30 June 2016
Amsterdam was drizzly all day, but I still managed to fall in love with that gentle and vibrant city. We had chocolate cake for breakfast (when on holiday…) and bread with berries from Vera’s boyfriend’s garden. We also met Vera’s children, Adriano and Graciella, who asked if she could come into our room to see a pigeon that had taken up residence on the balcony. We took the tram into the city and walked to the Anne Frank Museum, stopping along the way to look around the kooky Jordaan Neighbourhood. Houses there all seemed to have flowers or other plant life surrounding them, and the canals were quiet.
The Anne Frank Museum is small and intimate and reminds you of its 8 inhabitants who hid there for 2 years. The rooms are bare, and it is Anne’s voice, through descriptions and captions on the walls , that breathe life into the empty rooms. All furniture has been taken away, but traces of Anne’s stubborn and lively personality remain – the posters and pictures she glued on to the walls for instance, which I imagine couldn’t be removed like the furniture, and insistence on permanence and longevity (like her diary) which first puzzled me (how long did she expect to stay in the Secret Annex?) and then made me sad.
One part of the house that particularly struck me was the attic that she and Peter spent time in. The rest of the house had a mandate of forced silence, hushed by the black out curtains across the windows, but in the attic, there was a window patch of blue and the silhouette of trees and their leaves against the brightness of the sky. ‘The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air’. (Anne Frank, 23 February 1944) A glass panel over the entrance to the attic meant you couldn’t climb up and disturb the memories of that space, which was quiet because it wanted to be, not because it had to. We could only see into the attic through a mirror, just as now we can only see into the lives of the 8 inhabitants of the Annex through the pages of a book.
Although the 8 inhabitants of the Secret Annex didn’t survive the war (apart from Otto Frank), that wasn’t the case for all hiding Jews during the war. We discovered in our Free Tour later on that a group of Jews had hidden in the basement of the Royal Palace during the war, and had survived! The Royal Palace has another interesting aspect of its history, this one more humorous. When Napoleon appointed his brother Louis Bonaparte to rule and legislate Amsterdam, he decided to rename the Amsterdam Town Hall the Royal Palace, where he would take up residence. Unfortunately, when giving his speech to the people of Amsterdam his Dutch was so poor that instead of saying ‘I am your King’ he said ‘I am your Bunny Rabbit’ and from then on, he was known as "Konijn van 'Olland" ("Rabbit of 'Olland").
Near a street named Spui (pronounced ‘SSHH-PAO-W’) is a little chapel and inner court, called Begijnhof. This place was for unmarried women (but they were not nuns and could leave the place to get married if they wished) who began living together as part of a religious community, caring for the sick. Today, 93 women still live there as part of that community. Most of Amsterdam is abuzz with activity, but that place was so peaceful. However, its chapel holds a funny story. In 1345, a Priest administered the Sacrament of the Sick to a man who was ill, but he vomited the bread (which in Catholic belief is the body of Jesus made literally manifest) back up and it was thrown into the fire. Anton can Duinkerken described what happened next this way:: “The Host, thrown away into the fire, kept floating unhurt among the flames. The force of grace appeared to be stronger than nature”. A woman picked the bread out of the fire without burning herself, and it became a miracle! The chapel is built where that miracle was meant to have taken place, and the story of the miracle can be found on a painting in the chapel by the painter Schenk.
All this was told to us by our walking tour guide, a very enthusiastic and determined young lady originally from Louisiana who had come to Amsterdam as an au pair, fallen in love with the place, and began giving tours, rain or shine. In our case it was most definitely rain, and by the end of the tour it was pouring so heavily that neither Nat nor I could make out what the guide was saying.
We took shelter from the rain in a nearby café called Vegabond, where we had a summer roll, almond brie and fig jam toast and a breakfast granola and soy yoghurt bowl. Everything was delicious, and when two young boys (naughty boys who made faces and signs at passers-by) across from us left their toast with pesto and tomatoes untouched, I nipped over (after dithering for a moment beforehand from embarrassment) and took it back to our table, while Nat created a diversion by very noisily searching for something in her bag. No regrets, that toast was delicious.
