Amsterdam

“You’re the only person I know that’s been to Amsterdam without smoking dope.”

Yes, well.  It’s probably only by dint of circumstance that this holds true.  For whatever reason – lack of money, reservations about some members of the touring party, or other commitments – I never joined any of the occasional boisterous expeditions to Debauchery Central that took place through my twenties, one of which, that I’m particularly pleased to have missed, ended up in a holding cell at Harwich Docks from which escape was only achieved by strict adherence to the quickly constructed defence of “everybody deny everything” – which in itself is a pretty good album title.  But Amsterdam is one of those places that everyone naturally assumes that you’ve been to and looks at you rather oddly if you haven’t so, with a few days leave arranged, and no other calls upon my time, I finally got around to visiting the Venice of the North.

A word on coffee shops.  I might have been tempted to indulge if I hadn’t gone solo.  But wandering about on my own I had neither the desire nor the inclination to get myself stoned in the company of the Euro-dope-bores.  There were plenty of them in evidence, young for the most part but leavened with a rancid crust of fucking old fools, and I could just see myself getting dazedly trapped with them for a whole afternoon and evening of my bare 48 hours in-country.  Besides, dope is so effectively decriminalised and available now that if I did determine to get battered I would much prefer to do it in the comfort of my own home with no risk of Pink Floyd or The Doors entering into the equation, thank you very much.

A word too about Naughty Ladies.   It rained almost constantly for all of the time that I was in Amsterdam.  Sometimes heavily, sometimes lightly, sometimes torrentially. There was a lot of rain. My exposure (probably the wrong word under the circumstances) to the joyless charms of the red light district and the ladies beckoning from beyond the glass came at a point when Noah would’ve been thinking about battening down the hatches.  For my part I was rather more concerned with getting my umbrella out of my bag and cursing at its recalcitrant mechanism than I was with the, no doubt, heavenly delights on offer and the shiver that ran right through me was much less to do with sexual anticipation than it was with the raindrop that had unerringly found its way down the back of my neck.  I made my excuses to no one in particular and left, heading off to drink another witte beer, dry off a little, and establish which particular canal I was going to walk along next.

From the highs of low culture to Low Countries high culture. The Rijksmuseum is undergoing an extensive renovation and while this is going on the finest works of their collection have been gathered all together in one annex.  I should like to take this opportunity to commend this approach to all other major museums in the world.  I’ve visited the Louvre and if I never ever go back there again it will be too soon and I’ve become footsore and art-weary trudging around a dozen other lesser edifices.  Being able to see every picture that I went there to see in a leisurely uncrowded hour and a half between late breakfast and early lunch doth not a philistine make.

It was pure coincidence that I had recently read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell.   Set in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) enclave in Nagasaki harbour, it provided me with some context for the pictures of the fleets, the portraits of various VOC worthies and the items of trade booty in the Rijksmuseum.  As a book, I found it to be a rare page turner, vivid and entirely credible in its portrayal of that mysterious closed off society of 18^th century Japan though the more fantastical elements of the plot were unconvincing.  There was a quieter, better, novel here that got subsumed by over-ambition.  I note, too, that several women have, rightly, said that it made them feel rather queasy.

More rain.  The Van Gogh museum which, again, was a model of how museums should be – uncrowded enough to be able to walk around and simply absorb and enjoy.  More witte beer. 

 

On my final morning, before taking the train back out to Schiphol, I ventured a little further out from the city centre.  I had made a conscious effort to avoid the Anne Frank Museum, partly on account of the queues and partly on account of Third Reich Fatigue, but the Museum of the Dutch Resistance  was well worth a visit.  There were the expected portrayals of round-ups, hostage-taking and deportations as well as ingenious devices, hidden compartments etc. etc.  but what was most interesting (to me, at any rate) was a temporary exhibition on how the Dutch resistance was funded.

It’s rather a trite observation, but after seeing all of the sobering evidence of bravery and sacrifice and the betrayals and repression, one could not help but wonder, firstly, how Britons would have behaved under such circumstances and, secondly, how, or if, we in our society today could weather such a storm.