To finally arrive on this European continent…at 46…to have waited this long, too long… I am experiencing strange, abstract feelings of comfort and familiarity while knowing on a concrete level that this is a new and foreign place. There is discomfort to come, for certain, as this is life, but this feeling of floating, of surreality, of charm and dreams is welcome, welcome, welcome. Perhaps the self editor, the pragmatist, wants to gain a foothold in my writing, but for now, she gets kicked out of my brain.
Because Amsterdam was Romantic and lovely! As our wise Dutch/Turkish cab driver, Tolog said, “Different people come to Amsterdam for different reasons. Some come for the coffee shops, some for Van Gogh or Anne Frank, and some for the tulips.” Maybe this is so. He should know, since he’s driven all kinds of people in and out of his city. I came originally because it was a direct flight before our move to Berlin, and I was indeed curious about all that he described.
But what has left an impression and what will draw me back is the charm of the Jordaan neighborhood. There were so many bicycles! On the street corners, (where there were no traffic lights, except for a few of the bigger intersections for the trams) you had to look carefully in every direction, because people flew on their bicycles! People talked (or texted) as they rode, people in suits looked like they were rushing to work, and mothers propped babies on the front bars of their bikes, (the children were protected by plastic shields)… And not a single helmet to be seen. Incredible! There was a flow to it though, and people were extremely adept at using their little bells and brakes. To see less cars and more bikes was refreshing.
The canals and the houseboats added to the charm. Benjamin and I had pints of dark beer and some ‘snacks’ prepared by a sweet woman who was the proprietor of a Bavarian pub called The Two Swans. Her place was situated across from the canal, between the Cheese Museum and the Tulip Museum. How could we not stop here? The food consisted of a small platter of fried cheese, curry samosas, and Dutch croquettes which tasted like they had some potatoes in them, but I’m not sure. Everything was delicious and perfect with the beer! So we sipped and watched people slowly come out of their houseboats. They emerged quietly, naturally, while at the same time, the tourist boats chugged by with people snapping pictures, laughing, and drinking. Quite the juxtaposition! Still, I can imagine that sleep could come easy if you were rocked by the water every night. And if you wanted to leave, you could, I suppose just head down the canal. I loved watching this and imagining either one of my brothers or my nephew seeing this lifestyle.
When it began to rain heavily, we headed inside The Two Swans. Again, we were delighted. It was dark and perfect. There were pictures on the wall of people singing along with an accordionist and dancing polka out into the street. One picture looked like it dated back to the 1940s or 1950s. Another was a collage of all the singers who had performed there. Their heads were cut out into a circle around the title of the pub. Really fun images! From what I could read in another photo, the building was constructed in the 1790s. Lovely find indeed.
We did go to the outside of Anne Frank’s House, but I couldn’t go inside. There was a long line, and we didn’t have time, which was honestly part of it, but I also felt like I wasn’t ready. Not on my first day in Europe. I didn’t want to depart from my dreamy jet lag feeling, and I knew being inside a place where a young girl wrote in her diary, while she hid from evil would jolt me. We will return to Amsterdam, and I will go, when I feel stronger. I need to do this for myself and for my niece.
We didn’t make it to the Van Gogh or the tulip fields, but we vowed to return to these as well. Again, with only one day, we opted for wandering the neighborhood streets instead of trying to hit the tourist sites.
On a few of the streets in Jordaan, we did see coffee shops. They were lit by fluorescent signs, which of course appealed to the font/text geeks in us, and they were so…normal. They were like any other bar or cafe. Honestly, we would have walked right past them if it weren’t for the signage and the wafting scent. Probably in another district we would have seen more people in them, but overall these were not crowded. In the U.S., we seem to demonize so much. Prohibition haunts our past. We have banned our books. Some religions have feared, and still forbid, dancing and card playing. Maybe because I am the great grand daughter of a whisky-running, “witchcraft”- practicing family, I just don’t have it in me to judge these things. Anyway, this is as far as I go with this philosophy. The coffee shops were a normal part of a culture different from mine.
And Amsterdam is beautiful and unique. I can’t wait to return!
