I was really looking forward to going to Amsterdam because van Gogh is my favourite painter, and since I first heard about the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam as a teenager, it has been my dream to visit it. Except I wasn't able to! A work colleague had travelled to Amsterdam a couple of months ago and mentioning booking tickets to attractions in advance, not only because of pandemic measures but also because they sell out, but I didn't know I'd need to book at least a week in advance. I tried to book the night before, and the museum was sold out for the next week. This was hugely disappointing because going to this museum was the only reason I wanted to go to Amsterdam. However, you have to make the best of these things, and it's not like there isn't anything else to do in the city, so we found lots of other ways to entertain ourselves. But before I continue, I have to mention that within the first half hour of entering the country on the train, I already saw a windmill and fields of tulips--so cliché in a way, but let's face it: who doesn't want to see those things when travelling to the Netherlands?!
Day 1
We had actually arrived a bit later than planned due to the train being late--there had been "people on the tracks" at one point that stopped us up for about half an hour. I'm not sure what that designation means, if people were engaging in anti-social behaviour or attempting suicide or had somehow got trapped there by accident, but we couldn't see anything and were not given details beyond this descriptor. In any case, by the time we arrived at the train station, it was later in the afternoon. We discovered we could get a 48-hour transit pass that gave us unlimited access to all forms of public transportation for only €14.95, so we got those (and really got our money's worth during the weekend!) because our hotel was about 25 minutes away by metro from the train station/city centre. By the time we were booking hotels, prices in the city centre had skyrocketed due to it being the Easter holiday weekend, and much of Europe is on spring break at this time as well, so lesson learned to book earlier than later. But at least we had an easy way to get around, and the public transportation system there is excellent, with metro, tram, bus, and night bus to choose from when you need it. Moreover, our hotel had some green space near it, and it was quieter than the city centre, which was packed with tourists--and this despite being next to a music hall next to our hotel where there was a concert the evening we arrived and next to the Ajax FC arena, the place where Amsterdam's soccer team plays their home games.
After checking in at the hotel, we returned to the city centre to walk around. We saw that there were still some canal tours available for the evening, and as it's light later into the evening now, it was worth getting on one of those boats and learning more about Amsterdam's development by canal. I've travelled to Indonesia several times and have learned about colonial and post-colonial life through my travels there and through reading books and information about it, so now I was in the coloniser's location learning about this history from their perspective. Indeed, my husband actually lived in the Netherlands for 3 years through work some years ago, and he, corroborated by the tour guide information, mentioned the Netherlands as a trade and mercantile type of country and that they have historically been so. In that little bit of information alone, it explained so well why the Dutch engaged in the activities they did in Asia, being involved in the importation of spices, textiles, raw materials for textiles, and tea. Having read some of Joseph Conrad's novels that take place in Southeast Asia, this is exactly what people in those novels were doing, and everything just starting tying together for me in my head. The Netherlands today continues to be outward facing when it comes to their national economic strategies and continue to support local manufacturing but also trade and mercantile type industries, and it has allowed them to achieve a certain level of national wealth. And you notice the difference between there and Belgium, as the country just looks cleaner and better kept than in Belgium, where it is somewhat more run down. In Brussels we saw significantly more places that had gone out of business, but Amsterdam didn't seem to have this problem, apparently able to ride out the pandemic better than its southern neighbour. Anyway, one really fascinating thing I learned on the tour was the reason why houses are so narrow and tall. Apparently at the time they were built (between the 16th and 17th centuries), there was a tax based on the width of your building, so people tried to make their homes as narrow as comfortably possible. As a result, you'll see little protrusions coming out the tops of the houses, and they have a large hook on them, using them to move furniture and other large items into and out of the house because the stairways are so narrow that they can't use them for that purpose. We also learned that doors were made to look grand and windows were large to make the homes seem taller and grander--as if they weren't already tall enough! Some of these buildings are the most expensive in the city and many are now used by consulates and banks.
It was close to 8pm when the canal tour ended, and we were quite hungry for dinner. We didn't know it was going to be really difficult to find a place to eat. It turned out that things weren't just busy for museums such that they sold out, many restaurants were all booked up for the weekend as well. We had tried several places, thinking that we finally had found somewhere that we could at least get a slice of pizza, but they wouldn't take credit/debit cards. Apparently in the Netherlands, they are very wary of debt such that even credit/debit cards are often interpreted by the machines as credit cards only, so we couldn't buy anything at this store. Fortunately, that was the only place that happened to us, but we were so hungry that it wasn't welcome news at that time. We were about to settle for McDonalds, thinking that was going to be our only option at that point, but just before we crossed the street to where it was located, we saw local burger joint, so we decided to give it one last shot--but it worked! They supposedly have the best burgers in town. We thought the burgers were average, but staff were so great, and the atmosphere was so fun and upbeat, along with having food that was at least better than McDonalds, we came away with happy hearts and bellies as we made our way back to the hotel.
