THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407040181
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STEVE HARRIMAN
DATELINE: AMSTERDAM LENGTH: Long : 275 lines
THIS CITY AND I go way back. Amsterdam was my first European city. I arrived here, first at Schiphol Airport and then by train at Centraal Station, nearly a quarter of a century ago and was properly awed. Europe . . . Amsterdam . . . imagine! You feel that special excitement when you are young and on your first adventure.
I have been back several times since, and each time I have been taken, as I am now, by the spectacle that unfolds before me.
Centraal Station, gateway to the city, looms long and imposing, an ornate pile of red and yellow brick and gray stone, with gilding here and there, and with two tall towers, one for a clock and another for a wind-direction indicator. Wind has always been important for the Dutch, who built their nation on land reclaimed from the sea with the aid of windmills and who made their mark worldwide as merchant seamen under sail.
From the cobblestoned plaza in front of the station there are skinny, three-sectioned, multi-colored trams rumbling off every few seconds for every part of the city. I think in Amsterdam I love the trams most of all. Their bells clang-clang warnings to pedestrians and cyclists, metal wheels screech on metal rails as they snake through winding streets, sparks crackle from the overhead wires.
Tour boats glide about, long and narrow with glass roofs, built low to the water to clear the many bridges in this city of canals.
There are hundreds of bicycles and people everywhere - aging hippies who arrived during the drug-fogged '60s and never found their way out, youth hostelers stooped and staggering under much-too-heavy backpacks, middle-aged middle-class tourists from America with their thick guidebooks in hand and luggage in tow trying to take it all in at once.
The sky is a deep Delft blue, the clouds puffy white. Multicolored flags flap from the rooftop of the Victoria Hotel across the canal.
A festival of humanity is being played out here.
Ah, something familiar, something now nearly universal: A large red sign with golden arches points to the nearest McDonald's. (When I asked at the airport for directions to the train platform, I was told to turn right at the Burger King.) America's culinary gifts to the European Community.
I sit on a bench on the bridge over the canal, listening to a large portable musical contraption - a barrel organ - operated by a man rattling coins in a shiny brass cup. I share the crumbs of a croissant with a platoon of pigeons and drink an orange drink. I always drink orange drinks in the Netherlands. It seems like the proper thing to do.
Orange is the national color (although the Dutch flag is three horizontal stripes of red, white and blue). The Dutch team in the World Cup matches wear orange. German-born Prince William of Orange (it's spelled locally ``oranje'') led the Protestant fight against Spanish oppression in the 16th century and is regarded as the father of the United Netherlands.
There's even a Virginia connection with these House of Orange folks - by way of England. In 1668-69, when King James II infuriated the English by turning Catholic, they kicked him out. Still sensitive about chopping off the head of his grandfather, Charles I, in 1649, the English got their best PR people together and they came up with the term ``Glorious Revolution'' for this bit of treason.
Then they set out to find the most suitable available Protestant they could hire to be the new king. They settled on William III of Orange, who happened to be married to James II's daughter Mary Stuart. They ruled Britain (and Holland as well) in the late 17th century as co-monarchs, William and Mary. It was for them that the college at Williamsburg was named. Orange County, too.
Religious intolerance, by the way, is still played out today on an individual basis in a little British living history park called Northern Ireland. The Dutch, on the other hand, may be the most tolerant people on earth. Jews, for instance, found safe haven here for centuries except for the years of Nazi occupation (1940-45) when Hitler's goons annihilated more than 90 percent of them in Holland, including young Anne Frank, whose eloquent diary has become legendary.
But I digress. . . .
A couple of young tourists stop in front of me and with twisted necks and pointing fingers examine a map, trying to figure out how to get from here to there. I often wonder why they do that. Keep there noses in a map, I mean. They miss the point of travel. I prefer to walk, to wander. Explore, look at what's around, learn, enjoy. Get lost. It's OK.
There are some things in Amsterdam you will not experience anywhere else. Walk with me. You'll see.
The broad avenue called Damrak, with lanes for trams and bicycles as well as for motor vehicles, connects Centraal Station with the large square called the Dam, where Amsterdam began in the Middle Ages.
Damrak, a kaleidoscope of color - banks, sidewalk restaurants and brasseries, hotels, souvenir shops with ``feelthy'' postcards, tabak shops with cigars from Cuba and Sumatra, bookstores, money exchanges - is a sea of humanity at almost any hour. It is not unlike a carnival midway, - mimes, panhandlers, tourists, locals walking dogs. Lots of dogs. Even more pigeons.
The cobblestoned Dam is more of the same, fronted by the immense, grimy stone Royal Palace built in 1655 on 13,659 pilings sunk in land reclaimed from the sea, the National Monument obelisk that is the city's principal meeting point for the young, Nieuw Kerk (New Church, consecrated in 1410) and De Bijenkorf (the beehive), Amsterdam's largest department store.
A very brassy brass band, outfitted in black, red and white - Amsterdam's colors - is playing a concert. People mill about, thousands of them. Some even stop to watch and listen.
