That's not cigarette smoke!

If you look closely, I am in the picture.
Amsterdam
27.Sep.08

That’s not cigarette smoke!
That dam city in the Netherlands.

I woke up at 5:15am and it was dark. The darkness kind of reminded me what I normally see at that time of morning: the inside of my eyelids. The only people up and about this fine Saturday morning were those preparing their bakeries for the morning rush. Fortunately, the rental car company did not have the itty bitty car I requested so I got a new two-door six-speed diesel Opel Astra. It was transportation but nothing I’d buy. It had a power band like a toothpick: narrow and only useful for a short bit of time. There was nothing under 3000rpm and then the power kicked in very abruptly. Running through first gear just took a moment but in that short time it was like a roller coaster of automotive emotions. “Where’s the power? Is it really this wea..WOAH, where did that come fro—Oh, it’s gone.” It lost power about 1000 below redline at 5000rpm. If I blipped the throttle while shifting, the revs would stay high enough to not bog down in the next gear. I did discover a “Sport” button and that actually helped but not enough. For what it was, it felt quite big and the A-pillars seemed large and the rear visibility was lousy but I may be spoiled in the visibility department by my experience with older cars. But a car’s a car and after not driving for about two months, I was glad to be behind the wheel and bombing (safely) down the autobahn.




It took about four hours to get there, a bit longer than anticipated. There was construction on one of the main highways so I meandered my way through the countryside and about a billion traffic circles with the help of the GPS. Amsterdam is NOT a driving city. As soon as I got there, I wished I could ditch the car in the nearest canal and walk. The streets are narrow, nothing with two wheels follows traffic rules, there are one way streets, and no organized street grid. I got lost for a while, finally found a parking lot by a zoo outside of the center of the city, and traded my cross-trainers in for the casually comfortable leather shoes in an attempt to mask my true identity (tourist).


This is a picture of a bunch of fish for sale. Fresh, this is the closest I've been to salt water in 2 months.

Amsterdam is the fourth most visited city in Europe. At first I was surprised because I didn’t see any tourists. I walked through an open air market featuring clothing and I heard only Dutch. Dutch, by the way, is weird. It sounds remarkably like German but sillier, with more ‘J’s and “oo”s. Before too long, however, I found them: the tourists.

My first stop was the Rijksmuseum, featuring Dutch art and a lot of Rembrandt. It was good stuff but very crowded. Aside from a rather large American, who’s waistline and voice were only surpassed in magnitude by his ego and immaturity, it was a pleasing experience. I got to see several works from Rembrandt that I had studied earlier in my art history classes.

I then visited the Van Gogh Museum, just across the plaza. This was also a fine museum; it featured works from Van Gogh’s entire career. He was only an artist for the last ten of his thirty-eight years and with the guidance from the descriptions, one can easily follow his progression and development.


Getting tired of the museum shuffle, I turned on the speed and power-walked many kilometers through town. The canal system is quite interesting. It reminded me a bit of Venice, but with bikes, cars, and light rail. I found a central city park full of Dutch folk enjoying the beautiful day and joined them on a vacant bench overlooking a pond and grassy inner-city field. I trekked further north to the main train station, constructed on a man-made island in the bay. This was the business side of the city and it was definitely be considered bustling.

I took a boat tour of the canals and it was interesting for several reasons. Firstly, the tour was conducted in Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English in that order. I was amazed at how similar Dutch was to German. I could actually understand more or less what they were saying! Secondly, they had interesting stuff to say. For example, because the houses, doors, and staircases are so skinny, they have to move stuff through the window.


The Red Light District

I grabbed some delicious Chinese food and started following my GPS back to the Opel. On the way, I stumbled across the infamous Red Light District. This area consisted of a row of buildings separated by wide walkways and a canal and a few blocks of cross streets. Every few buildings there were several glass doors or windows with girls illuminated by the red lights. They wore almost nothing but they seemed pretty happy about it. Groups of people, often bachelor parties, walked through looking for where they could see the best show or the best girl or what not. It was like grocery shopping meets pornography. Quite interesting. I walked past an English tour guide explaining the happenings to a small group and it was hilarious. Maybe it was how proper he sounded with the accent but the whole scene just didn’t fit, in a comical way. The whole setting was something totally different.

I skated back to the car in record time to beat the parking meter. A pack of gummy somethings, a huge KitKat, a Red Bull, and great Dutch and Deutsch music kept me going until I arrived back in Köln a bit before 3am the next morning. Good trip. I’ll have to go back some time.