Amsterdam
Most of what I remember from my first visit to Amsterdam in 1983 is the cold. I went to the Netherlands in February of that year with an Israeli friend who was attending a conference. While I had packed sweaters, gloves, boots and a wool hat, I recall shivering most of the time. When I was there, I tried to conjure up crisp, clear days and rosy-cheeked people ice-skating along the canals, but those images didn't relieve my discomfort. The weather was rainy, slushy, with skies the color of lead, and cold that made me think my bones were cracking.
So why, in 2009, would I ever leave California in the wintertime to go back to Amsterdam? I had only one compelling reason – to visit my Greek god-daughter Katerina who had been living and working in Amsterdam for several years. I hadn't seen her for eighteen months and Jim, for even longer. I had no idea what her Dutch life was like and I had never met Darius, her Lithuanian boyfriend.
The trip came about in a touching way. In November, as Jim and I finished dinner at home in Santa Rosa, I gazed at the few sips of wine left in my glass and confessed my dread of the Christmas holidays. It wasn't the first time I'd felt that way. At Christmas, Jim and I usually lose out on family celebrations because our families are scattered across the U.S. Jim's offspring on the East Coast celebrate with family members who live closer to them. And , even though our California friends invite us to join their families, I long for a family occasion of my own, like we had when I was a child. Frankly, Christmas without your own family around you isn't much of a holiday.
When Jim suggested we go somewhere in California to "escape" Christmas, I appreciated his thought, but couldn't come up with any place enticing. Why travel in the winter, I thought to myself, unless you are going someplace warm to escape the cold like Hawaii, Mexico or the Caribbean.
"So what would you like to do?" he asked.
Although in a holiday funk, I had one magical idea – to be with the one young person whom I considered to be family. "This is crazy," I said, "but if we go anywhere, I'd like to be with Katerina."
"Go to Amsterdam? In winter?" Jim said in surprise. "Are you serious?"
"She's my god-daughter, our god-daughter, and we haven't seen her in so long."
Jim's wrinkled his eyebrows, then grinned. "Well, you'd better start looking for tickets."
I was ecstatic. First I emailed Katerina to make sure she would be in Amsterdam at Christmastime. When I presented my idea of a visit, she answered immediately with a short email, saying, "Book, book, book." The only reasonable tickets I could find had us flying to Amsterdam on Christmas Day when no one else wants to be in the air. That didn't bother me at all. I didn't mind eating an airline Christmas dinner or arriving on December 26. I just wanted to see Katerina.
PREPARING
I rushed out to buy a Lonely Planet Guidebook and start preparing. The guidebook's cover depicted everyone's fantasy of Holland – feet in wooden clogs and big rounds of Gouda cheese. I always thought wooden shoes were related to Holland's below-sea level topography, but discovered on the Web that clogs or klompen are worn throughout northern Europe. Of course, today most people wear plastic clogs and bring out the wooden ones only for gardening. Other traditional photos of Holland showed windmills, canals and tulips, but, beyond the kitsch, I knew Holland had a rich history, political and cultural life. In a short week's visit, I planned to get at least a taste of all of those.
I began studying the guidebook's map of Amsterdam. It was daunting, especially since I knew not one word of Dutch although I figured out that gracht meant canal. I emailed Katerina to ask what section of the city she lived in and she sent back a Google map. Thank heavens for the Internet. Once I figured out her area, I was able to pick some hotels that were nearby. I checked out their web sites and chose a hotel that advertised three-star quality at two-star prices. I hoped it would live up to its reputation. When I realized it would be much cheaper to take a train rather than a taxi from the airport, I emailed the hotel and they gave me train directions. The Internet had made travel so easy, one advantage of going to Internet-advanced countries as compared to visiting the developing world.
I was glad the hotel I'd chosen didn't serve breakfast since Lonely Planet described a typical Dutch breakfast as "filling yet unexciting – a few slices of bread accompanied by jam, cheese and a boiled egg." I thought it would be far preferable to hit one of the 1000 cafes in Amsterdam or a broodjeszaken (sandwich shop). I began to fantasize about consuming lots of cheese which, based on the discovery of ancient pots that separated curds from whey, revealed that cheese has been made in the Netherlands since prehistoric times
Before I left, I thought a great deal about Dutch character because I had conflicting impressions. When I imagined Dutch people, I thought of individuals who were calm, reserved and resourceful – after all, they had reclaimed much of their country from land under the sea and, with huge dikes, had kept the roiling North Sea at bay. Also, based on the notion of a "Dutch treat," I thought of the Dutch as parsimonious, if not, stingy. At the same time, the Dutch had progressive social policy with generous benefits. They had taken extremely liberal positions on such issues as drugs, prostitution, gay marriage and euthanasia. How could people who were reserved also be so accepting of unconventional social behavior?
