Amsterdam

Monday October 25, 2010

One of the many canals of Amsterdam.

I was keen for a productive day today, wanted to achieve as much as I could. My to-do list consisted of:
- have a shower!
- new bike tyres
- repair kit for mat
- new bidon and bidon cage (drink bottle and drink bottle holder)
- get a needle and sew button back on my pants
- wash clothes
- get blog up-to-date
- plan route to Italy
- visit Apple store to enquire about my iPhone being broken
- water proof booties
- merino base layer
-go on free walking tour
If I managed to get all that done, then I could do some sight-seeing in Amsterdam, visit a few of the many museums, including the "Hash, Marijuana and Hemp Museum", the Torture Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, etc, and I could also see some of the tourist attractions such as Leidseplein, Vondelpark, Museum Square, Flower market, Dam Square , Rembrandt Square, Anne Frank House, Van Gogh museum Amsterdam, Madam Tussauds, Rembrandt House... I didn't know what most of these places were, but my hostel write-up said they were attractions nearby the hostel.
As usual, I started the day in the best way one can - with a big breakfast. Unfortunately the hostel didn't provide any cereals for breakfast (so they lost quite a few points there in my books), they just had bread to toast, with spreads and, unusually, boiled eggs and cheese slices. It's pretty hard to fill up on toast I reckon, but I managed it after about 20 slices of it, with several cups of tea and orange juice.
Meanwhile I surfed the net on my iPhone and investigated locations of bike shops, and the Laundromat.
I'd already achieved the first item on the list last night (shower), so I could tick that one off.
Next I went to the Laundromat, it cost €8.50 to wash a load, excluding drying! There's no way I was going to pay that. I might as well have bought a second-hand washing machine, set it up at the hostel, washed my clothes there, charged a few euro for other hostel goers to wash their clothes, and then sold the machine and I probably would have made a profit, albeit with much less convenience. €8.50 was the cost of convenience.
I walked back to the hostel then had to walk to the meeting point of the tour because my bike was still out of action with a puncture, and I had no more patches.
I'm not used to walking places, and I underestimated how long it would take to get there, so I was about fifteen minutes late.

The National Monument, a 1956 World War II monument on Dam Square, Amsterdam.

Dam Square, or simply the Dam, an important town square in Amsterdam.

However, the tour was just leaving as I got there, so it was perfect timing really. There were so many people there for a tour that there were two groups going, so I picked a group based on which guide I thought was better, and on which group had more good looking girls ;)
I picked the group which a young Australian bloke was taking, and he was really good, quite funny, so I think it was a good choice. I always wonder how boring it is for them, giving the same tour, day after day. I wonder how it is for teachers too, teaching students the same thing over and over, and for musicians, playing the same songs night after night at each show. Actually come to think of it, most jobs are repetitive like this. Hmm. Supermarket checkout staff or shelf stackers?
I have a bit of an idea what being a tour guide is like though, I gave heaps of tours at college and quite enjoyed that actually. It helps that each person or group you take is different, and I liked being able to meet and chat to each person or group that I took on a tour, I guess that's what kept it interesting.
Anyway, our guides name was Julian. He started by giving us 800 years of history in Amsterdam in about 8 minutes.
Julian had heaps of interesting things to show us and talk about, too much to include it all here in my blog. But if you're in Amsterdam some time, I recommend going on a tour with him. I'll mention some of the interesting things I can remember though.
Whenever I go on one of these walking tours, I just learn so much and there is so much to write about in my blog. So this post has turned out to be quite long again. Here we go.
Amsterdam got its name from a couple of fishermen who built a dam on the river Amstel and settled there. See they were caught in a nasty storm and didn't think they were going to survive, and they promised each other that if they did survive, they would start a settlement where they were washed up. And that happened to be the river Amstel. And that's where we currently stood - Dam Square.
Amsterdamers are not very creative in how they name things. The new Church stood nearby, named as such because it is 600 years new, whereas the Old Church is 700 years old.
We went through the red light district, one of the things Amsterdam is known for. Prostitution in Amsterdam is entirely legal. There were plenty of underwear clad women standing behind windows trying to grab our attention as we walked past. They like to knock on the window and look at you seductively. They don't like it when you take photos of them though. Julian told us about a time when an old man took a photo of a woman, she was rather a large woman too, and she came out and chased the man down, snatched his camera off him, threw it on the ground and then stomped on it, crushing it to pieces. I wonder if she knew the photo would still be on the memory card?
Julian reckoned others have a container of urine ready to throw at anyone who tries to photograph them. That would not be nice!
So I didn't photograph any of them, but I did take a photo of this crane in the middle of the red light district, which is more interesting anyway ;)

A crane in the middle of the red light district in Amsterdam.

