Amsterdam

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Every Dutch person I've talked to insists that there's another side to Amsterdam; somewhere behind the red light windows, coffee shops, and drunken tourists, there's a city they love and are proud to call their own. If that's the case, it's pretty well hidden. As a tourist in town for the weekend, there's pretty much no avoiding the things that have made modern Amsterdam such a destination, and there's nothing wrong with that. The liberties give the city a feeling of togetherness comparable to what one might find after a few beers at a frat house. You look around the streets and hear the many languages being spoken, and you realize most people are just here to have a good time. The city becomes really surreal only when you look down at your Emerson-provided lunch bag and realize you're on a school trip.

We took a bus from the Castle at some ungodly hour of the morning, and I killed the three hours talking war with Andrew Vella. When we got there, all 80 of us toppled out of the bus and flooded the hostel lobby, much to the chagrin of our travel-weary cohabitants. After a quick meeting, we picked up our lunch bags, broke into groups, and went for a walking tour. Ready to find that other Amsterdam, I tried to pick up as much as I could from the enthusiastic and knowledgeable Dulcia.

The city is beautiful, and the walking tour was a big help in getting oriented, but no amount of walking tours could give a tourist the confidence and street smarts required to effortlessly walk around Amsterdam. To say the streets are confusing is a vast understatement. In Boston, streets will turn or become other streets without warning. Boston streets are confusing; Amsterdam is in a league of its own. From tours and readings, I've gathered that Amsterdam was first settled in the 12th century, long before modern innovations such as cardinal directions and streets that go in a straight line. It's built around a dam (now Dam Square) with the Amstel River to the north, and the bulk of the city to the south. Encircling the city are canals that allowed merchants to transport their goods back in the day. These canals are a pretty big part of the city's layout, as streets bearing their names (I assume, there were no street signs) run alongside them. The problem is that, as the canals turn, so do the streets, so it is unwise to orient yourself using the canals, or to start walking alongside them in one direction and think you're going to keep going in the same direction. Just describing it is hard enough.

What's even more confusing about the streets of Amsterdam is the streets themselves. Just when you think you can tell the difference between the street, the bike lane, the sidewalk, and the tram tracks, you walk a block and everything switches places. Now what looked like the bike lane is actually the street, there's people walking on what you thought was the street, and a tram is quietly approaching you from behind. I wish it were a joke, but I legitimately had to concentrate on what part of the ground I was on at all times. With so many different modes of transportation sharing such tiny streets, right of way becomes a huge issue. What I gathered is that bikes always have it, even over pedestrians. This rule was probably thought up by people who assumed bikes would stay in the bike lanes, but this is not the case, and most bikers don't relinquish their right of way just because they're on a sidewalk. The same issue came up with pedestrians versus cars. Who has right of way on a street that looks like a sidewalk? Should they even be driving here? These are questions any tourist will have on their first trip to Amsterdam.

After the walking tour, we regrouped to visit the Rijksmuseum, an art museum dedicated to all things Dutch. I got a cool tour from my Art History professor Rob Duckers that included Rembrandt's The Night Watch and my personal favorite, a huge wooden coat of arms of Charles II taken as a trophy from the back of the English flagship. After the Rijksmuseum we headed over to an Indonesian restaurant for some dinner, which was delicious. The funniest part was that we were given a private upstairs room, but the vegetarians had to eat in the basement.

And then finally, the moment we had all been waiting for: night fell. There was talk of going to see a "sex show," an ambiguous term that will stay that way for now. Still in search of that other Amsterdam, I looked up some old pubs in the local-recommended Jordaan district. Some friends and I wandered over there with the intention of going from pub to pub and seeing what happened, but time restrictions and famously bad service wouldn't let that happen. The place we hit was called De Pieper, a small pub established in 1665 with a working Belgian beer pump from 1875. On the way, Vella and I decided to give in and "experience Amsterdam" by going to the sex show, so we had to be there by 11. After a couple fine beers, our group headed over to the red light district. Most of them went looking for a coffeeshop (you don't have to look hard), but Vella and I were determined to find The Moulin Rouge, where the sex show was, so we got to wandering.

It wasn't my first time in the red light district, but I still hadn't gotten over it. During the day it was surreal, walking past window after window of scantily clad women beckoning you, yes you, to come inside. And in broad daylight, customers came in and out, negotiating prices, tightening their belts, acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary, because, quite frankly, nothing was. That's pretty much all there is to say about the red light district. Coming to Amsterdam, I thought of it as a mysterious place that people had to actively seek out, like one hidden block where you had to know some secret knock to get in. But the weirdest part is that there are no such complications. It's just there, and anyone who goes to Amsterdam would have to have strong reasons not to stroll through.