A website on Dutch culture tried to explain this anomaly, arguing that, above everything, the Dutch are pragmatic. On the issue of drugs, for example, the website maintained:
A Dutch person would think: If soft drugs were forbidden, then their use and traffic would go underground and no one could legally control it any further. Furthermore, the prices would go up, forcing some users into criminal behavior sooner rather than later.
Thus, legalize the use of mild drugs such as marijuana and hashish. That makes perfect sense to me – if only the U.S. were so pragmatic.
At least the U.S. was smart enough to adopt the name Santa Claus from Sinterklaas, the Christmas character introduced by Dutch settlers in the 1600s when they colonized New York's Hudson Valley. Sinterklaas, here we come.
GETTING ACCLIMATED
The best part of arriving in Amsterdam was being met at the airport by Katerina, holding a big bunch of roses, and her partner Darius. I hadn't been expecting them, but knowing Katerina's loving nature, I wasn't really surprised to see them. Katerina and Darius shepherded us onto an airport train to Central Station and then onto trams to our hotel. I'm not sure we could have managed getting our suitcases, loaded with gifts, onto the various trains but, thank goodness, tall and strong Darius was there to carry both bags.
Our hotel was located in an old-style building right next to a tram stop. "Location" is the best thing I can say about the hotel. We entered from the street into a stairwell no more than a yard wide that stank of cigarettes and had extremely steep, winding steps going up a flight to the reception. As soon as we got to the reception desk, I was ready to change hotels except that it was busy, busy Christmas week and I feared we would not find anything else. And, since I'd booked online, the hotel already had my credit card number.
I asked to see the room and climbed another steep flight of stairs. At least the room was large and non-smoking, but its ugly appearance was rescued only by Katerina's red and yellow roses. Jim and I were ready to collapse after a three-hour airport delay in San Francisco and ten hours of flying. We hoped things would look better in the morning. What morning? At three a.m., we were woken by a pair of young women returning to the room next door after a night of partying. They shouted, laughed uproariously, and refused to acknowledge our angry knocks on the wall. Needless to say, there were no hotel staff members around to appeal to..
The next morning, after breakfast in a café next door, Jim and I began our round of museums. The neighborhood we were in, once the Jewish quarter of town, had many small museums within walking distance and, bundled up in long underwear, we found the weather decent enough for a stroll.
BIG AND SMALL MUSEUMS
Amsterdam has an astounding number of major and small museums, which not only feature art but also history, trades, foreign affairs, and crafts. We began with a visit to the newly established Hermitage Museum, an annex of the grand and glorious Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The opening exhibit, "Palace and Protocol," was an introduction to the nineteenth century Russian Court and contained walls of royal portraits and displays of luxurious gowns, jewels and men's formal wear. I would have preferred to see some of the art of the Hermitage but, clearly, Dutch museum-goers were fascinated by the displays of tsarist excess.
That afternoon, we stopped in to Verzetsmuseum, a small museum in our neighborhood that featured the Dutch Resistance in World War II. Most foreigners think of the Dutch as brave resisters, connecting to the Dutch experience of the war through the eyes and diary of Anne Frank. On my previous visit to Amsterdam, I'd seen her hideout and the museum dedicated to her book. This time, I was interested in getting additional perspectives about the Dutch and the war.
Contrary to the Resistance Museum's intent, the exhibit left me with a strange impression that the prevailing Dutch attitude to the German invasion had not been to resist but to get along with the Germans and return, as quickly as possible after the invasion, to business as usual. Holland's surrender to the Germans came four days after the invasion, and once Germany had pushed on to Belgium and France, the Dutch resumed their lives, free of fighting. Of course, there was some Dutch resistance to the Nazis – strikes, a few protests over discrimination against Jews, organizations that helped Dutch Jews hide – but mostly the Dutch found the Jewish presence in Holland a nuisance. While 25,000 Jews were able to hide with 18,000 surviving, 107,000 were taken to death camps with only 5000 to return to Holland.
