Amsterdamalog
Hi Kids,
Hope you're all well. Haven't heard from most of you
in quite a while.
Remember, the ride ain't free, I expect some of you to keep me company.
If you don't write, then send money!
Where were we? Ah yes, I was about to get off the
boat.
It was about midnight when the shop docked at the
Hook of Holland. I
was the only cyclist aboard and was given priority disembarking. Like a
good Canadian, I stood in the line up quietly waiting for someone to
tell me what to do. The ferry workers, I noticed, were looking at me
with puzzled expressions on their faces. Then one must have seen the
little maple leafs on my crossbar, and waved at me to get off the boat.
With lights on and refector jacket draped over my back, I wheeled off
the boat, on the wrong side of the ramp, thinking I was still in the
UK, then followed the directions I was being given to get back on the
right, and did a big semi circle out to where two men were standing,
rather nonchalantly, watching the ferry traffic.
I rode up to them, with the intention of asking
where I go to catch the
train to Amsterdam.
"Hi guys, how ya doing."
They seemed a bit startled.
"Hey, do yous know where I catch the train to
Amsterdam?" I asked.
One of them pointed through a series of glass
enclosures to what
appeared to be a blue light, it was actually the side of a train.
"See that blue," he said. "That's where you go."
I said thanks, then made like I was going to ride
off, when the other
man said; "We have to see your passport before you go!"
I was a little surprised. I've been through borders
before; America,
Mexico, England, but for some reason I forgot I was passing one now.
I'd had to produce my passport and other documents on the British
side and had figured that was customs. Now, I was realizing these two
seemingly relaxed fellows, who I'd mistaken for janitors, were actually
Holland customs officers.
Reaching into my fanny pack, I produced my passport.
"Oh Canada, eh" said one of them.
"Yeah," I responded.
He opened the passport, held it up to the street
light for a second,
then handed it back.
"Don't I get a stamp?" I asked, half thinking these
guys were just
yarding my chain, and weren't really customs officers afterall.
"You want a stamp," said the fellow, taking the
passport back from me
and walking over to a little booth nearby where cars from the ferry
were pulling up, talking to someone inside for a couple seconds, then
proceeding through. He disappeared inside the shack for a second then
came back out with a troubled look on his face.
"We have no stamp," he said, concerned he had to
disappoint me.
"Ah, that's too bad, I really wanted one," I said,
trying to be funny.
"Wait a minute," said the second customs man, "I
think I might have one
in the truck."
As he went over to the a green truck that was parked
just off the road
ahead of me, the other fellow and I talked. He asked where I was going,
how long I planned to ride, why I was doing it, and whether I'd cycled
much in Canada. While we were chatting I could see the first man
rummaging around in a tool box at the rear of the truck.
"Found one," he said, pulling what appeared to be an
old grocers
pricing stamp from the bottom of a box.
"First I have to fix the date," he said, looking at
his watch to figure
out the date.
"Here, give us your passport," he said. Opening it
up, he seemed
surprised there was only one stamp inside it, from England. Then, as if
not wanting to besmudge any clean pages, he chose to put the Holland
stamp on the same page as the UK one. He was very careful to make sure
a corner of the stamp overlapped on the British one, then handed it
back.
"Here you go, you're officially in Holland now. Have
a nice time. We
have to go back to work."
I rode away towards the trains as the two men
crossed the road and went
to talk to the driver of a minivan who's just pulled up to the booth.
When I reached the train platform I found a young hippie type helping
some elderly passangers figure out which train to get on. I could see
no train officials, so asked him which train went to Amsterdam, he said
he wasn't sure, but the one he was standing on was definitely going to
Rotterdam.
After wandering around a few minutes, wheeling my
bike against traffic
through the train station, then going back out onto the platforms, I
found a group of men standing around with laptop bags over their
shoulders. They were laughing and joking, and I thought for a moment
they were business men, until one noticed me and made a motion like he
wanted to assist me. These guys turned out to be the conductors. When I
asked where the train to Amsterdam was, one told me to follow him. He,
and a young guy of about 18, broke from the rest and began to walk with
me over to the same platform where the hippie type had been assisting
the elderly couple.
