Herbstferien, Episode 1: Amsterdam

It hardly seems possible or fair, but after only three weeks in school, I’m already on my first break: two-week-long Herbstferien (fall break). Of course, two completely empty and commitment-free weeks immediately screams TRAVEL, and I accordingly planned trips to Amsterdam, Budapest, and Vienna.

The first leg of my adventures is already behind me—three hours after school let out on Thursday, I was on a train to Amsterdam, and I returned yesterday afternoon in time for my appointment with the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner office) today at 1:15 (Everything went smoothly there, thank goodness). I’m going to try to fit as much as possible about Amsterdam into this entry, and then follow up with another tomorrow, but I get on the overnight train to Budapest tonight at ten, so we’ll see what happens…

More fun with Deutsche Bahn:

One thing my experience with German trains thus far is teaching me is to appreciate the miracle that is travel that runs smoothly. I booked a train that was scheduled to get to Amsterdam an hour and a half before check-in time at my hostel, just to be on the safe side. But, what do you know, between Cologne and Düsseldorf the train squealed to a halt, and it was an HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES before it started moving again. The mood on the train went through several phases during this time, ranging from calm to bemusement to irritation. In the end, though, conversations broke out across aisleways, people started to make their way back to the BordBistro for a beer (I myself had my first Radler, which is a mixed drink consisting of beer and lemonade or soda), and the train seemed to settle into a collective attitude of, “Well, we’re going to be here for a while, might as well get comfortable.”

The notable exception to this easy-going atmosphere was an older American couple sitting in the row behind me: at about the twenty-minute mark they began complaining loudly about “service” and how “unacceptable” it was that their travel plans were being interfered with, and by the time the train got moving again they were deeply involved in composing the complaint they were going to lodge with the Deutsche Bahn higher-ups. Watching this whole drama unfold, I was struck by how typically American their attitude was—in the worst possible way. What does it say about Americans that we’re so quick to anger at the slightest inconvenience or perceived slight?

For my part, once the train finally got moving again, I spent the rest of the journey nervously eyeing the clock, comparing scheduled arrival times at the various stops with actual ones. In the end, the train pulled into Amsterdam Centraal at 9:45 PM, an hour and fifteen minutes later than it was supposed to, and I walked through the door of my hostel at exactly my scheduled check-in time of 10:00. Which just goes to show you, sometimes things don’t go according to plan, but they still work out.

Near-Death by Bicycle

Actually, by bicycle, tram and automobile. During my first full day in Amsterdam, I came to the conclusion that the city is nowhere near pedestrian-friendly: bicycle lanes masquerade as sidewalks, sidewalks become impossibly narrow and disappear altogether in some places. I thought Frankfurt was bicycle-obsessed, but it’s nothing compared with Amsterdam, and cyclists seem to have way fewer qualms about mowing down wayward pedestrians—woe betide you if you happened to be walking in a bicycle lane during a period of heavy bike traffic. Same goes if you happen to be walking too close to a tram track: those things graze so close to the sidewalk, if you’re holding your elbow out even a little bit, you run the risk of losing an arm.

In truth, though, the city is very walkable: you just have to figure out what the rules are, and then abide by them. The first commandment of Amsterdam-by-foot: obey the bell. If you hear a bell, whether bicycle or tram, LOOK OUT YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE RUN OVER. This means that blasting your iPod as you wander through the city is not a responsible life choice. Once I pulled my earbuds and stowed my iPod in my bag for the entirety of the second day, my number of near-death encounters decreased dramatically.

An overcast morning on the canals (that's the famous
Amsterdam Bloemenmarkt, or Flower Market, on the left) 

I wish I’d had one of those portable odometers that tell you how many steps you’ve taken in a given day, so I could say for certain how far I walked in my four days in Amsterdam. (A friend reminds me that there is an app for that. Oh well, there’s always next trip.) It’s got to be in the mid- to high-tens of kilometers. I probably could have decreased this amount considerably if I’d approached my explorations of the city in anything resembling a systematic fashion: Amsterdam is a city neatly divided into compact neighborhoods, which the Lonely Planet travel guide I borrowed from my roommate very nicely explained to me, and which I proceeded to ignore. In my defense, I did this with the best of intentions: there were certain big-ticket items I wanted to be sure of seeing—the Rijksmuseum, with its Rembrandts and Vermeers; the Van Gogh collection, temporarily relocated from its own museum to the Hermitage; the Rembarandthuis and the Jewish Quarter, just to name a few-- and in pursuit of these sights I zig-zagged back and forth across the city dozens of times. When you factor in a considerable amount of extra walking as a result of disorientation and a good deal of aimless wandering in the evenings, when the museums were closed and I didn’t know what else to do, I wouldn’t be surprised if I spanned the city two or three times a day. Ultimately, though, I think I’m glad I went at the city as haphazardly as I did: it afforded me the opportunity to see some things I might have missed out on otherwise, and I learned my way around the city as a whole a lot more quickly.