It stopped raining after that little rest, and Nat and I took a walk to the Fault in Our Stars bench. I haven’t watched the movie or read the book, but I could tell which bench it was from the numerous love locks fastened to it and quotes from the book written all over. I can’t remember much else about the bench, but I do remember that we laughed a lot.
We got back to Vera’s to find the house in an uproar, Graciella in tears and Vera frantically cleaning the place. We tried to comfort Graciella, and later found out that Vera had discovered fleas in the pigeon and was terrified that it might have gotten into our things. But I certainly didn’t notice anything amiss, and we also decided not to tell her that Graciella had picked up the bird again.
1 July 2016
‘It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet’
that is the Dickens quote isn’t it? And that was also what Amsterdam was on our
second day there. We’d had perfect weather for most of our holiday so far, and
all the bad weather decided to conglomerate and pour down on that first day of
July.
We started the day with a trip to the antique market of Waterlooplein,
where we found tins and other old things, work clothes, and the song ‘Do ya
think I’m sexy?’ by Rod Stewart. We decided to stop by Vondelpark because we
had plenty of time that day, having cancelled a countryside bike tour in view
of the weather. We were directed to the park by a very cheerful metro man, who said
we must never walk ‘like grandmothers’, a statement he found so funny, couple
with his imitation of how ostensibly a grandmother walks, that he burst into
giggles after his own sentence! Nat and I both have the impression that the
people of Amsterdam are friendlier than most, and very helpful too. In stores,
the shopkeepers will switch to speaking in English with each other so as not to
exclude you from the conversation, and yesterday as we were walking through the
Jordaan neighbourhood, two people said ‘Welcome in Amsterdam, ladies!’
Vondelpark looks like it could be beautiful, but any park in
a downpour is not exciting, and so I ate an apple, we sat awhile and watched
the bicycles whizz by, and then we went to the Albery Cuypmarkt, where Nat got
some dates, and then to … the Van Gogh Museum.
The museum follows the different locations and ‘periods’ of
Van Gogh’s art. Some things I learnt and loved:
- In his painting of a peasant’s cottage (which he likened
to human nests) a tree arches over the hut, protecting those within, and the
streak of orange in the sky is reflected in the cottage’s window.
- Like Jonathan Safran Foer’s story in Extremely Loud and
Incredibly close, Van Gogh thought hands were the most expressive part of the
body.
- Van Gogh loved the spring in Arles, where he painted an
Apricot Tree, a Peach Tree and a Plum Tree. Having experienced for the first
time the joy and hope spring brings after winter, I felt like I shared Van Gogh’s
excitement, in some small way.
- A microscopic examination of one of his paintings of a sea
scape shows sand in the paint, sand from the very beach he sat painting on.
-‘The Garden of the Asylum’ struck me as particularly
interesting because it didn’t show so truthfully the sight of the garden, I
thought, rather the austere dark colours of the courtyard and the psychedelic
colours of the sky seemed more like a reflection of the fluctuating mind of
mental illness and the desire for freedom and release from the asylum
We spent 3 hours in that museum, but I could have stayed
there all day. It was still raining when we emerged.
Oh, Nat said something funny this day although I cannot remember
exactly when. We were travelling in a tram, at our usual place near the back of
the car, and talking about what we would put in our shops if we owned shops.
Nat would have a shop full of plants and succulents, and then she told me about
how with one succulent she had owned, the little buds (which she calls ‘babies’)
had grown at such a fast rate than, in her words, ‘I threw all those babies off
the balcony’!!!