Right in the middle of the red light district is a big church. This may seem strange but as our guide explained, it makes sense.

A church in the middle of the red light district in Amsterdam.

Back in the day, Amsterdam was a busy port so it had lots of sailors. Being a sailor was kind of a hard job, because they would be out on a ship for long periods of time, only with other men. So they got payed quite a lot, and when they got some time off the ship at Amsterdam, they would head into the red light district, spend some of the money they earned and sleep with lots of prostitutes, drink lots of beer, basically paint the town red. Then they would wake up the next morning feeling sorry for themselves, and knowing that they had committed sins. But they'd look out their window and see the church and think "hey look, there's a church, I'll just head in there and repent my sins, and then I'll still go to heaven." So they would go into the church and say "I'm sorry father for I have sinned".
And the father would be like "well what have you done, my son?"
And the sailor would say "well, I was out drinking and I got quite drunk, and we did this, and then I visited a prostitute and we did this, this and this, etc". And the father would be like "hmm, yes ok...well that will be...[mumble mumble]...yes, if you give me €26, your sins will be forgiven". And so the sailor would hand over the cash to the father, and he'd be free to do what he liked again, knowing that he would go to heaven, and if he sinned again he could just come back to the church for his sins to be forgiven.
So this was a good system because everyone was a winner. The priest made money out of it from the sailors, the prostitutes made good business from the sailors, and the sailors had a great time!

Julian telling the tour group about the history of Amsterdam.

At one point in the Netherlands history, our guide told us, "Napolian invaded the Netherlands but being a busy man, he gave the rule to his younger brother Louis. But Louis was like the lazy underachieving unemployed younger brother who'd never really done anything with his life. In modern days he'd be like the guy who just sits on the couch, smokes too much pot, plays too much WoW."
Louis took his duties as King of Holland seriously though, and he wanted to gain the respect of the Dutch people. So he tried to impress them by learning Dutch, and addressing the people in his opening speech as king in Dutch. He couldn't really speak any Dutch though, so he decided he'd just learn how to say "I am the King of Holland". So he'd practiced and practiced, and he got to the big day, all the people were gathered to hear what their new King had to say, and he came out and said Konijn van 'Olland ("rabbit of 'Olland"), rather than "Koning van Holland" ("King of Holland"). From then on he was known as the rabbit king, I think Julian said.
For much of Amsterdam's history, it has been a Protestant city, and being a Catholic was illegal. However Amsterdamer's are known as tolerant people, and so there were still Catholics living in the city. However, as long as they satisfied three conditions, then it was accepted and they wouldn't be arrested or anything. These three conditions were:
1. Discreet
2. Good for business
3. Doesn't hurt anyone
Now the Catholics living in the town couldn't build a church, since it was illegal to be a catholic. So instead they had some secret churches.

An inconspicuous Catholic church on the second floor of the building on the left (behind the grey panel van).

The second floor of the house in this photo here (the house on the left) was actually a Catholic Church, which could hold 400 people. It was allowed to happen though since it satisfied the three conditions. And if you went to a police officer and said "officer, I just saw about 400 people go into that building there, I think they're Catholics and it's actually a church", the policeman would say "where? I don't see any church. That's just a house", and he'd just walk off.
I'm not sure if you can tell from this photo, but most of these buildings aren't standing up straight.

A typical building in Amsterdam on a slight lean.