As we walked the conductor told me I could chose
from several locations
where to park my bike for the train trip. Once I decided to park it in
the rear of the train, he said, "that's good, just when we get near
Amsterdam make sure you keep an eye on it because there are many
'pickpockets' around." He also told me to keep all my valuables with me
at all times.
Once the train rolled, he and the young fellow came
back and talked to
me. They told me about several tricks theives use to distract
tourists. These tricks included throwing money on the train floor and
robbing the people who helped pick it up, grabbing lap tops from
people's seats just before the train doors closed, and knocking on the
train window from the outside, distracting riders, while a seocnd
person comes along and takes your stuff while you're looking out the
window.
They were also very set on telling me about what a
'free society'
Holland was, and if I was careful about my possessions, I would have a
great time here.
The first stop was in Rotterdam, where the train
filled up with late
night partygoers, mostly young students, and a few elderly tourists.
Then it made its way, sometimes moving backwards, other times forward,
through, what I later found out, was most of central Holland. I didn't
know it then but we were being diverted around track repairs, and were
taking a roundabout route that led us through such exotic locales as
Leiden, the Haag, and other places until we finally pulled into
Amsterdam Central at about 2;30 in the morning.
Pulling Wheels off the train, I stepped aside to let
traffic clear. I
was suprised to find the station shut down, was unable find a ramp off
the platform to the main part of the station, and eventually put Wheels
and myself onto an escalator, even tho' the signs clearly told me not
to. Once down the escalator I found myself surrounded by security
guards, who seemed puzzled by my sudden appearance in their midst, but
unfazed. None of them said anything to me as I pushed my way through
the otherwise empty station to what was clearly the front door. As I
was about to exit I asked one where the back of the station was (my
friends Arno and Gerda had told me in an email they would be waiting at
the back). The fellow, a black Afrikaner, told me I'd have to go out
the front door and around the station.
It was as I went out the doors that my first bit of
culture shock hit.
Everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, in front, beside, high above in a
three story parking garage, were bicycles. There were more bikes in
front, and along the side of that station, on nearby bridges, and along
every entrance and exit route, than there are in the whole of Canada!
As I rode around the station I came to be under an
overpass, where there were even more bicycles, and was riding along in
the dark when I spotted a
lone walker coming my way. He immediately called me by name. It was my
friend Arno, who I'd met with his wife, Gerda, a couple years ago in
Lake Louise.
We shook hands and he led me to his car, which was
sitting with its
emergency lights flashing at the end of the overpass.
Disassembling Wheels, and loading it in the car with all my gear, we
made short work of the 15 k of highway between downtown Amsterdam and
their house in the village of Zaandam, just a little north west of the
city. Zooming along, I noticed people riding their bikes along well
treed cycle lanes nearby. I'd heard of the cycle roads, now I was
seeing them, and they looked great. I knew right away I was going to
have a lot of fun on them.
Less than half an hour later we were in Gerda and
Arno's dining room,
sipping tea, eating sandwiches and talking about the trip and what I
would do in Holland. They had prepared maps and booklets for me, gave
me a key to their house, showed me the route from their house to
Amsterdam and generally acted like I've always thought family should
act. By about 5 am my hosts decided they should get some sleep before
their workdays began. Arno is an architectual engineeer and Gerda is a
secretary. They both work in downtown Amsterdam and ride their bikes to
work each day, an 11 k course along a cycle lane, that includes a short
ferry ride.
A short time after they crashed I climbed the two
flights of stairs to
the loft where they'd set up a bed for me. Their house, which is
located in a housing developement that was built back in the 1920s, is
a former village bakery and is quite large by Dutch standards.
Actually, it is something right out of an architects digest magazine,
austere, but open, sparsely decorated, and full of large windows. It is
built of brick, with a clay roof and a small courtyard in back.
