen. And they lost no chance to rub it in. From every city they traveled to they sent me a postcard telling me of their adventures, always ending with “sorry you have to miss it.”  I remember, perhaps incorrectly but who’s counting at this distant date? That in Amsterdam they were able to see Janis Joplin in concert! Janis Joplin! Southern Comfort-guzzling goddess of our dreams! How cool for them! What a downer for me!

Which is the good doctor’s long-winded introduction to why he picked Amsterdam at the last minute for a last brief fling in his year abroad. In fact it may be longer than the blog itself.

But here he is! Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Amsterdam…what can I say about it?

The canal on the street where I am staying

 More canals than Venice, but in Venice you see nearly no cars. Of a similar heritage as Bruges, but Bruges has the luxury of remaining small and can keep itself clean, and Amsterdam cannot. Like Copenhagen a city on water and like that city has made an art of forging bicycle paths EVERYwhere. But there seem to be more traffic snarls and angry beeping of horns in Amsterdam, and while there seem to be fewer bicycles here than in Copenhagen, the anger, or aggression, seems to have passed on to the bikers as well.

I noted the anger of drivers I noted just above from the first moment I got here, mainly because my taxi driver seemed angry at the world. He started shaking his head and muttering the minute I got into his cab. He kept on shaking his head and muttering at everyone on the road except for himself, and made an astonishing swerve through at least four lanes of traffic to get to where he needed to make a right turn. I became a bit afraid he was going to pull a Robert DeNiro: “Are you talkin’ to me?...Are you talkin’ to ME!? and was very happy to pay him and leave him a nice tip so he would go away.

I noticed the change between Venice and Amsterdam in a less obvious manner. 

Cars of all things along the canals!
There oughta be a law!

Number one, how can you be expected to take atmospheric photos of beautiful canals if cars are parked everywhere? Right? OK, that’s a ridiculous tourist’s lament, and reminds me of my own mother on climbing the bridges over the canals in Venice when she implored, “Why can’t they make them flat!?!” Think about that for a minute if you have to. All right! Shame on me for number one.
 Number two is more serious, becausewhen I blew my nose after a nice long walk I noticed in my lily-white handkerchief a substance I connect only with New York City and London – black soot. I haven’t checked, but there seems to be a pollution problem in Amsterdam that I was shocked by.

I noticed the trash on the streets this morning when I set out for my first full day Amsterdam adventure. I was frankly shocked at how many paper wrappers and cans, particularly beer cans, were strewn seemingly everywhere on the street. Many of the locals swept these into piles, which helped immensely, but I never saw a street-cleaning crew come to clean them up. If there’s an shortage of jobs in Amsterdam, I have a suggestion…

As for the bicyclists, they rule the city. I have been watching as carefully as possible for bike lanes, which are everywhere, but I have been nearly run down on several occasions, once by a guy I nearly screamed at as he sped off, as he was not in a designated bike lane and still nearly took part of me with him he came so close.

So! With all of these complaints (and I’ve not finished, though maybe I have in this particular post), why do I find myself charmed by Amsterdam? Because I do. I’m not sure I can pinpoint why, though I’ve been very good about pinpointing drawbacks, but with all its flaws it is in many ways a very beautiful place. In fact if street-cleaning is not of interest to Amsterdamians (hmmmm…surely that’s not the correct term, but it has a ring to it), then they can bring me over and I’ll be happy to oblige.

Let’s see…in spite of what I wrote above about the cars, Amsterdam is filled with beautiful canals. I took a tour on a canal boat yesterday and I may even take another before I leave – wonderful views! And the canals are lined by amazing-looking and widely varied dwellings (no little boxes on the hilltop here). On a pretty day, and yesterday was pretty, the residents throw open the windows of these lovely dwellings and seem happy for you to see inside their often really lovely interiors. They seem to have a great time eating and yesterday I saw several groups right at their open windows breathing in the air. If it is polluted here, it doesn’t seem to be!

This shot and that just above it demonstrate the variety of styles
of dwellings along the waterfront

Also, the city is so young! I wrote to someone yesterday, “Is there no one in Amsterdam, except for American tourists, over 30? Panini, the Italian restaurant I dined, and dined well at last night seemed to have no one working as a server, in the kitchen, in sight over 30 years old. I think this youthfulness accounts for what's at the heart of vibrant energy that drives the city. And some of the young at least seem quite open! On two occasions in my short time here beautiful blonde young women I was passing on the street smiled at me! Young women don’t usually do that to strange old men – sorry, make that to old men who are strange, whoops, I mean to old men who are strangers. Who knows why these two smiled? Maybe because they know that my knees are practically buckling at their beauty? That this buckling may at any moment cause me either to fall or to kneel to them in worship? More probably because they are confident and unafraid to be, dare I say it…friendly. Or even merely polite.

The Stadsschouwburg - finest theatre in Amsterdam

The opera house, sitting on the water

The Concert-gebouw, prime venue for classical music

So it’s got beauty, it’s got youth – it’s also got culture. There’s great music, dance, theatre, and wonderful places in which to perform; the art museums (though two major ones are closed for renovations) are impressive and offer a wide range.

The Rijksmuseum from the rear in Museumplein

It’s a city of all sorts of museums. I bumped into three today: The Museum of House Boats (admit it, you’ve always wanted to see the inside of one), The Tulip Museum (the flower is beautiful enough to deserve a museum, obviously) and (cough, cough) the Erotic Museum (interesting title – I have sometimes found walking through art museums alone a kind of erotic experience – don’t press for details – and I don’t think that’s the sense in which they’re using the word). And I know there are many more. Who knows what I’ll come across tomorrow?

The Museum of Houseboats

The Amsterdam Tulip Museum

The Erotic Museum

OK, it also has the stuff I mentioned above, it has a pretty atrocious pedestrian zone, it has a red-light district – maybe the combination of stuff I really don’t like and stuff I just love gives it that vibrant something that I find myself really enjoying in my short visit. I threw the first lines of Jacques Brel’s great song about Amsterdam on my facebook page yesterday. I’ll do that again, and add some:

In the port of Amsterdam

There's a sailor who sings

Of the dreams that he brings

From the wide open sea…

a bit farther down:

In the port of Amsterdam

There's a sailor who dies

Full of beer, full of cries

In a drunken town fight

then near the end:

In the port of Amsterdam

There's a sailor who drinks

And he drinks and he drinks

And he drinks once again

He'll drink to the health

Of the whores of Amsterdam

Who've given their bodies

To a thousand other men…

The song is dark in tone, and it darkens deeply as it builds, but there are contradictions,  juxtapositions in it that make me feel perhaps a little connected to Brel in his song and that maybe I understand Amsterdam in a similar fashion. By the way, did you know that there’s a bar dead in the midst of Amsterdam’s red light district called The Old Sailor? Saw it today, though I did not enter.

The Red Light District - on the right
in red, The Old Sailor

Brel also wrote a song that in my mind is the most intelligent, important, key, really, in his oeuvre: La Chanson du Jacky!

If I could be for only an hour

If I could be for one hour every day

If I could be for just one little hour

Cute cute cute in a stupid-ass way

And how did I get to this point from where I started? Who knows!? This is one twisted blog post, and it’s the last you’ll have from Dottore Gianni for a while, probably, as he travels back to the U.S. After this post you may be relieved.