This is because they don't have solid foundations, and over time they sink differentially, and start leaning to one side.
The other unusual thing about these buildings is that they all have hooks at the top. Julian explained what these were for: in the old days, all the supplies would come in via boats, and these boats would travel up the canals and deliver the goods to each shop. However it wasn't a good idea to store the goods on the ground floor, since the buildings were liable to flood every now and again, and then the goods would be ruined. So instead they were stored on the top floor, and a rope running over the hook down to the ground was used to hoist the goods up to the top floor. The goods swinging on their way up was sometimes a problem though, because they could swing into a window and smash the window. So some buildings were built so that they leaned towards the canal. Until some bright spark came along a few hundred years later and said "hey, why don't we just attach the hook to a beam sticking out from the wall so that it's further from the wall, then we won't have to build the buildings with a lean."
This building is an old medieval building; I think it was one of the gateways to the city in the old days.

The Waag ("weigh house"), a 15th-century building on Niewmarkt square in Amsterdam. It was originally a city gate. The building has also served as a guidehall, museum, fire station and anatomical theatre, among others. It is the oldest remaining non-religious building in Amsterdam. The building has held riksmonument status since 1970.

I can't quite remember what Julian said about it, could have been something about public executions and where bodies were cut up in public and studied, and where artists would paint these with body parts removed or cut up. Pretty gory. (Note: I got the above photo caption from Wikipedia).
At this point, Julian also talked about Rembrandt, the most important painter in Dutch history. Julian reckoned Rembrandt would attend auctions of his paintings and put in bids just to push the price up. And sometimes he would even destroy his own paintings to push the prices up of the remaining existing paintings.
Next we saw the Jewish Quarter.

The Jodenbuurt (Jewish Quarter) neighbourhood in Amsterdam.

When the Nazi party was in power in the 1940's, the population of Jews in Amsterdam increased, with Jews coming in to try and escape persecution. However, the Nazi's later took up occupation in Amsterdam, and this was disastrous for Jews living there. The Jews were gradually driven out or killed by the Nazi's, and the population of Jews dwindled. Houses were left unoccupied and fell into disrepair. And Amsterdam was cut off from the supply lines, but people needed to keep warm, so they would come and take whatever they could burn from these houses to keep warm. That's why all the trees in Amsterdam are the same age too, because all the original trees were cut down to use as firewood.
Anyway, in the 70's I think Julian said, they decided they'd refurbish the Jewish Quarter, rebuild all the houses and make it look good again. They gave the job of architecture to the University Students, and our guide reckoned this was a bad idea because he reckoned the Jewish Quarter looked really ugly now. He reckoned the Architecture students were probably on LSD and were like "hey man, let's go with yellow, that'd be like psychedelic and rad and stuff", so most of the houses have some kind of yellow cladding or facade.
Next we saw the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch).

The headquarters of the Dutch East India Company.

In it's day, this was the biggest, wealthiest and most powerful company in the world. It was the first multinational corporation in the world, and the first company to issue stock. They became a successful company because they did trade differently from other companies at the time. In those days, ships would travel out, fill up with one commodity (for example, nutmeg), and then sail back to Amsterdam. However, if they were caught in bad weather and delayed or sunk, then the company would not be able to deliver any nutmeg. All their eggs were in one basket, so to speak. The Dutch East India Company thought it was a good idea to load up each ship with lots of different commodities, so that if one ship was delayed or sunk, then all of the commodities would still get back to the Netherlands in the remaining ships. And this method turned out to be very successful. The company was raking it in for more than a hundred years. Eventually though, they went bankrupt in about 1800.
Next we saw the statue of Eduard Douwes Dekker, known under the pseudonym of Multatuli.

The statue of Eduard Douwes Dekker, known under the pseudonum of Multatuli.

