TELGEN VACATION REPORT

Amsterdam, October, 1998

We were lucky enough to visit the beautiful city of Amsterdam, Holland this fall. Amsterdam is well known for its canals (among other things), and this shot was taken while we were actually travelling on a canal. You can see we had some lovely weather while we were there—but only in the mornings. But Amsterdam was a fun place in the drizzle, too, and we took an evening cruise in a light sprinkle that still allowed us to view many of the city's sights.

Our adventure did not start out so easily, however. We thought it might be different (and thus fun) to try the "rail and sail" path to Amsterdam, especially as David is so enamored of trains and boats. This involves an hour's journey to the coast of England, a three-hour to four-hour trip on a high-speed ferryboat, and another hour's ride on a train. Unfortunately, we arrived at the port on Friday to discover that the ferry had been cancelled that day, due to the weather (which didn't look that bad to us). So we hopped on a bus, which took two hours to take us to the train station in Ashford. Then we took the Eurostar across the tunnel to Brussels, where we switched to yet another train. Instead of enjoying a leisurely six-hour jaunt, we arrived in Amsterdam some twelve exhausting hours after we left home. Although Amsterdam is definitely a night city, we went to bed early so we could walk around the city the next morning, before it got busy.

Above is a photo of one of the city's canals, with lovely fall foliage framing the waterway. You can see the cars at the side of the road; there are little bumpers installed along the side so that cars don't roll into the canal. One guide told us that prior to their installation, people would lose an average of one car per week into the canal. The city still dredges some 10,000 bikes from the canal every year, however.

We didn't spend that much time on guided tours of Amsterdam (just two short boat tours, one at night, one during the day), but did do quite a bit of walking around the city. We enjoyed ourselves just looking at the architecture, doing a little window (and real) shopping, and sampling the wares of the numerous little cafés for which Amsterdam is famous. Just looking at the different types of buildings is fascinating. They're so skinny, evidently because when they were being built in the 17th century the owners were taxed according to the amount of canal frontage the property occupied. Then there are the different types of gables at the top of the homes—step gables, bell gables, etc—some with very elaborate decoration. This picture only shows one kind, but it is a good illustration of another interesting feature of Amsterdam architecture: the furniture hook. Those beams you see sticking out at the top of each building are necessary when moving in and out of a house. The doors and stairways are so narrow that the only way to move your furniture is through the window. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any in action, but it was fun to imagine what the spectacle would be like—the archetypal baby grand piano suspended three stories up, etc.

Another excursion we enjoyed in Amsterdam was to the Rijksmuseum, Holland's national museum. The Van Gogh Museum was being renovated, so we went to this national museum to view a rather large display of his work. We tried to go to a hands-on Technology Museum, but it had just moved a month or so beforehand. Instead we got lost and ended up at a café where Bill had to speak German to be understood. In the center, touristy part of the city, you can easily get by with just English, but here they just shook their heads at us.

The other place of interest we visited was the Anne Frank House. This museum occupies the actual building where Anne Frank and her family spent part of the Nazi occupation, before being discovered and sent to various concentration camps where all but her father perished. This "achterhuis" or "house behind" took up the attic space of the warehouse owned by Anne Frank's father. After the war, he returned to Amsterdam to resume his business, and later converted the building into a museum. You can walk through this space, and they have models of how the furniture was laid out so you can imagine what it must have been like to live there. Anne's room still has the postcards and pictures of movie stars that she stuck up on the walls to help her forget her claustrophobic daily existence. It was truly one of the most incredibly moving places I have ever visited.

So now you know that Amsterdam is full of art and history, but some of you may be wondering—what about the sex and drugs? Well, we did see (from a distance) evidence of some of the other famous aspects of the city. During our nighttime boat cruise, we did pass down part of the city's notorious "red light" district. And it's true; the wares really are displayed in the shop window. The red light glows from above, and you look through the big window to see a lady sitting in her underwear. No decorations, no furniture, just a somewhat, um, Reubenesque lady lounging about with no clothes on. You wouldn't think it would be that appealing, but we did observe quite a few British "gentlemen" returning on the train with us who obviously hadn't visited the city for its sights.

As for Amsterdam's famously lenient attitude towards the cannabis plant, we saw plenty of evidence of that, too. First, there were many souvenir shops selling T-shirts featuring the city's name and the unmistakable image of that many-leafed plant. Then we saw this boat-café, featuring these unique renderings of Donald Duck and the genie from Aladdin. I never considered that the genie's funny riffs and Donald's speech impediment might be due to a toke now and then, but the proof is right here! I don't know how the culture mavens at Disney would feel about these images, but I thought they were pretty hilarious.

So that was our trip to Amsterdam. We were there less than 48 hours, only long enough for a sampling, but long enough to know we'd like to visit again someday (maybe without David). Although we probably wouldn't enjoy the city's public transportation system—large tram trolleys—as much as he did.

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Copyright © 1998 by Diane Telgen. All rights reserved.