Amsterdam

We left Bristol one very early Good Friday morning and spent some time at the airport waiting for our outbound flight. It must be something about weekend travelling because our flight was also delayed coming back. (I sat in the airport on Easter Monday smugly listening to Cardiff bound travellers having an hours delay - I was less smug when I heard that our flight would be delayed about 3 hours. As a result we got home about 2.30 in the morning and had an unexpected guest - a young german girl had missed her connection to Exeter and so after finding her luggage had gone astray came to our spare room for the night). Leaving Schipol Airport included a long taxiing, about 30 minutes, before take off and de-icing which delayed us even further. Let's hope we don't have to fly out of terminal 5 in the near future! Anyway, back to Amsterdam. As a pedestrian we needed to watch out for bikes, cars, trams, scooters, buses all going in different directions - there is no such thing as a one way street and everyone has more right of way than those on foot. We looked carefully each way before running across streets - I pitied those that were disabled or had small children with them. We bought a €17 tram pass for 96 hours and took the tram whenever we could, and when we felt tired often took a rest with a tram ride sight seeing a different part of the city. Some trips were a lot longer when we didn't quite get off at the right stop and went many kilometres out of our way before realising!! On the last day we hired bikes and rode to a nature reserve a few kilometres from the centre and into the country where there were few cars and fewer pedestrians. We caught the ferry across (its free for pedestrians, cyclists and scooters as they aren't allowed to use the tunnel) and rode our dutch bicycles sitting upright and cruising along as the steepest slope were those on bridges. We were pleased that in the morning the sun was out, but while we ate breakfast it began to snow and by the time we had finished our farmers omelette it had cleared again and so off we went. We got some lovely photos of the countryside with a very dark cloud coming our way and on the way back all we can say is that snow clouds move a lot faster than pedal power and we had a great time riding through snow, opening our mouths when we were thirsty for a snow flake, and getting covered in snow. Cycling is a really interesting scene in Amsterdam and as one of the guide books said 'sling a couple of shopping bags over the handle bars and you will feel right at home (we also saw a woman holding an umbrella while cycling). We took a photo of Caramello sitting on the bike seat while on the ferry. The ferry shuddered and he fell off landing near a hole in the boat wall and nearly fell into the canal. I would have been devastated if we had lost our little furry friend as he has been a great campanion during our trip and we have enjoyed taking photos of him.

Canal boats were also a must for us and we took the one hour trip around the centre on the boat one cold afternoon and sat and listened to the commentary. We enjoyed looking into house boats on the canals it was dusk and with lights turned on but curtains open we could see inside quite well - there's a name for people like us!! Most of them looked like rather expensive floating apartments with offices, libraries, dining rooms and leather couches to lounge around in. I could handle that I thought.

Another day we went on a bus trip out to the country and saw a little windmill village called Volendam-Marken (a bit like a Ferrymead or other historical villages), a clog making factory (we were tempted to buy clog slippers - made from material not wood!!), a cheese making factory (oh boy was that tempting - but we are trying to stay off cheese for the fattening qualities it offers and if it was sitting in our fridge there would be no way - they had one called dynamite a local cheese designed to give power in an hour - I don't think we had enough somehow). As an interesting point someone at work mentioned that when they ate cheese they had very vivid and memorable dreams and over the weekend I did too - could it have been the pizza, dutch toasted sandwiches, cheese sampling etc?). The bus trip took us through the polders, over dykes and reclaimed land and then dropped us at a fishing village where the main street was the top of the dyke. We enjoyed the boat trip back to another village and then Harry and I looked at each other and saw the clouds clearing and thought 'nice day tomorrow' - soon after the bus driver said ' there's snow coming' - guess who was right? The trip reminded me of my primary school geography lessons and reading a spy book about 'Nick Someone and the Hole in the Dyke' - seeing is so much better. The windmills these days (some have thatched roofs or walls) are mainly used for pumping water from the polders to prevent flooding. The water is often pumped into a lake which we crossed on the boat. It once was sea water but was dammed and now through all the pumping of water into the lake and out to sea has basically turned into fresh water. We didn't ask what the fisherman in the village fished for (some mutant sea creature that now can live in fresh water?) The villages were quaint (alot of buildings painted a dark green or black - it represents poor as these colours cost less once upon a time) and the houses often had three ornaments in their windows and generally they took pride in their gardens.