He worked as a civil servant in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, where he arrived when he was nineteen. When he got there, he saw that the indigenous Dutch were being abused and treated very badly. The people in the Netherlands didn't know about this though. He published a famous novel Max Havelaar (1860), under the pen name Multatuli, which in Latin means "I have endured many things." And this brought to light the way the indigenous Dutch were being treated, and resulted in them being treated better.
His statue stands on the widest bridge in Amsterdam. It's wider than it is long.
And one of the houses just nearby is the narrowest house in Amsterdam. Julian said it was only 1.2 metres wide. I would love to see how everything is arranged inside.
Then we were given a free sample of goat's cheese, which tasted really good. The Dutch love their cheese. Julian suggested this might be one reason why the Dutch are typically so tall, because they eat lots if cheese.
Next Julian talked about marijuana smoking in Amsterdam, one of the things the city is best known for. All of the coffee shops in Amsterdam aren't actually coffee shops; they're marijuana-smoking shops. Many people think that smoking marijuana in Amsterdam is legal, but it's actually not. But it's allowed to happen because Amsterdam is a tolerant city, and because it satisfies the three conditions: it's done discreetly, in "coffee shops", it's good for business since it brings in heaps of money from tourists, and it doesn't hurt anyone. Well it's still a drug which can cause harm but it's only a soft drug. See Amsterdam used to have a big problem with heroin addicts, there used to be about 10,000 of them, but the police really cracked down on it and cleaned the place up, and now there would only be a few hundred junkies left. So they think it's much better to allow pot smoking and have few junkies than for the city to be full of junkies.
Julian gave us some interesting statistics on marijuana smoking. I can't remember quite what they were, except that on a global scale, cannabis use has one of the highest prevelence's in New Zealand. Out of the European countries, Italy has one of the highest prevelence's of cannabis use. Cannabis use in the Netherlands is actually quite low, and this is because it's mostly just the tourists that come to Amsterdam and smoke pot, not so many of the locals do. Julian reckoned it brings in €4 billion to the city each year!
Magic mushrooms used to be legal in Amsterdam too, until recently when a tourist who had eaten magic mushrooms thought she could fly, and jumped off a building and died. So magic mushrooms were banned in the Netherlands in December 2008, but there are alternatives such as magic truffles. These are legal in the Netherlands and can be bought from shops in Amsterdam, and they have almost the same effects as magic mushrooms.
We wandered on and stopped at a bridge over a canal.
Come to think of it, Julian didn't really have a catch phrase he used over and over like the guides on the other waking tours I've done did.
Julian was good because he would chat to people in the group as we walked along. I had a chat to him and he was originally from Canberra but moved to Amsterdam to be with his girlfriend. He reckoned he never rode a bike much in Canberra but since moving to Amsterdam he's seen the light and he loves the cycling culture here. He said he'll definitely ride a bike when he moves back to Canberra.
Presently on a bridge over a canal, Julian described the cross section of a canal: the top layer is water, the bottom layer is the mud and dirt, and the middle layer is bikes!

A canal in Amsterdam.

See that's one of the things drunk people like to do, they find any unlocked bikes they can and throw them in the canal. It's like a competition they play, see who can throw the most bikes in the canal, or see how far they can throw them into the canal. And every now and again the bikes will be cleaned out of the canal, taken to a place where they are repaired and then sold back to the public again. So people might be riding a bike that has been in the canal several times, pretty funny hey?
The other thing the locals like to do is try and hit tourists while riding their bikes. See tourists will often step out onto a bike lane without looking and will almost get taken out by a cyclist - ask anyone who's been a foot tourist in Amsterdam and they'll tell you they were almost been hit by a cyclist on many occasions.

Back in the day, there were no street numbers on houses in Amsterdam. Instead they had little concrete sculptures positioned above the doors, which indicated what kind of shop it was.

Examples of little concrete sculptures which were used to indicate what kind of shop was inside of the building they were on.

And people didn't really have surnames either, instead they were just known as "John the Baker" for example, or Derk the Window Maker. Then civil registration meant that everyone had to have a surname. In 1811, the French under Napoleon occupied the Netherlands. They started having a census for the purpose of taxation, and forced everyone to have a family name, which was not a common practice for the Dutch.
The Dutch thought this would be a temporary measure, and some took on comical or offensive sounding names as a practical joke on their French occupiers. So some of the dutch adopted the name of their profession as their surname, some adopted the name of the farm they lived at, and others made up a silly name, for example: Suikerbuik (Sugarbelly), Springen in het Veld (Jump in the Field), Uiekruier (Onion-crier), Naaktgeboren (Born naked), Poepjes (Little shit), Schooier (Beggar), Scheefnek (Crooked-neck), Rotmensen (Rotten people), Zeldenthuis (Rarely at home), Zondervan (without a surname), Borst (breast), Piest (to urinate). You can imagine the Dutch standing in line to register and having a few laughs at the expense of the French officials, only to have the name stick to them and their descendants for centuries, and poor little Johnny Naaktgeboren being picked on at school for having a silly surname.
We walked through a bit of an art gallery and saw a few paintings. Back in the day, people would dress up in good clothes or armour and make themselves look tough and noble, and they'd get together for a dinner or party or whatever and get an artist to paint them. If the painter liked someone, he would paint him looking strong and noble, but if there was someone he didn't like, then the painter would make him look silly in the painting, for example he'd paint him sitting on the lap of another guy.
Julian said he didn't care much for paintings, but he did like this one, which is a bit gory:

