Beyond Amsterdam

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My usual second-busiest tradeshow of the year, the International Broadcast Conference in Amsterdam transformed itself into the first in terms of activity and stress. After a couple of weeks of non-stop business, having a few hours to explore the Netherlands beyond Amsterdam was a good way to return to inner balance.

I had narrowed my exploration targets to Monnickendam or Volendam, two harbor towns north of Amsterdam but it took some more precise instructions from my hotel’s concierge to learn exactly how to get there and what was the best approach to do it. According to his advice, it was possible to visit both towns but I needed to go first to Monnickendam and then explore Marken, an island that has been joined to the mainland by means of an artificial land bridge. In Marken, it was possible to take a ferry that would cross the now inland sea and take me to Volendam.

Finding the bus stop in the area of Amsterdam’s Central Station required some effort since my instructions were not as precise concerning what bus would take me there and where to catch it. Just outside the station, I found an information center for the subway system. An attendant working there told me what I needed to know: I needed to take bus line 111 that stopped about half-a-block away from the information center, beyond a bridge visible from the center’s entrance.

The bus ride from Amsterdam to Monnickendam took only about forty minutes, but I was unsure as to which of the many bus stops within the town would be the best one for me to get off. I was hoping to start my walking tour from the stop closest to the harbor, but it was not evident while riding the bus which one that was. As I found out, the bus route within Monnickendam was a loop and the first and last stops were in the proximity of a church that I had seen in various web sites describing the town, so I started my walking tour after I ran out of stops and ended up in the same general area where the bus first entered town. From there, I just asked for directions from a couple of people waiting for another bus.

I followed the street on the other side of the church towards the direction where I was told the harbor would be. I soon discovered Monnickendam’s great charm as I walked the narrow streets lined by beautiful homes and shops built in the traditional Dutch fashion. Water canals cross the town in a way not dissimilar to Amsterdam’s, they are just narrower. When the canals intersect a street, the town citizens have built small drawbridges capable of being raised with minimal effort by means of weight counterbalances to allow the passage of tall boats. All of the bridges have their name inscribed in the top structure frame. I found these structures very photogenic and spent some time exploring the side streets capturing images of the bridges and the buildings around them.

As I followed the original main street, I soon arrived at what appeared to be the center of town and its harbor. In the area where the main water canal flows into town, I found the main marina and several larger boats berthed there. This area was so charming that for the first time I wished I had something better for my photos than the featureless, heavily overcast sky that had been over the Netherlands for most of the time during my week and a half visit. During my exploration of the area, I found the local McDonald’s, which on one of its outside walls featured a map showing the other towns in the “Waterland” area. I still needed to find out if it was possible to walk to Marken Island where I needed to catch the ferry to Volendam. It was difficult to judge distances from this map alone.

After exploring all of the areas in the vicinity, using the harbor as the anchor point, I visited the town’s museum housed within the structure of a tall and very old clock tower near the main canal. In addition to a large room in the second floor full of artifacts documenting the town’s history, this museum also had a photography exhibit featuring the works of a local photographer. I actually enjoyed both exhibits. As I visited the historic part of the museum, I learned that the town’s first inhabitants arrived in the area around 1000 AD and sustained their lifestyle by fishing. By 1200 AD there was already a more formal town in the area.

When I was ready to leave the museum and resume my exploration of the town, I found that the museum’s employee who sold me the entry ticket was also very helpful in terms of information. She told me that the best way to get to Marken was via the 111 bus that had taken me from Amsterdam to Monnickendam. I just needed to get back to any of the bus stops that I had passed while riding the bus earlier.

By the time I left the museum, I was ready for lunch and decided to secure a table in a restaurant with a large open porch overlooking the activities around the main canal and people passing by. Only a couple of other patrons were there at the time. Lunch was tasty local seafood cuisine and a local brew. As I enjoyed lunch and the sights at a very casual pace, the small restaurant became much busier than when I first came in.

After lunch, I walked beyond the harbor tracing a lazy arc until I reached the highway at the end of town. From there, I returned on a parallel street that eventually led me to the area where I had been taking pictures of the draw bridges earlier in the day. I reached the large church that had been my beacon from the bus and arrived at the first stop that bus 111 would make in its way through town. Checking the bus schedule posted there, I realized that that I had fifteen more minutes before the next bus would arrive, so I casually walked the route that the bus would follow with the hope of being able to take more pictures of the area and eventually catch the bus at one of the later stops in the loop through Monnickendam.

A bit over a quarter of an hour later, I caught the next 111 bus two stops beyond the first bus stop. The driver confirmed my suspicion that the round-trip, 6-Euro ticket that I had purchased in Amsterdam actually covered unlimited rides on that particular bus line during the entire day. My short trip to Marken did not add any additional cost to my trip.