Rain, Rain, Go Away—Or Not.

It’s no wonder the Dutch masters were as obsessed with light as they were, if they saw as little of it as I did during my time in Amsterdam. It rained constantly for the first three days, though the sun did make a few valiant attempts to break through the cloud cover. Fortunately, I was prepared for this, both practically and psychologically, having checked the weather online before leaving Frankfurt. “Rain and the Netherlands go together, somehow,” observed a Kollegin at the Elsa when I ruefully mentioned the forecast for my first international excursion.

Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue

The weather did very little to dampen my enthusiasm for the city, but I can’t help but wonder how my experience might have been different had the weather been more cooperative—would I have seen more? Done more? At the very least, I might have saved some money, as I spent a lot of time ducking into cafes to get out of the rain/cold, and buying coffee and/or beer to justify my presence there.

On Monday, it very considerately turned gorgeous for my final day, including my visit to the Portuguese Synagogue, where the early-morning sunlight flooded through the eastern windows and set the brass chandeliers to shining. The canals, too, transformed in sunlight—the Prinsengracht, in the Western Canal Belt neighborhood, was my personal favorite. I had originally planned a day trip to Haarlem, just fifteen minutes away by train, for my last day in the Netherlands, but I’m glad that I ended up giving the extra day to Amsterdam instead.

A quick terminology lesson

In Amsterdam, a café is like a pub, and sells mostly beer and liquor, and a coffeehouse is where you go for the (in)famous not-legal-but-universally-tolerated cannabis. It is possible to order coffee at either of these establishments— in the afternoon/early evening, cafes in particular more closely resemble cafés as we know them in the States—but coffee is not what they’re “selling,” so to speak.

Cafe Hoppe, a classic "brown cafe" on the Spui,
traditionally a popular hangout among left-leaning
writers and intellectuals. 

It’s worth mentioning here that Amsterdam’s coffeehouses are overwhelmingly left to tourists: marijuana use—like prostitution, which I’ll (hopefully) get to later—is something the Dutch might experiment with in their teens, but before long the allure wears off and they get bored. Either that, or they get put off by the obnoxious behavior of tourists (largely American) who, in a frenzy of excess, very frequently wind up over-doing it.

Gezelligheid

Café culture lies close to the heart of a Dutch virtue of sorts known as gezelligheid. It’s one of those words that doesn’t have a direct translation in English (in German, though, it’s Geselligkeit). It’s variously translated as sociability, coziness, conviviality. Basically, it’s what happens when you and a bunch of friends (or strangers) get together and swap stories over a beer or a coffee. I got a first-hand glimpse of gezelligheid when I ducked into a cafe called De Baronesse on Friday night. From the safety of my corner table, I watched as the other customers—clearly regulars—laughed and joked in Dutch. One particular gentleman, who looked a lot like a young Jack Black with dreadlocks, was obviously the life of the party—at one point, “Brown Eyed Girl” came on, and he immediately started to sing along, sashaying up and down the bar, giving the bartender (who looked a lot like the actress who plays Esmee Cullen in the Twilight movies) a twirl when she stepped out from behind the bar to bus a table. On the wall next to the bar at De Baronesse there was an index card reading, “Oh how lonely at the bar…” surrounded by pictures of people sitting at the bar looking anything but lonely. Whether they’d known each other for years, months, or minutes was impossible to say—and that, from what I can tell, is the idea behind gezelligheid.

Speaking of Language…

I really regret not taking the time to learn some basic Dutch phrases before going to Amsterdam. Not that I would have had much opportunity to use them, since everyone in Amsterdam speaks English, especially everyone in the tourism industry—museum docents, waiters and bartenders, hostel employees.  Still, at least making the effort to speak the language seems like the polite thing to do, and according to Lonely Planet it can go a long way in opening doors with the locals. It wouldn’t have been that difficult, either: Dutch, like German (or English, for that matter) is a Germanic language, and the grammatical similarities are pronounced.  I frequently found I could make out whole sentences on museum signs and restaurant menus, particularly when I compared them against the English translations. Pronunciation is a different story— the best way I can describe the sound of Dutch is to say that it sounds like German spoken with a heavy Minnesotan accent. Still, “Hello,” “goodbye,” “please”, “thank you”, “I’d like…” and “How much” wouldn’t have been too hard to pick up, and I can't help but feel like I dropped the world-traveller ball a bit. The only excuse I can offer is to say that my whole Herbstferien trip came together very much at the last minute, and I didn’t really have the time to do the research. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to haunt me in Hungary—Magyar is supposed to be an incredibly difficult language, and I don’t think English is quite as widely spoken in Budapest as it is in Amsterdam. 

I so desperately don’t want to be that American, the stereotypical tourist who expects everyone to “talk American” and doesn’t take an interest in the local culture. Hopefully I can find other ways to convey that, and next time I wander somewhere linguistically far afield, I’ll be sure to do my due diligence.

 To be continued…