Next we went to the Begijnhof Convent, which is Julian's favourite place in Amsterdam. He likes it because no matter how busy the city is, how loud and hectic it is, you can always go to the Begijnhof and it will be quiet and peaceful, and you can relax and take in the serenity. In the Begignhof is the Wooden House, which is famous because it's one of only two existing wooden buildings in the centre of Amsterdam, and probably the oldest wooden house in the Netherlands.

The Wooden House in Begijnhof, Amsterdam. This house dates from about 1528.

To finish with, Julian told us the story of Anne Frank, which I actually didn't know about. I'm going to have to read the diary of Anne Frank.
Julian had been a very good guide and I was very close to giving him a tip of €5, but I couldn't quite do it, just like when I was in Dublin. Afterwards I regretted not tipping him; if I see him again, I'll definitely shout him a beer or two.
Julian then led a bunch of us to a pub where they normally take people on the tour to, and I tagged along with the group for a bit, but along the way I spotted a Laundromat, so I ducked across to check the price, and when I got back I couldn't see the group anymore, I'd lost them.
So instead I just walked back to the hostel and grabbed all my clothes that needed washing, got them all washed and dried for about €5. While they were washing, I went to find a bike shop to buy a puncture repair kit. It was actually harder to find a bike shop than I expected, but eventually I did, and got a repair kit. On the way I saw a chess match taking place:

I walked back to the hostel with my washing, and fixed my punctured tyre. Then I went for a ride to the specialty touring bike shop that I'd come across online. I got there and was disappointed to see it was closed because the owner was out touring, and the shop would only be opening on Fridays and Saturdays (today was Monday). It was too late to go to any other bike shops, so I rode back to the hostel, bought a €5 pizza and scoffed it down, then went for another bike ride, to see if I could find any other bike shops, then I'd be able to go to them the next day.

A blog post about Amsterdam isn't complete without lots of photos of their canals!

I loved riding around in Amsterdam, because there were cyclists everywhere, and bike infrastructure everywhere.
I bought some groceries and rode back to the hostel, and cooked up a big beef stroganoff so that I'd have left-overs for lunch the next day.
After that I reorganised all the gear in my panniers, then checked my sleeping mat to find where the puncture was. I discovered there wasn't just one puncture, but the whole thing leaks! It's kind of like trying to hold water in a hessian sack, it just leaks out everywhere. I was quite disappointed because I wasn't going to be able to fix that.
After that I wrote my blog. The hostel only had two computers, and people were hogging them, so I had to just use my iPhone. Just about everyone uses the computers primarily to go on Facebook. I wonder what it was like in hostels before Facebook was invented, the computers must have been free all the time. Or maybe they just had less computers. Maybe everyone chatted to their fellow hostel-goers rather than their friends on Facebook.
There was a guy from Belgium who I had a brief chat to, he'd just moved to Amsterdam and had started a job with TomTom (GPS). He was looking for an apartment and would always be making phone calls in the common room using VOIP to try and organise an apartment. For some reason though, he was speaking EXTREMELY LOUDLY, I'm sure the person on the other end would have had to hold the phone slightly away from their ear. He seemed oblivious to the fact that there were a whole bunch of other people in the common room trying to converse, watch TV, read, whatever. Some people are so inconsiderate, it really irritated me.
Anyway, it turned out to be a fairly late night because I was determined to finish the blog post I was writing. I got to sleep after 4 am.

Ride stats:
Distance: 11.3 km
Average: 16.4 km/h
Maximum: 38.3 km/h
Time: 41:19