I suddenly realize: I am the ONLY person in sight, maybe the only person in all of Amsterdam, who is not wearing denim. Remarkable. If orange is the national color, then denim is the national cloth. I hope they do not have fashion police here.
Behind the palace and the church is a wonderfully decorative architectural work of another era. It is the former main post office. It has been converted into a shopping center, Magna Plaza, three floors of very trendy, up-scale boutiques around a central atrium. The America Today store is doing a land-office business in - you guessed it - jeans.
South of the Dam, the principal ``people places'' are the Rembrandtplein and the Leidseplein (plein means place or plaza). Both are packed with eateries of all imaginable types. Almost all have outside tables from which to watch the show. These people will sit outside in almost any weather.
The more bizarre of the two is the Leidseplein. Always something happening here. Caricaturists drawing badly, Rastafarians in dreadlocks, roller skaters, a growling Harley hog, puppeteers, jugglers, assorted vagabonds. There's a guy dressed like the Mad Hatter with a pink bow in his tall, black velvet top hat. Just up the street I saw a store advertising illustrated Lewis Carroll books. This guy may BE the Mad Hatter, on the lam.
This is, by and large, a pretty scruffy bunch. I'm thinking of setting up a portable shower business here, but I doubt there'd be enough interest to make a go of it.
Ten street musicians - short, stocky Inca Indians with thick black hair braided down to their waists - play an assortment of what appear to be handmade instruments, and their music inspires a pair of Dutch nymphs to dance. An international Woodstock in the making. The crowd that gathers tosses pocket change into a basket.
A young fellow called Nigel, a Brit, asks if he can shake my hand. He is trying to set a world record for shaking hands. He says the record is 28,000. I ask if he's got a chance. ``I don't really think so,'' he admits. ``I tried last week and only got 5,000.'' A couple of hours later Nigel is nowhere to be seen. I'll have to check the Guinness book next year. I may be a part of history - one small handshake for man. . . - but I don't really think so.
On a narrow street, the wind blows over a big galvanized trash can. People stop and watch as it clatters about, not quite certain if it is part of the street scene.
Aw, no! I don't believe this. Amsterdam dogs do pretty much what they want to do wherever they want to do it. Usually on the sidewalk. This is a very tolerant city, remember. But you really do have to watch EVERYwhere you step.
In this city of Rembrandt, art - outdoor art, that is - has gone in a decidedly different direction. There is a LOT of spray-paint graffiti. Most of the artists seem to have gotten their inspiration, not from the Dutch Masters, but from Heavy Metal comic books. Except for the people who decorated the trams. They're, well, moving examples of classy modern art.
Call it a death wish, but I have a weakness for street food. I stop at a little hole-in-the-wall and order a hot dog. With cooked onions and mustard, it is much more delicious than the average American hot dog (bigger, too), and it is served on a fresh-baked roll.
The woman who served me conversed in three different languages as I sat there. Being language-impaired, I am always amazed by this European ease with foreign tongues. The Dutch, by the way, speak English as well as we do.
Still healthy, and still hungry, I try some pickled herring with onions at a stall in the open-air Nieuw Markt. Not as good as in Sweden, but not bad. Now I must find an apotheek shop, which is what Europeans call what we call a drugstore. They sell mouthwash.
The canals are what set Amsterdam apart from most other cities of the world. They form a series of more or less concentric crescents that girdle the ever-expanding old city.
These quiet brown waterways, with a bit too much floating debris to call them really charming, are lined on either side by narrow, tree-shaded, herringbone-brick streets. Some Amsterdamers still use them as traffic arteries, traveling in small motorboats. A few live on them in houseboats.
The canal houses are narrow and usually four or five stories tall with steep pitched roofs and decorative facades. Because the stairways inside are steep and narrow and winding, the houses pitch forward slightly over the street so that furniture and other stuff can be hoisted up by pulley from beams or hooks that project from the eaves and hauled into the house through large windows.
The other thing that sets Amsterdam apart is its infamous ``red-light'' district, which roughly parallels the Damrak a few blocks - or canals - to the east. Proper Amsterdamers are not very proud of this service industry, but prostitution has been officially sanctioned here since the 14th century. The district seems to have grown each time I come here.
Here you've got Rembrandt and van Gogh and all those other major contributors to world culture, and then you've got . . . SEX. Where do you think the crowds go? (``I guess we really ought to go and at least have a look, Margo. What do you think?'')
I think you'd better be prepared for a VERY BIG shock. What goes on here would probably have brought a blush to the face of the late Bootsie Goldstein, Norfolk's most renowned purveyor of porn. But Bootsie probably also would solemnly observe, as he often did in his shop, ``It sells because people want to buy it.''
What they have to sell is displayed in storefront windows. It's all very explicit, the pictures, the language, the paraphernalia. Sex shops . . . videos . . . live shows. You cannot miss it. You cannot AVOID it. Scantily clad prostitutes - young and aging, fat and thin, and of every race - sit and preen in little street-level windows beneath red lights in these centuries-old houses awaiting customers. Some of these ``stalls'' look out onto a churchyard.