It snowed a lot but was warm enough for it not to settle in most places. We heard some tourists talking on cell phones about it being cold but we had packed warm and pleased that we did when the pilot told us it was 'below zero' just before we arrived. We wandered around all wrapped so we were o.k. (those leg warmers I bought in Hong Kong were a good purchase). In places daffodils stood forlornly in snow and I could just picture one turning to its neighbour asking 'what on earth are we doing here? We enjoyed many a coffee while watching the snow float through the air, it was a bit like watching a fire in a hearth, the waves splashing on the beach or fish swimming in a pool. ' About time for a coffee' became the euphemism for 'lets find a loo'. They are very sparse in Amsterdam and the only ones we saw was in the railway station and one along a street only for men.

Many people we have spoken to about our visit say it is the architecture that grabs them and we would agree. The hotel we stayed in was built in 1920 by a shipping company for immigrants to stay in before going to south America. They left the boats and trains from Eastern Europe, were fumigated, washed and subjected to other things I imagine all in the name of hygiene and then stayed a few nights in the hotel waiting for their ship. The restaurant place mats were in the orange and red pattern of the blankets that the Polish bought with them to keep warm. The hotel after the downturn of shipping became a home for criminals for a while and then what sounded a very bleak place for juvenile delinquents to pass the time of day. Most of the hotel had been redecorated and the core of the building had been gutted to give the 6 flights an open view to the sky virtually. It created a sense of space which was the main aim of the redesign. We watched a documentary one night on the hotel and then looked at all the photos on the stairwells of the immigrants, prison days, cells, building and construction. Most of the stair wells and our bedroom still had the chipped tiles etc that were left – for effect I guess (or too expensive to replace) but in reality I didn’t quite enjoy my last night there once I realised, and was constantly reminded of, the sadness that had once been there.

The city has indeed had its share of sadness. The synagogue, Jewish Museum and Ann Frank's House were all testament to this. The Portugese Synagogue was built around the late 1500's after Spain expelled its Jewish population and many fled to Portugal. Descendants began to arrive in Amsterdam. At the time the Dutch was at war with Spain and so to avoid being identified with Spain the immigrants were called Portugese Jews. A few hundred years later many Jews arrived from Eastern Europe. Holland asked a well known public figure (can't remember his name) to make a judgement about whether the Jews should be able to live in Amsterdam etc and he claimed that they were no different from anyone else and they should be welcomed as God would welcome them. The one thing I remember about the synagogue is that it had no electricity - was lit by 1000 candles during services and I am sure it was colder inside than outside. Ann Frank's house was a rather moving example of the result of further persecution of the Jews with Nazi Germany invading Holland in 1940. Only 10% of the Jewish population survived the war and much to everyones surprise the synagogue was left largely untouched. Ann Frank's Father said that he made her diary available because ‘we can not build a future if we do not know the past’. Imagine living in hiding with the fear of being found out daily for 2 years as a teenager. No one knows who betrayed them, but the wonderful thing is that some very caring people did look after them and continue to run the business.

We visited the American Hotel. I had been told by someone at work that ‘the food is not great and its quite expensive but still worth a visit’. My curiousity got the better of me!! So, when riding on a tram I saw it we got off at the next stop to investigate. He was right it was worth seeing. It was an old building with quite unusual decorations, dark interior, stain glass windows with birds that looked like peacocks and very large chandeliers. We peeked inside but with Peter's comment decided that we wouldn't bother sampling the food or the coffee. We also had a look through Rembrandts House (he went bankrupt due to his rather extravagant tastes). Other architectural highlights were:

• all the houses have hoists so that when you are moving house you don't have trouble fitting furniture up narrow stair wells
• we wandered past the oldest house in a courtyard in the centre of Amsterdam. Now well restored and earthquake or subsidence proof probably, it didn't look that old. But was surrounded by a lovely peaceful courtyard of other homes, a retreat from the busyness of downtown Amsterdam. There was a little church - quite simple and beautiful
• and past the smallest house in Amsterdam - you'd have to be slim to get up those stairs.
  

I guess Holland is known for its tolerance of a number of things. Although the tulips weren't quite out in Amsterdam except in the market places, but the flower displays there were quite magnificent including the display of cannabis seeds (went to a Hemp Museum but the smell got to me after a very short time and we left). The Red Light district was well visited by tourists and possibly locals alike. Restaurants cooked any food but dutch - (except for the occasional pancake and apple tart). We found within two blocks of restaurants, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese (Mooshi Mooshi Sushi) , Greek, Mexican, Italian, Argentinian, Brazilian, Belgian, Turkish, Indonesian, American (McD's and hot dog stands), - a testament to the fact that Dutch are tolerant of other cultures. We were so surprised that we had to have a coffee to write them all down before we forgot. With the coffees we always got a little biscuit - in the same packaging but often different. So, when Harry discoverred I got a chocolate one and he didn't we had to open them together and split them if they were different. Trams also gave away little Easter eggs so Haz got his share of chocolate.