The land bridge that the Dutch have built to connect Marken Island to the mainland is just wide enough to include the two-lane road and a raised bike path that commands a better view than what you get from the motor road. The bus line’s terminus is the second bus stop in Marken. I had to walk around in the area a bit before I located the town’s church steeple in the distance. The approach road was flanked by grass fields where several sheep were doing just what sheep do. A couple of them were close enough to the edge of the road for me to snap a couple of photos.

Marken shared the general looks of Monnickendam, just in a more limited scale. I followed the narrow streets until I ran into the town’s church. I noticed that the structure included large stained glass windows and wondered if it would be possible to photograph them from the inside. The main door to the church was actually open and as I entered, I noticed a lady there in the process of carefully aligning chairs within the main body of the church. I said hello and asked if it was OK for me to take pictures inside. She said that it was fine and as I proceeded to comment how beautiful the church was, I noticed something really unusual inside the building: there were several model ships hanging from the ceiling of the side aisles of the church. The lady working in the church noticed my interest and volunteered that Marken have had a long history as a fishing town. The town folk in centuries past used to make these offerings to God in the hope of obtaining blessings for their daily activities and bountiful catches. The little ships (some of them with their fishing nets) still hung proudly from the church’s ceiling as a testimonial of their piousness.

As I was leaving, my host offered an English-language leaflet containing the history of Marken and its church. She told me that her name was Aaltje and brought my attention to another detail of the church that I had noticed: every tile on the floor had a unique, unusual geometric symbol. She told me that these symbols are believed to correspond to each one of the original builders.

After saying goodbye and thanking Aaltje, I headed for the harbor and marina in search of the ferry that would take me to Volendam. The marina was not as large as the one in Monnickendam; little shops and restaurants that looked somewhat more “touristy” surrounded it. After taking a few pictures in the area, I found the ferry’s ticket counter and proceeded to buy my round-trip ticket to Volendam. The ferries departed regularly about every forty five minutes.

The trip to Volendam on the upper deck of the ferry afforded views of the expansive body of water and the other ships sailing this inland sea. Unlike the more modern-looking ships that you often see in the waterways in North America, ships in the Netherlands tend to look more like classic sail ships; including the great-looking, three-masted kind that I suspect requires a high degree of fine-tuned skill to sail.

Upon arrival to Volendam, I remembered my hotel’s concierge making a passing comment about the “tourist trap” quality of part of my proposed itinerary. I had actually found it! Volendam, unlike Monnickendam or even Marken looked like the typical tourist trap found anywhere in the World. This look was evident even before I descended from the ferry’s upper deck.

To my astonishment, almost in perfect synchrony with the ferry’s arrival in Volendam, the featureless cloud lock that had been in place for so many days over the Netherlands, suddenly gave way to the kind of beautiful blue sky with a few pink clouds that make travel photos really remarkable. I just wished that this transformation had occurred a few hours earlier, as I was exploring Monnickendam.

Determined to make the best out of the tourist-trap situation, I quickly left behind the harbor with its shops and crowds of video-camera-toting tourists (to my surprise, the tourists were mostly from Spain) and followed a side alley into areas of town that seemed more normal and likely to be where the locals live. Beyond the tourist-trap area, Volendam also shared the charm that I had seen in the other two towns within the Waterland area, north of Amsterdam.

I particularly noticed how popular cats are in the Netherlands (much more than dogs, I believe). I had several encounters with local felines that because of their friendliness towards me, demonstrated that local people are also very friendly towards them. All of them wore collars fitted with little bells that produced very high-frequency “dings” as the cats moved around doing what cats do.

After spending some time exploring the “normal” side of Volendam, I returned to the harbor to snap a few images there and to be ready to board the ferry that would take me back to Marken. The ferry on the trip back was a bit different from the one that brought me to Volendam, but it still had an upper deck that was the best platform for photography. This time, I had much more competition for the best vantage points from other tourists who insisted on taking extraordinarily long takes with their video cameras, panning and tilting wildly as they did. I started to feel sorry for their unsuspecting audiences (victims?) back home who would get volunteered to watch these home videos.

Back in Marken, after I left the ferry, I took advantage of the clear blue skies and still available sunlight to take a few more images of places where I had been earlier; including the harbor area and the outside of the town’s church. Satisfied with my bounty of images, I headed back to the bus stop area to wait for bus 111 to return to Amsterdam. Many of the Spaniards that I had encountered earlier were also going through Marken and eventually came to board several large tour buses parked just beyond my bus stop. As they passed by where I was, it was interesting to hear their conversations and comments, totally unaware (and unconcerned) that I could understand what they were saying.

Back in Amsterdam, after I got off the bus near Central Station, I walked towards town to take advantage of the still available daylight and clear skies and capture a few photos of the city’s famous channels and architecture. After more than ten years of visiting Amsterdam on a regular basis, I am surprised that I had never taken the time to capture it properly with my camera. I would try to correct some of this oversight in whatever time was left before my lack of a tripod would prevent me from taking any more photos.

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Photos

Model Ship in Marken's Reformed Church
Tribute from Marken's Fishing Generations Past