And people flock here, men AND women, in pairs, in groups, usually joking, laughing self-consciously. Uh, just looking, thanks.
I stop for a cup of coffee and sit listening to the 47 bells in the carillon of Oude Kerk. Signs on the sidewalk tables say, ``Please smoke your joints inside.'' That's the drug law here: no public display. You can get coffee at a coffee shop, but here it's another name for a place to smoke dope.
The shop next door is called ``Nothing's Shocking.'' No, not any more. I remember looking for the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah when I was in Israel. Seems as if they've moved here.
The Dutch Masters still do have their following as they've always had. The world-famous Rijksmuseum has Rembrandt's marvelous ``Night Watch'' as well as about 5,000 other paintings by Dutch artists. The 17th century house where Rembrandt lived and worked from 1639 to 1658 is now a museum containing 250 (almost all) of his etchings. It's particularly interesting to see them exhibited in the same surroundings in which they were executed.
The van Gogh Museum has a current exhibit of self-portraits made by Vincent in Paris. In 1886-87 he drew and painted himself 28 times; 20 of these are here, including five that are only rarely displayed. Just beyond is the Concertgebouw, famous for its acoustics and home to both the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the world-famous Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
At the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum (Maritime Museum) - Amsterdam's Nauticus - set in the grand 17th century home of the Amsterdam Admiralty, there's a full-size replica of an 18th century Dutch East India Company ship on which the crew demonstrates what life aboard was like.
The Amsterdam Historical Museum is featuring this summer a major exhibit on Dutch beer from the 14th through the 19th century. For an up-to-date view of this subject, the Heineken Brewery, near the Rijksmuseum, has tours for those 18 and older.
The 17th century Portuguese Synagogue is one of the most famous in the world. It is said to have survived during Nazi occupation at the behest of Spain's Gen. Francisco Franco, who out of respect for his mother (who was Jewish), asked Hitler to spare it.
Also of particular interest: Geels & Co. coffee and tea museum (the Dutch helped spread the popularity of these drinks worldwide) and the Anne Frank House, where the young Jewish diarist lived in hiding with her family until discovered by the Nazis. There are also a number of diamond centers that welcome visitors, particularly prospective buyers. The cutting of diamonds has been a major industry in Amsterdam for four centuries.
Museums to be missed: the Sex Museum, the Pornography Museum, the Cannabis Museum and the Medieval Torture Museum.
Or am I being intolerant? ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
Eating and drinking: You could stay in Amsterdam for months and
not eat in the same national or ethnic type restaurant twice. A
must-try experience is the Indonesian ``rijsttaffel'' (rice table)
consisting of rice, of course, and as many as 25 side dishes. There
are many of these in Amsterdam; I can recommend highly the
Restaurant Indonesia at Korte Leidsedwarsstraat 18, about 30 yards
down a side street from the Leidseplein.
Look for little restaurants, cafes and brasseries in the side
streets and narrow alleys for atmosphere, those in the pleins for
people-watching. Visit at least one of the city's ``Brown Cafes.''
There you'll find what the Dutch call ``gezelligheid.'' It doesn't
translate well, but ``conviviality'' and ``coziness'' come close.
Some are large, some are tiny, but the few characteristics they have
common are brown walls and ceilings - from age and tobacco smoke -
and the absence of music. Just conversation here. Try the Dutch
beers and the pungent and powerful genever.
Lodging: I stayed at two three-star hotels: the Rho just off the
Dam and the Tulip Inn on Spuistraat. Both are about $85 a night
single, slightly higher double; five-star hotels run twice that much
or higher. The Tulip Inn is located next door to the Restaurant
d'Vijff Vlieghen (the Five Flies), arguably Amsterdam's finest -
despite its name.
Specialty shopping: Amsterdam is a city of tiny shops. The antiek
shops are some of the most interesting. Most are located on Nieuwe
Spiegelstraat. If you stand at the entrance to the Rijksmuseum, you
are looking straight up this street. There's a floating flower
market on Singel canal near the old Mint tower. A package of 50
tulips was selling for at little less than $7.50. There's a wooden
shoe maker (Klompenmakerij) at No. 20 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, not
far from Centraal Station. I was slightly surprised to see three
chickens, some chicks and a guinea hen in the back workroom among
the tools. People actually wear those clogs for gardening, and
everyone gardens.
Clothing tip: Pack rain gear with your jeans. It's often wet
here.
Info: Amsterdam has one of the best tourist offices in Europe -
VVV. There is an office in Centraal Station (open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
seven days a week) and another in front of the station (open 9-5
seven days a week) that can help with lodging accommodations in a
price range you select, as well as with maps, brochures, etc., and
it will even book theater tickets. You also can write: P.O. Box
3901, 1001 AS Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
- Stephen Harriman by CNB