Day 2
Breakfast wasn't included at our hotel, so we had picked up some pastries at the grocery store the day before to have with the coffee in our room. We set off about an hour earlier than we needed to (we booked tickets for a certain entry time the night before) for the Rijksmuseum--my replacement for the Van Gogh Museum--thinking we could just hang out and enjoy the morning. It was enjoyable, and it was nice to be out snapping photos of all the tulips before there were tons of tourists, but it was much chillier than we anticipated, so we tried to keep moving, and fortunately there was gift shop open that we could peruse and keep warm. The Rijksmuseum is actually located near a group of museums in the same area, most of which you can see if you're in the centre of all of them, and the gift shop seems to focus on items from the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.
We enjoyed our museum visit a lot. The Rijksmuseum focuses on Dutch masters, but one of the things that impressed us the most, aside from the beautiful building and paintings, was the app they have that allows you to get information about the art pieces, offers guided tours according to artist or theme, and also allows you to set up your own personalised tours if there are particular pieces or artists you want to see, and then it includes a map to show you how to get those pieces from wherever you are in the museum. You can rent their equipment, but the app allows you to plan in advance and also listen to information before or after. In fact, you could take a virtual tour using the app if you wished. All museums should have this. It's the best museum technology I've ever seen. And I love it also because it allows you to focus. Most of the time I just walk through museums because I can't read about all of them, and everything starts looking the same after a while, so this gives you a way to focus on certain pieces. One of my focuses was on the Monet painting and the 4 van Gogh sketches they have. They also have a self-portrait, but it's been loaned to a museum in London, so I'll see it here! I want to go to every museum where there are van Goghs, but since I'm not that wealthy, I'll settle for going to as many as I can, even if it's accidental! When you view the photos, I've included as many links as possible to the works from the Rijksmuseum or another link to describe the piece because the character limitations on captions prevent me from including full info. You can click on the photo for more information. Some I included were interesting pieces that included black people, both from imperial times and also as represented in religious art during medieval times. I found it interesting. On some pages you link you, you might have to click "more info" on the page and translate the description using Google Translate since the digital copy doesn't seem to include a English description.
I should mention the scary incident that happened while I was at the museum, though. We had grabbed a coffee and snack at one of the cafes in the museum to take a break, and I think it was there that I took my camera out of my bag and set it down to get something out of my bag. About half an hour after we had started walking around again, I realised my camera was not in my bag! I asked one of the security staff in the room we were in where I'd need to go to ask about lost items, so we went there right away. As soon as I mentioned it to the lady there, and she asked me to describe it, she smiled and brought out my camera. Someone had turned it in! That's the first time I've ever left anything of great value behind before in all my years of travel. I was so grateful to whoever turned it in. My teary eyes of worry and loss turned to tears of joy.
After the museum, we sat outside in the green space in the middle of the museums. I also took photos of cherry trees and blossoms. Both Brussels and Amsterdam had cherry trees that were so thick with blossoms that it almost looked like some sort of candy or sculpted cotton candy. I wanted to eat them, but they wouldn't have been candy-like at all if I had done that! Anyway, from there, we went to find a cheese shop so I could get some to bring home, and on the way, we came across a Marc Chagall dealer. The dealer sells prints and lithographs by Chagall. I'm not a huge fan of abstract or surreal art, but I like Chagall's use of colour, and there is something about his whimsy that I find delightful. There were some affordable pieces there, and I must admit that I brought home a small lithograph of one of his Jerusalem Windows. The dealer was this lovely old Dutchman with a thick accent and who knew a ton about the artist, providing us with a lot of detail. We did eventually get to a cheese shop, and I got some delicious gouda, and we went back to the hotel to rest before going back out for our dinner reservation at an Italian restaurant. It seemed to be a family-run, authentic place, and we enjoyed the food very much.
We went home the next day and took a little walk around our hotel to see the area before going back to the train station, just to enjoy the birds in the morning and have some quiet time in the fresh air. I look forward to returning on a quick weekend trip to just see the Van Gogh Museum--and I'll likely pick up some more cheese because, you know, why not? I also mentioned in my title about the Netherlands being my other homeland. It's because my grandmother was Mennonite, and they originate in the Netherlands. My ancestors left in various waves of persecution and fled to Germany, Prussia, and Russia, and then eventually to the US and later Canada; in fact my great grandparents came from Russia but I believe were Dutch and German, ethnically, and met and married in the US, if I remember right, so it's a more distant past than my other immigrant ancestors, but I have Dutch blood in me somewhere, so that's why I think I've completed my homeland tour now as it seems that the line stayed genetically Dutch and German, not mixing so much with local Russians, or at least not in the case of my family. I imagine there are Mennonites there today, but I don't know much about it. Perhaps that's some research for another day. My photo album in this last paragraph are the random photos I took from the train--or that my husband took at times, as I was facing backward and just on the streets as we walked around.
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