I'm just back from Amsterdam. Yes, great opening line. Dani and I spent a week there. It's cold, but that's probably obvious. Some other obvious things: apparently, in a city where it's legal, it's never too early for a doobie. As we walked to the Rijks museum our second day, we passed many "coffee shops" along the way and the smell wafted out.
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl (So why do they call them coffee shops? Don't know, but they seem to be just for tourists, or at least that's what it looked like to me.) I congratulated myself that morning as several shopkeepers spoke Dutch to me (I didn't wear sneakers, I'm not a sloppy American). The Dutch are very well-dressed. Lots of different languages here, many I can't even place, other than the continent. Dutch beer is great (Heineken, right?) and the drinking age is 16. Really. Totally different attitude about that over here.
So it was pretty fun. We went to a cheese shop and sampled, we looked at many paintings I've only seen in books, we have walked a lot along the canals. We found a Lebanese restaurant, of course. We went to the Anne Frank house and waited "in a queue" for less than an hour in the freezing rain. That was pretty intense -- seeing the actual marks on the walls where the Franks recorded the girls' heights as they grew. The Van Gogh museum
www.vangoghmuseum.nl was breathtaking - but I felt like so much of his works are at other museums, such as MoMA. I was expecting to see more paintings from his time in Arles. Still an incredible museum, a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the span of his development, which they did an excellent job of articulating. Here's a few of my favorite Van Goghs.
When we arrived in Amsterdam, it was about 8 am on a Sunday as we walked from the train to our B and B, and we walked thru the Red Light District. Interesting. Saw people clearly coming off-shift. We made a tour of that later, and saw the sex workers in the windows. Kind of takes all the romance completely away, but that must be the idea. The bikes are everywhere and you better watch out. I haven't seen a single helmet, either, which scares me. Some of the taxis drive way too fast up these little cobblestone side streets beside the canals. And yes, everyone here is generally slimmer than Americans. Might be because they smoke, however. Getting tired of the butts everywhere (there I go, ugly American). The biggest difference is the Dutch men - quite attractive, no 10-year old baggy Dad jeans that wifey bought. I haven't seen a single boring Izod on them either.
We walked thru the Red Light District and arrived at Oude Kerk (Old Church), which the Dutch started building in 1250. This actually was my favorite place in Amsterdam. It was such incredible beauty, and we arrive pretty early so we were alone. The stones on the floor were grave stones. See one below. But the most interesting part was an art exhibit they had inside. It was an acoustical piece that sought to reflect all the souls that had passed through that church all these hundreds of years, but it was beautiful visually as well. A series of speakers in a lattice hung from the ceiling would activate as you walked under them, whispers and sighs and prayers and songs and arguments….it was incredible. I took a video, here it is, it's less than a minute. Just a taste.
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| Oude Kerk |
We took a canal cruise and listened thru headphones to the tour. I counted, it was offered in 18 languages. Everyone on our boat was Asian except us and one other guy. The canals make quite a picturesque city, but it's still crowded and dirty. Much like New York.
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| Van Gogh land |
It's nice to take a week off from work. I'm starting to see some of the ...I don't know.... issues or problems at work. I used to complain about working for large, impersonal organizations, like big hospitals or even when I was a corporate drone, but now I see that small organizations have problems too, but they're different. When there aren't a lot of rules, things happen. I still find my work fulfilling, and I definitely don't want to whine. What I'm trying to remind myself is basically, step up. If there's an issue, fix it or speak up. Be part of the solution. Haters, don't drag me down. But here's a really cool thing....none of my worries have anything to do with patients.
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My favorite painting at
Rijks Museum |
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| Flower Market |
We walked to a park several mornings, got a little lost the first time so the walk took 2 hours. Not utilizing a car is great exercise, it's funny because it seems everything here is a 30 minute walk away, whereas in Austin, everything is a 30 minute drive away. Speaking of which, Austin traffic was deemed by NPR as third-worst in the nation. Really. I'm not kidding, they played the story last week. Trapped in shiny metal boxes.
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| I'm freezing. Take the picture already. |
One of the weird things here is dealing with restaurants. The big differences are you seat yourself, you don't tip, and you head up to the register to pay. It's considered rude for the server to rush you out by handing you the check. But it's funny, we picked up on this after the 2nd meal, but it still feels awkward. There are lots of cats in Amsterdam - loved that - but our hosts explained that's because the buildings are so old that they are full of rats.
We visited the floating flower market, it was absolutely lovely. Incredible selection of bulbs, such choices, and some super-high prices. I doubt if these would do well in Austin - could the climate be more different? The weather here is ...you know... what it's like on this side of northern Europe. Cold, wet, and overcast. I was thinking today that I bet they sell a lot of SSRIs here (antidepressants). I'm finding that if I dress for the walk, I am a sweaty mess by the time I arrive at the destination, and then I'm hot in the over-heated buildings, plus I have a heavy coat to wrangle. So I'm just wearing a jacket and suffering a bit. I kept seeing all these people without gloves and I'm wondering, how do you do that?!
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| One of only 2 sunny days the whole week |
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| Visiting Rembrandt's house |
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| City at night |
On our last day, we took that canal cruise. The captain explained that the "XXX" that you see frequently in Amsterdam has been used since the middle ages and has nothing to do with porn - it means fire, flood and plague and seems to have been used as a talisman to ward off those things, which were the things most feared by the Dutch back then. It's such an old city, so beyond anything in the States. We also found a way cool fetish shop right behind where we stayed -- and apparently straight jackets ("leathers" as we called them in the psych hospitals I've worked in) are fetish objects. For some people. Look.