My initial impression was reinforced the next day when I visited the Jewish Historical Museum in a restored synagogue. The exhibit describing World War II explained that a few fortunate Jews were able to purchase ration cards, false identification papers and transport out of Holland from Dutch resistance groups at a cost of about 100 guilders a month. The rest of the Jewish population had to scramble on its own. After the war, Dutch Jews, according to the Museum Guide, again had an exceedingly difficult time:
The government did not take any measures to address the specific problems of the Jewish population, arguing that they did not wish to discriminate as the German occupying forces had done. The decades following 1945 witnessed a bitter struggle for redress. The Dutch public was coping with its own poverty and distress and had little interest in or sympathy for the plight of the survivors (pp. 86-87.)
Helping Jewish victims would be a form of discrimination? That's a somewhat less appealing picture of Dutch behavior than the Anne Frank story.
I close with a description of one of Amsterdam's two world-famous museums, the Van Gogh Museum. When considering Van Gogh, I would argue that one must distinguish between the art and the museum. The art is fabulous – more than 200 of Van Gogh's paintings, many well-known masterpieces and many other rewarding small works and self-portraits. Van Gogh's short life as an artist is remarkable. He started to paint at 27, essentially self-taught, and, despite trying economic straits, was prolific for ten years until he took his life in 1890 at age 37.
I have always felt that Van Gogh, alone and lonely, fully projected his emotional life into his paintings communicating the ecstasy of beauty and the despair of everyday existence. His museum failed to capture the man. It gave a brief summary of his life, but failed to convey his passion, in part because the biographical material was dry and restrained and in part because the paintings were hung in pedestrian chronological order. Van Gogh deserves a more artistic presentation than he receives in his museum. No wonder he escaped Holland for France.
THE MUSLIM INVASION
I was extremely interested in learning more about Muslim life in Holland. I knew that thousands of Turks had come to Holland as gastbeiters, guest workers, and many Muslims from the former Dutch colonies of Indonesia and Surinam had emigrated to Holland after the colonial period. I was not aware of the large presence of Moroccans until 2004 when 26 year old Mohammed Bouveri first shot, then stabbed to death film-maker Theo Van Gogh, a descendant of the painter, in reaction to his film "Submission" which was a critique of the lives of women under Islam. Bouveri, a Dutch citizen who was educated and employed, had fallen under the influence of a radical Syrian cleric promoting a holy war of Islam against the west.
Clearly, few of the 320,000 Turks and 280,000 Muslims in Holland are radical Islamists. Most are second or third generation immigrants from families that came to Holland in the 1960s and 1970s when the Dutch needed workers for their expanding economy. Although immigration to bring in wsorkers ended officially in 1973, immigration continued as workers brought their families to Holland under liberal reunification laws. Today, including recent immigrants from the Middle East, there are 850,000 Muslims in Holland or five percent of the population. Muslims have been elected in small numbers to Parliament and serve as state secretaries in the government.
How have the Dutch done when it comes to integrating Muslims into society? As a visitor, I saw a number of darker-skinned people on public transport, in service jobs, and as low level government workers such as tram drivers or museum guards. I never saw interpersonal interaction taking place between the European population and the Muslims. Nor could I tell much about residence patterns since very few Muslims live in the center. In my god-daughter's lower income neighborhood, there were many Turkish people and shops, but she reported that relations occurred over business transactions and little else. I was told the Muslim minorities lived on the outskirts of Amsterdam in areas of high-rise buildings known as "dish cities" from the plethora of satellite dishes used to pick up television stations in North Africa and the Middle East.
The failure of integration is based in part on economics. Unlike the past, the Dutch don't have enough jobs today for the second and third generations of Muslim residents. Unemployed youth reportedly spend much time plugging in or tuning in to Web-based and media-based violent rhetoric. While they don't all become violent, the rhetoric they hear raises their anger and dissatisfaction.
At the same time, the Dutch are reacting negatively to the immigrants' presence in Holland, especially after the Van Gogh killing. In 2008-2009, the Dutch tightened their immigration laws to require that immigrants pass – in their home country – a test of their Dutch. In order to cut down on Dutch immigrants bringing brides from other countries, the Dutch partner must be at least 21 and have an income 120% of the minimum wage. These tight restrictions may cut down on new immigration, but problems of assimilation remain for Dutch Muslim citizens born in Holland from immigrant families. I'm not optimistic. The Dutch, like other northern European countries, have little experience with immigration and came onto the immigrant scene at just the time terrorism was proliferating. Having failed to integrate immigrants in the past, the difficulty of doing so now is far more intense.
