Six years ago, while on an 8-hour layover, I witnessed Amsterdam through the giddy eyes of an ex-con on parole; a sailor on leave. Eagerly experiencing forbidden stimuli while surrounded by garish neon and blinking red tints, proved to be a tad overwhelming. It’s a well-known fact throughout the Western world that staid, Puritan mores keep us Americans from having any fun at home. It’s also a well-known fact that the Amsterdam tourism bureau likely prefers it that way.
The frenzy shoots outward like spokes from Dam Square, buttressed only by Centraal Station and the Red Light District. In the confines of this mini-state within a city, English seems to be the official language with a sort of drug-induced slur, a close second. Just like back then, hash and weed bars continue to misleadingly label themselves “coffeeshops”. Wonderfully enough, though, the coffee’s excellent. Pornography, souvenir wooden clogs, Turkish shawarma joints, Van Gogh this and Rembrandt that spilled out into the streets like the North Sea waters would if Holland hadn’t meticulously kept it in check.
On the invisible maritime scorecard, the Netherlands seems to be up on Mother Nature, successfully pushing the sea back to reclaim as much land as possible. Even in the past three or four years, the city has leveraged a system of dykes and dunes as part of its shrewd water management philosophy to reclaim a tiny string of islands just off Amsterdam’s coast. Apartment blocks and tram lines connecting them to the mainland ensures recent visitors, myself included, are easily fooled into thinking they had always been there.
Just like six years ago – way more so – I played the fox unleashed in the henhouse. If it could be smoked, rolled, ingested or drank, I did. My pal Kevbro was with me every faltering step of the way; most times faltering ahead.
Unlike then, however, the henhouse got to be a tad boring after a short while. There’s only so much of the word “dude” I can hear in a ten-minute period. After a couple of performances, a sex show is a sex show is a sex show. Plus, once you’ve come down, you realize the irrationality of paying ten euros for a bland, whipped-cream covered pastry that looked pretty in the display case, to go with your can of Coke.
So, we busted out. We went as the Dutch go. This meant taking advantage of Holland’s bizarrely flat landscape. We began our ride from the bicycle rental shop pretty confidently. We had opted to ride what the attendant had dubbed “typical Dutch” which meant an outdated looking bike with only one speed and no hand brakes. Just like being a kid again. Visually declaring a worse agility than in my youth, within ten minutes I had been transformed to typical tourist by getting my front tire stuck in the tram tracks. A common occurrence I had been told, but I uncommonly managed to stay on the wobbling bike despite partial embarrassment.
Regardless of chilled temperatures and the occasional precipitation, Kevbro and I spent the next 36 hours peddling on terrain that would have given the average American trial lawyer a very wet dream. Narrow, cobblestone streets lined with knee-high iron poles on the right, were flanked by the canals to the left. Cars patiently shared the road with helmet-less bikers who quickly negotiated tight squeezes and close shaves. In the States, all it would have taken was a single injury to a single child and before you know it, the legislative and litigious spigots would have runneth over.
The compact city center blurred itself out the farther we biked. The Jordaan, Amsterdam’s old Jewish quarter, was a stunning collection of slender houses leaning slightly forward as if to gesture politely to the passersby. This time around, I did not see the Anne Frank House with Kevbro. I recalled the visit on my previous trip, while slightly tripping, climbing the characteristically narrow staircase through the narrower house and observing the microscopic attic room where Anne and her entire family tried to quietly survive. My bedroom is bigger. Regardless of how informative the curators tried to make the exhibits within the museum, all they had to do was to lead the visitors directly to that room; that haunting hovel, so they could really begin to understand the outer reaches of human absurdity.
Pushing south of the center, we approached the Albert Cuyp market and you would think it was the smell of smoked fish, French fries with mayonnaise and various Dutch desserts that lured us in. You’d be half right. It was also a French woman and her vast array of cured sausage for sale, including donkey; which, by the way, fortunately tasted very much unlike ass. It was the make-up of locals buying and selling in their native tongue. It was the fishmongers hawking shellfish, salmon and squid, twice as large as I’ve ever seen in the States. Most of all, it was the relative sparsity of Dutch locals as they purchased food for their daily usage without having to dodge a group of Australians with bongs.
We temporarily tied the bikes to one of the ubiquitous racks closest to our compact guesthouse on our second evening there. Margarita rolled up in her comparably compact car, specifically designed for urban Dutch driving. No Hummers here. Kevbro and I entered the vehicle where I quickly learned I was poorly designed for Dutch driving. I had met the lively – and lovely – Margarita while on a previous trip to San Francisco and she had graciously agreed to show us around her hometown of Haarlem, situated about thirty minutes west of Amsterdam. A quaint mid-size city, by Dutch standards, the landmark St Bavo Protestant Cathedral, tranquilly punctured the Haarlem skyline.
The next night, Margarita managed to stuff Kevbro and I (a feat many a kitchen hath attempted) with a sumptuous Indonesian meal, made up of about twenty dishes, at a local Haarlem restaurant. Part Indian; part Thai, with a hint of Malaysian, the cuisine was mildly spicy with the pungent flavors of lemongrass and curries. The food was also liberally crunchy due to the generous usage of ground peanuts in many of the dishes. For the Dutch, Indonesian is akin to American Chinese take-out in its widespread availability. As the waitress continued to bring delectable dish after delectable dish to our overburdened table, I began to see the upside to Dutch colonialism.
After hobbling back to the restaurant to retrieve my missing camera, we headed two hours south to the town of Utrecht for a birthday gathering of one of her friends. Driving down the uneventful, flat highways Margarita explained how traveling that far south meant we had traversed most of the country which is the same distance some people I know have driven to get cheaper gas. We actually stopped to get gas on the way at what was probably the cleanest, well-kept highway gas station I have ever seen in my life. The pumps were immaculate and every product for sale inside was arranged symmetrically for maximum retail viewing. There wasn’t a single stain on the coffee station nor a lick of dirt on the floor. Perhaps a spotless gas station was a meager reward for paying over $6 a gallon for gasoline.
Margarita’s friend’s gathering was a relaxed affair of about thirty Dutch around our collective age. Never have I seen so many empty bottles of Grolsch, the beer locals drink while foreigners wrap their lips around inferior Heinekens, lying around. Our hosts, and pretty much anyone we talked to, were warm and gregarious. Almost from the outset, the two out-of-place Americans were ingratiated into any topic of conversation, whether it was Dutch drug laws; EU trials and tribulations or snowboarding. It felt relaxing, really, to have an everyday chat with everyday people where sincerity was measured, not in grams puffed, but in the genuine interest and respect they showed to us strangers.
We returned to Amsterdam a few days later after a brief, yet fascinating, stint in Turkey where the choice to stay on the straight and narrow was more of a demand. Anxiously, we planned our final night in the Dutch capital around a greasy little mushroom and momentarily profound statements regarding life, love and an absurd group of drunk Brits we had met, desperately looking for a beer. It’s hard to admit it, but as essential as flying the cliché coop is to experiencing Amsterdam, occasionally waltzing right back in with all the other hens was part of it, too.
