Bikes and Boats

Amsterdam is an extremely loud and chaotic city, full of energy and people all over the place—in trams, on foot, on bicycle and in boats. The full range of things that may hit you at any given moment makes it a bit difficult to appreciate the cool things around you, so Jay and I decided to go on a three-hour walking tour with the New Europe company as a mindless way to get oriented. The idea is simple but cool—they provide free tours in major European cities with freelance guides working just for tips (the guides pay the company a fixed rate to pick up a shift and then pocket 100% of what they make). About 150 people showed up for the tour we went on, they broke us up by language and then into smaller more manageable groups of around 20 for the tour. The guides do not have canned language, but instead audition to be a guide and are told the route, then are on their own to come up with historical content and fun anecdotes. Our tour guide was outstanding (an out of work Irish actor who followed a Dutch girl to Amsterdam) and it was a great way to see the city and learn a TON. I think I might know more about Amsterdam now than Denver. Amsterdam is a really walkable city because it is pretty small and very densely populated. The tour took us all over the place, from the famous historical buildings (Royal Palace, various churches, the Dutch East Indian Company headquarters) to the most relevant culture areas (Squatters district, Red Light district, coffeeshops). Of course I could only absorb a fraction of the information the guide threw our way, but here are some of my favorite tidbits:

• Amsterdam really should not be where it is. The city is reclaimed land on a flood plan below sea level (the highest point is 2.3 m above sea level) and if it wasn’t for the amazing Dutch canal system winding through the city, the whole area would be under water. 

Cool mural at the hostel showing the altitude of various things in Amsterdam

• The city was first and foremost a merchant town, and many parts are designed with that in mind. The clearest example is the architecture of the houses along the canals. They are the narrowest houses ever because they were taxed by the width of the water facing side since canal access was so valuable. (The merchant vessels came all the way into the city canals.) Most merchant houses doubled as their warehouses and because of the flood risk, the products had to be stored in the attic. But since no one wanted to carry goods up and down the stairs (especially the steep stairs resulting from such narrow houses), the houses have hooks from the roof for pulleys to haul goods from the sidewalk to the attic storage area. To prevent the wind from catching the load and blowing it right through the bedroom window, all the houses are built intentionally tipping forward into the water, giving the pulley system some more swinging space. How cool is that!

Pulley hooks

It's hard to photograph building lean

Narrowest house in Amsterdam: 1 meter wide

• The city is full of incongruities that actually make good practical sense upon closer inspection. For example, the Old Church is smack dab in the middle of the red light district because the priests wanted to keep their mistresses close. This served the port city well because sailors had their sins and their confessional right next door. Pretty quickly confessing after sins turned into paying per-indulgences, alms to make up for sins you were about to commit, which seems like a very strange concept to me. It works for the church though--it made good money off the sailors for many years, and allowed the building to grow into one of the biggest structures in Amsterdam.
• Contrary to popular believe, marijuana is not legal in Amsterdam, it’s just decriminalized and accepted. This and legalized prostitution are good examples of the city’s long history of economically-driven tolerance policies. In the Dutch mind frame, anything goes as long as it’s kept quite, it’s not hurting anyone, and it’s good for business. One of the really nice stories the guide told was about World War Two and how the economically-based tolerance policy morphed into moral tolerance  too: Amsterdam was the first place in Europe where non-Jewish citizens (non-military) stood up for the Jews at their own expense.

I learned lots of other things too and we enjoyed the tour so much that we also did a special tour of the Red Light District with the same tour company later in the visit. In addition to the two walking tours, we went on a canal tour. It wasn’t as good as the free walking tour, information wise, but it was still awesome to get a different vantage point of the city. There are so many canals and so many boats trying to navigate the waters its a bit of a madhouse—there are four way intersections, stop lights, and many traffic jams. I can’t imagine driving a boat around Amsterdam is much fun, yet there were lots of people out for a Saturday afternoon joyride.

Boat crossing

Amsterdam canal: cleaner than Venice because they actually drain the water (what a concept)

The two museums we checked out were the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House. I liked the Van Gogh Museum because you get the unique opportunity to see one artist from the early stages of development all the way to the end of his life. It’s a pretty crazy 10 year story: Van Gogh just decided to become an artist one day, rejected traditional art training and instead just painted a ton until he honed his talent. During that period, he moved from a grey, melancholy Dutch style to the optimistic French style he’s more known for, tried (and failed) to create a rural artists community and created amazing influential Impressionist works. Then, he got too sick to keep painting and shot himself in the chest. That’s a lot for one man in a decade. The Anne Frank Museum was outstanding but I don’t feel ready to write about it yet. Maybe after I finish rereading the diary and we visit a few more Holocaust remembrance sites.  

All in all, Amsterdam is an awesome city. It’s a bit exhausting because of all the noise and people but there is lots of cool stuff to see and do, and the whole place just has a great vibe. Plus, how can you not love a city with an indisputably bike-centric infrastructure and a multi-story bike parking lot?

Train station bike parking