My room is at the top of the house and features slanting walls and a
window that opens up on the courtyard. Its quite nice.
After a few hours sleep I woke up to find myself
alone in the house. I
made coffee and porridge, wrote a little in my journal, then pulled
Wheels out of the large storage area in the back, and we rode into
Amsterdam, where I immediately fell in love.
Amsterdam is all I've ever imagined a city should
be. There is
something for everyone. About the only thing as numerous as the
bicycles, which are absolutely everywhere, is the cafes and 'coffee
shops', the latter being rather notorious as Hash houses, in the west.
Actually, they are not the airy fairy hippie hang outs I thought they
would be. They are quite respectable, and one can just as
easily drop in and have tea as they can buy and smoke some hash. The
only real difference is one is called a 'cafe', and the other a 'coffee
house', with the latter being restricted to persons 18 or older. Both
can be found everywhere throughout the city, and, as I've said, there
is little visible difference between them.
The other thing I found quite to my liking was
the presence of
thousands of little Ma and Pa operations. In downtown Amsterdam there
are few big name businesses, but the Dutch actually have laws in place
protecting these businesses from the big conglomerates. For example,
you may sell toasters, but if you sell kitchen appliances, then you
can't sell stereos, if you sell coffee and tea, then you can't sell
groceries, if you sell stereos, then you don't sell plugs and adapters.
In some instances some of these rules are relaxed, but for the
mostpart, they keep a lot of small specialized shops in operation.
There's no Walmart to be found anywhere, at least I've not seen one,
and you can be hard pressed to find a large grocery like those back
home. When you do, they do not compare to the small specialized
shops.
Another thing that surprised me about Amsterdam was
the canals. They
are everywhere, and next to bicycles, are the best way to move about
the city, although I think you'd need years of experience to know which
way to go. And everywhere you go there are little bridges spanning the
canals, and around these little bridges are dozens of cafes, coffee
shops and pubs. Amost every canal crossing is a town piazza, full of
happy smiling people sittting around.
After a couple hours just hanging around, I made
contact with Arno and
Gerda to a special remembrance ceremony held every May 4
in the big square outside the royal palace, called the Dam Square. May
4 is the day the Dutch commemorate the end of the Nazi Occupation, with
a very subdued ceremony. On May 5 they celebrate the liberation from
the Nazis, with much more boisterous goings on, but on May 4 it is
quite subdued. It was very somber, and I was impressed when most of the
speakers got up and talked, not about how mean and nasty the Nazis
were, but about the roll the people of Holland played in their own
subjugation and in the perpetuation of the Nazi atrocities. I am
learning very quickly that the Dutch people are quite eager to take
responsibility for their own problems and issues. Unlike in North
America, where we have a propensity to blame Hitler for World War II,
the Dutch blame themselves, and are intent on making sure it
never happens again, to anyone, anywhere.
It is the same, I am finding out, with their
societal issues. This is
why they have legalized marijuana, prostitution and other issues. Their
public relations materials clearly state they recognize that such
things as drug addiction and prostitution are not going to go away, and
that denying them, or criminalizing them, does not work. So they have
chosen to allow them, and to manage the situation, which they do most
effectively. Holland actually knows how many people in the country are
addicted to hard drugs, who they are, where they are, and what they are
doing about it. They also have a real good idea how many people are
working in prostitution, how many have got out of it, who is sick and
who is not. And you know what, there is none of this stuff like we have
in Canada where the drug addicted and sex trade workers are out in the
street making a nuisance of themselves, or sleeping in alleys, or
begging. No, these people are cared for, they have their place, and
they have readily available ways out, and it all works, which makes me
feel very ashamed to be a North American, because we could quite easity
do the same.