At night however, it gets a little more freaky. Not scary, it's still relatively safe, just freaky like Bourbon Street in New Orleans (the two are surprisingly similar cities). The red lights actually illuminate the dark alleys, and more women than ever try their hardest to lure you in. Vella and I had almost given up on finding the sex show when we finally found it. Or so we thought. As soon as we showed the slightest interest in the place, a tall, thin man in a dark suit walked out and asked if we wanted to see the show. Like a con artist, he whisked us inside before we could think twice and started filling out a form asking if we wanted drinks included. We told him we were looking for a group, and when he said he had seen them, we decided to go ahead, 2 drinks included. We paid him, and expected to go through the doors behind him that said "Theater" above them. Instead, he walked us outside, where we followed him for a couple blocks over to another, bigger theater. I guess we had found one of their satellite campuses, but as we paid the same price as everyone else, we didn't think we got scammed (although for the same price some Emerson girls had been given 4 drinks included). After a short wait, we went inside, where we found the small stage, set up more like a strip club than a theater, was surrounded by Emerson students. The show was bizarre. For the sake of decency I won't go into details, but with some nice moves and a good amount of on-stage (Emerson) audience participation, the show was well worth it. But thank God I only got 2 drinks.

The next morning was awful. I had had a total of 4 drinks the night before, stretched over a long night, so I was by no means drunk. But when I woke up, I felt terrible. I threw up enough times to clear out everything and then some, but didn't want to ask to sit out the tours out of fear that the faculty would think I had just partied too hard and was asking to sleep in. So I cleared my system again and set out for the Anne Frank House.

It was a pretty amazing experience to walk around the house that the 8 people hid in for 2 years, but as there's no furniture, it's pretty hard to get a feel for what the place was really like. The house was mostly interesting because I was reading the diary for European Lit at the time. I didn't have time for a nap between Anne Frank and the next tour, so I crashed on a couch in the museum cafe, had a tea, and read the diary. An hour or so later I made my way back to Dam Square to meet for the next tour, the Allard Pierson Museum. Only about a third of my Art History class showed up (the others signed up for other things), so we got a very personal tour with the Duke, Rob Duckers. The museum contained mostly ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Etruscan art, which we saw and discussed to get a foundation in the classical art that inspired the Renaissance. At one sculpture, Duckers asked us to identify the period it came from. When the answer came a collective "Archaic," he asked if we were willing to bet a bottle of champagne on it. After much debate we decided yes, and he told us he owed us a bottle of champagne. We laughed and forgot it until the end of the tour, when he said, "Now, let's go find some champagne." He led us to a Hotel on the Dam Square, where we conversed over an 80 euro bottle of Moet, courtesy of the Duke.

My stomach was still a little off, and by this point I was so sick and weak from walking all day on a (literally) empty stomach, that I crashed in bed and slept for 3 hours. I was awoken by Ben, who informed me that people were hanging out at the hostel bar, and I had to come down. I went down to the surprisingly hopping hostel bar and found out that people were going to some dance club, not my scene. We instead went out to dinner at a sports bar to watch the Ajax (Amsterdam soccer) game. I had Dutch meatballs with frites and it was glorious. Afterwards most of the group went to the dance club, while Ben and I, both ready for an "early" night, hit a coffeeshop and went to bed.

The next day, we got up, checked out of the hostel, and all went our separate ways. I went with a few people to the Van Gogh Museum, which really is a must see. Ben made the valid point that if there's one artist who's work you have to see in original form and up close, it's Van Gogh. Being able to actually see the canvass on the edges of certain paintings gave me a real appreciation for the genius that goes into creating art out of simple, yet complex lines of paint. We then got some of that famous doner kabob and Dutch donuts, and got a train home.

Sickness and freezing cold weather will sadly always taint memories of my first Amsterdam trip. And try as I might have, I don't feel like I uncovered any secret local Amsterdam. But it was at some point during the sex show, that I realized I don't really care. Of course the Dutch are going to say there's another side, they don't want to look like a bunch of hedonistic sinners, and all touristy cities have another side anyway. Being from DC, I know that better than most. But the fact is, I am a tourist, and I'd be a fool to go in search of hidden Amsterdam before taking a ride on the wild visible Amsterdam. This city is like Halloween or New Years, you can't over-plan, because something might come up that's way more fun. I realized that when everyone is looking for a good time, you're better off just going with the flow.

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Comments

[Gins]

i must say...
jake, i'm enjoying your recount of all your experiences so far. miss you kid.