2 July 2016
There was a bit of a wild goose chase in the morning as we tried to find the bus to Zaanse Schans, a neighbourhood of Zaandam with historic windmills, houses and a historical grocery store. We found our bus eventually, and got off at Zaanse Schans where we were greeted with the most heavenly smell of chocolate. Perhaps it was from the Verkade Paviljoen, a 20th century factory-turned-museum, where the authentic machines that once produced Verkade chocolate and cookies still run. More than 100 years old, the Verkade company has produced more than 48 different sorts of cookies, chocolates, toffees, bonbons, waffles, cakes, snacks and candles. It was famous not only for its confectionary, but for its workers, the ‘Verkade girls’. Verkade was one of the first industries employing women at the end of the 19th Century, and these Verkade girls (essentially factory workers) would also enjoy classes in cooking and sewing after work hours, and following World War II, crèche services were also made available to encourage mothers and older, married women to work in the Verkade factories.
Beside the Verkade Paviljoen is the Zaanse Museum, which gives you a brief history of Zaans Schans history and folk culture. Zaanse Schans has had over 400 years of industrial history, with three golden periods: 1720-1750, where there were at least 650 windmill factories in operation, 1890-1914 when windmills made way for steam, diesel, gas and electric machines, and 1950-1973.
Known as the ‘larder of the Netherlands’, the Zaan region’s main products were cocoa, starch, oil, wood, rice and paper. Rice might seem a bit of an odditiy – Holland? Rice? What happened was that Dr Peter Molenaar marketed rice porridge as a wonder food for babies, calling it Molenaaar’s Kindermeel, which was a huge success.
We walked into a weaver’s house, a clog workshop (did you know that clogs are fire-proof, water-proof, and can be driven over by a car and not break?) a chocolate shop, a bakery, a clock museum, and the colour mill where pigment is ground into paint powder, and the oldest organization owned and operated by the Dutch supermarket operator Ahold, the grocery store started by Albert Heijn in 1887, when orders were delivered by bicycle.
Today we were fortunate enough to have blue skies and sunshine for most of the day, except for a brief storm, and the good weather followed us back to Amsterdam. It was our last day in Amsterdam, and we were not going to leave Holland without trying pancakes (to be fair, we had had some pancakes the day before, but were not too impressed by them and wanted something better) We took the tram to Mook Pancakes, which I’d found just by chance while googling vegan pancakes in Amsterdam. Most of their pancakes aren’t vegan, but they have many vegan options. We had two plates of pancakes – syrup drenched and fruit covered. Both of us had a slight sugar high afterwards, but it was completely and utterly worth it, oh my. If ever you go to Amsterdam, don’t miss out on Mook Pancakes!
We posted our postcards, used a bathroom in a Police Station, walked around the streets which were even more beautiful in the sunlight, and then took a tram towards the bus park in Zuiderzeeweg, to catch our bus to England. And that’s when things started going wrong.
First, we missed our tram stop, and had to get the same tram back to the right station. Nat was noticeably worried, but as we had plenty of time I wasn’t very bothered by it, and watched a little boy on the tram play with his toy dinosaur.
The bus park at Zuiderzeeweg was strangely quiet, but since our bus only left in an hour and a half, we assumed that nothing was out of the ordinary, and sat down at one end of the bus stop. However, at 9.30 we realised that no buses had moved and no bus conductors were anywhere to be seen, which was worrying as we knew there was another bus to England at 9.30pm before ours at 10.30pm. So we checked the ticket, and realised that we were in the wrong place. We were in a holding place for buses, rather than at Duivendrecht, where our bus left from. This had happened because initially we were going to travel with another bus company which I suppose leaves from Zuiderzeeweg, but decided to use Eurolines which leaves from Duivendrecht, and had forgotten to change the bus stop on the itinerary.
That meant, we had to take the tram back into the city and then find the metro to get to Duivendrecht, which was in another area outside the city centre. We had one hour. I was strangely calm, and I just felt a detached and logical sort of reasoning of steps. I was already telling myself, ‘Alright, if we can’t make it, we have to go back to Vera and ask her if we could please stay another night.’ Nat was really panicking, and it was certainly a rush to get there. Thank God for a kind lady on the tram who gave us directions to the metro, and by God’s grace we got to the bus with time to spare to go to the toilet before settling down for a long ride.
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