No folks, Amserdam is not a drug infested orgy of
disease and degenerency,
like it is sometimes painted to be. Rather, it is the US and Canada,
and England for that matter, with their backward ideas about how to
deal with social ills, and criminalization of the same, that are drug
infested, crime saturated, dens of degeneration. I've been here nearly
a week and not one person has come up to me on the street and tried
agressively to panhandle from me. You can't walk five minutes in any
city in Canada and say that. DO YOU HEAR ME STEVEN HARPER?
That first night, after the ceremony in the
Dam Square, my friends
took me on a walking tour of the city's red light district. Disney
land be damned! Its quite a scene down there, with the sex shops
and the women in the windows. There must be thousands of such windows,
little portals to the street, with little hotel-style rooms attached,
and throngs of men and women wandering around. It is not totally
wild, there are police, and public health people, but they are not all
heavy handed and obviouis, in fact, most of the police I saw were
women, smiling, friendly, discreet. And I did not find the scene was at
all out of hand, although we were there during some peak hours. There
was none of the raunch and gross crap you might find in downtown
Canada. Actually, the place was quite clean, and short of a thick aura
of sexual energy, there was nothing ugly or unsavoury about it. This is
another thing I like about Dutch society, it openly acknowledges its
sexuality and revels in it, which seems totally healthy, compared to
how we in North America have subverted it.
As we walked around I found myself looking into the
eyes of the women
who were in the windows. Yes, some of them looked a little rough, some
a little cynical, some quite unstable, but I also saw some light, and
more than a few who looked liked they were enjoying themselves. Yes
there were some who looked a little young, some confused, some
troubled, some desperate, but there were a lot who looked straight back
at me and seemed to appreciate that I was paying them the courtesy of
looking in their eyes.
In the end, I did not find my little foray into the
zone at all erotic.
I didn't come out wanting to go in. It was not arousing, although I did
find myself thinking about sex, it was not like I was overcome with
desire. Quite the opposite in fact. For me, I simpy was reminded that
when it comes to sexual contact, I've got to be able to look in a
woman's eyes and like what I see. Maybe if I was 25 the red light
district would turn me on, but today, it just leaves me looking for
what really turns me on, humanity, intelligence, well being, good
homour, and self realization. Yeah, a nice body does good things, but
without the aformentioned its just an empty package.
We made a stop at one of the local cafes before
retreiving our bikes
and riding home that night. The next day, a holiday here in Holland,
Arno and Gerda and I rode out on the dykes past a bunch of old style
windmills. It was lovely day spent lounging by canals and talking to
other cyclists.
The day after I had to myself, and passed it
cruising Amsterdam on my
bike, getting lost several times and finding my way again, which is one
of my favourite things to do in new cities. Its how I find my way
around.
Yesterday, Sunday, we got up early and rode out the
cycling trails to
the North Sea. It was a beautiful ride, first along the canals, then
through several small villages to a place called the dunes, which roll
for miles towards the sea, where we eventually came out on a long sandy
beach. Arno and Gerda tell me the beach stretches over 100 k in length.
I've never seen any beach, anywhere, quite like it, just miles and
miles
of soft warm sand, ocean, birds and people.
After our time on the beach we rode back, making
nearly 60 K by time we
were done, had a big dinner, then caught an early night.
This morning I find myself alone. Arno and Gerda
have gone off to work.
The sun shines. The house and neighbourhood are quiet. I'm off to
Amsterdam again, this time to visit the Van Gogh museum, if I can find
it, and if I can bear to go indoors on such a lovely day. In a couple
days I head for Utrecht, a nearby city, where some other fellow
cyclists
are planning a barbeque. I think they want to show me how good
they've got at roasting corn.
Anyway, I have fallen for Holland folks. Its a
wonderful place. And
yes, I'm still working on finding a way to extend my stay in Europe,
but I have to be honest, the fares aren't looking so good. I may well
have to stay into September to get a decent price home. Don't know if I
can do that.
Guess I'll jump those hoops when I get to them.
Hope you're all having fun, and to my English
friends, GET OUT, THERE'S
A PLACE JUST A FEW HOURS AWAY THAT REALLY IS GREAT!
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