WINTER TOURISM
A visit to Amsterdam has to include some tourist highlights. For me, one highlight, a canal cruise, was a particular delight. It had snowed the night before and canal buildings were framed in white. Amsterdam has 100 canals tat are crossed by over 1000 bridges. The canals are necessary for the city to exist since it is only a yard and a half below sea level at high tide.
The city was established by fisher folk in 1275. These were the people who built the first dikes and learned how to regulate sea water at high tide. They also understood that housing needed to be built on stilts. By the 17th century, the canals were shaped to form concentric circles around the city center. In that period, Amsterdam experienced considerable wealth from its role in world trade; residences were built by wealthy merchants, financiers, professionals and craftsmen. Since Amsterdam was a small city, narrow houses – about 30 feet wide -- were built with long narrow windows and narrow stairs inside. In order to bring furniture into the house, pulleys attached to furniture hooks were used. Even today, moving involves hoisting furniture or goods up the outside of the building using a hook extending from the top gable. Amsterdam architecture is handsome from the outside, but not particularly comfortable inside.
The canal boat ride took us through different neighborhoods, some commercial, some residential. While Dutch buildings along the canals are designed in different styles – neo-classical, gothic, and Tudor – I found the Art Deco buildings of the end of the 19th century the most intriguing. We ended up the canal tour at the harbor, one of the largest in Europe. The open sea was a relief after winding through canals which, when lined with houseboats to provide city folk additional housing, felt a bit claustrophobic.
Another cultural highlight of Amsterdam was an evening of music in the famous concert hall, the Concertgebouw. We had a lovely dinner in the hall's restaurant beforehand, then heard an Edif Piaf concert by a fantastic Dutch singer. But the star of the evening was the hall itself – a neo-classical wonder with a huge grote zaal, great hall, that housed a three-story high organ. The Concertgebouw's acoustics are renowned all over the world. I was deeply impressed by the sound, engineered way back in 1888, given the modest number of microphones over the stage.
A last aspect of Amsterdam tourism that I will mention are coffee houses where you go, not to consume coffee, but to smoke marijuana. Having heard much about these "evil" dens, I was eager to visit one. I went with my god-daughter because Jim doesn't approve. I was surprised by many things. The selection of marijuana or hashish cigarettes for purchase is so wide, you have no idea where to start. I would have been lost without Katerina. You sit at a comfortable table to smoke, imbibe cokes, coffee or beer, and relax. One thing you are not allowed to do is smoke cigarettes because of a no smoking ban in restaurants and cafes, so if you want to mix your marijuana with tobacco, you have to do so very discreetly. The coffee house was pleasant – soft music, subdued customers, and no pressure to finish whatever you ordered, get up and leave.
I engaged in one other consumption activity unique to Holland – drinking jenever, the Dutch national drink. Jenever is a liquor brewed from juniper berries that is the favorite alcoholic beverage in the country. I went with Jim, Katerina and Darius to a bar near the famous Dam Square that was crammed with loud and laughing young people. We pushed through the bar to the counter to get small, liqueur-looking, glasses filled to the brim with a pale brown liquid. We then had to push our way back to the street to sit on benches in the alley and sip away. Even though it was frigid outdoors, we didn't feel it. Jenever, known as Dutch gin, takes the cold right away, but it is bitter, undoubtedly, an acquired taste.
The one Dutch specialty I never tried was herring. I was told it was served dried, in one long slab, and tasted very salty. The herring I like at home comes in a jar and is smothered in sour cream and onions. I think I'll stick to the mild American version.
WHAT I LEARNED IN HOLLAND
When I considered my initial impressions of Holland from before my trip, I re-discovered that first impressions should always be tempered by a taste of reality. I continue to find the Dutch reserved and a bit distant, but I now know they can have a mellow time smoking marijuana in a coffee house or a jolly time downing a glass of jenever after work.
As people, the Dutch don't seem to reach out to foreign peoples, but they do tend to respect their human rights. The Dutch in the 16th century allowed Judaism to flourish, but, during World War II, they didn't do as much as they might have, despite Anne Frank, for the Dutch Jewish community. Likewise, the Dutch welcomed foreign Muslim workers forty years ago when they needed them and provided these newcomers with impressive social benefits. Still, today, most Dutch do not see Muslims as an integral part of Dutch society and have done little to integrate them into Dutch life.
For me, Amsterdam was a fine place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Like Vincent Van Gogh, I'd feel freer and more inspired by France. I know, however, that the next time I visit Holland, it will not be when the snow is falling, but when the tulips are in full bloom.
