Amsterdam, November 30, 2001.
G'day from Amsterdam!I arrived here about 4 days ago after a pretty comfortable flight with Singapore Airlines. Great service, good entertainment, and amusing fellow passengers. Almost got stuck in Frankfurt airport. It has 2 terminals and they are seemingly miles apart! I barely made the connection...
But anyway, I spent most of the first day having a quick look around the city and visiting the Rijksmuseum, which is about two minutes walk from the hostel. I was thoroughly exhausted from jet-lag and could barely stay awake. I was marginally concerned that I would trip over my feet from fatigue and be booted out of the Rijksmuseum because they thought I was a drunken bum! I managed to stay awake til about 6.30 pm, somehow…
Over the last couple of days I have visited the two other major galleries in Amsterdam- Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum. It seems that ‘Van Khokh’ is the correct pronunciation, rather than ‘Van Go’, but it is quite difficult to spit out those harsh uvular fricatives, so the Anglicized version is much more commonly heard outside of Holland. Unfortunately half the collection is on tour in the US at the moment, so several of the gallery"s most famous works are travelling, though the Potato-Eaters, a rather more sombre painting, was still on display. The gallery also houses some Gauguin, Monet, Pisarro, Renoir and Von Stuck. The Stedelijk Museum (Contemporary Art) was a lot of fun too, although much of this was also on tour. There was a pretty groovy pop art exhibition on when I visited which nicely contrasted with the remaining permanent collection.
I wandered up Leidestraat and Kalvestraat to Dam Square where there were swarms of pigeons, many of whom seemed to be surprisingly fond of bagpipe music! I sauntered past the Dutch Royal Palace and onwards to the Anne Frank House. The house was a lot bigger than I expected. There used to be a shop down the bottom and secret entrances to the rooms above which Anne and her family lived. At the end of the exhibition you are led into a room where you watch a short doco covering various human rights issues - they then get you to vote on where you stand on the issues. Kinda unrelated to everything else in the museum, they also showed a commercial where these three young blokes meet up with these two young chicks in a bar. One of the blokes has sustained severe burns to the face following a mishap with fireworks on NYE. The point of the commercial, is essentially, that guys with deformed faces don’t get the girls. Well not really, more so just to raise awareness about the potential dangers of drunken revelry, specifically that involving fireworks.
Apparently injuries from fireworks on NYE are quite common in Northern Europe. We spent last NYE in Berlin and this didn't surprise me at all. Last NYE in Berlin was one of the most terrifying of my life. I had a bundle of fireworks explode under my feet on a train, numerous explode around me on flights of stairs at train stations etc. - hundreds of thousands of drunk Germans on NYE with too many fireworks is not a good idea. The government only lets retailers sell fireworks for 3 days every year (around NYE) so when it comes to NYE, it is one wild party – quite dangerous too! And everyone from 6 yr old girls with plaits to drunken seedy old men seems to join in on the fun! CRAZY! Anyway, it seems that it’s not a phenomenon exclusive to the Germans!
I went to the New Church the other day, which is where the ‘Royal Wedding’ will be held in February. There is an exhibition about the Dutch Royal weddings on in the church at the moment, but as I’m not Dutch, not a Royalist nor tempted to pay 12 guilders ($10.50) to go in, I missed it. Also visited the Old Church (original names!) wandered past the Royal Palace and had a stroll through the Red Light District. It’s actually pretty mundane – old ladies, middle aged couples, young mothers with small children, average uni students etc…..all walk through here as it is a convenient passage from A to B – and seems remarkably safe.
Where else….I came across the Begijnhof, which is a beautiful courtyard housing tiny flats owned by nuns and other Catholic ladies – it’s also very sheltered from the usual humdrum of the city surrounding it. After I’d been to Anne Frank House I went to the Jewish Museum, and today I went to the Shipping Museum, and Zeedijk (old shipping port). I don’t particularly have an interest in the shipping industry, but as it is an important part of the Dutch history and culture, thought it might be somewhat interesting – it wasn't! I also did a fair amount of random wandering - just following around the canals and seeing where they lead me. Lots of weird and wonderful people in Amsterdam (but not nearly as weird and wonderful as people would have you believe). The city itself is really beautiful and surprisingly clean...I had the impression that Ams would be somewhat like Venice...but there are far fewer canals, the city is much cleaner and not so smelly!
The youth hostel where I'm staying is fantastic! Great location, lots of friendly people, good food (i.e. the bread won't break your teeth if you bite into it), hot showers, safe, clean etc. I have been sharing a room with another Aussie (from Melbourne), a girl from the Philippines, 2 Norwegians, a Spaniard...and another Australian girl just arrived today. There is an International Documentary Film Festival on in Leidseplein (about 5 mins from here) so there are lots of young people visiting the festival staying at the hostel. We wound up playing cards with some South Africans last night - they delighted in telling us Aussie jokes and bagging our rugby and cricket teams (inferiority complexes!!). There is an open-air ice-skating rink in Vondelpark, right next to the Van Gogh Museum, and a group of us were to go skating....but it's been raining a little too much and the ice is quite slushy so I might have to give it a miss.
There are some fantastic shops about...but I've managed not to do too much damage to the CC....only purchased 'essentials' so far :) I'm planning on saving the shopping for Spain as then I don't have to lug it around with me for the next 2 months! Lots of delicious food around too :)
It rained all day today, which made getting around difficult and didn't help my cold (every time I fly long-distances I wind up with a miserable cold!!).... Hopefully tomorrow, the rain will have stopped as I'm spending the day in The Hague.
I'm off to Bruges on Saturday for a few days and then to Paris for a week.
Having a great time!
Tot ziens
Belinda
