I spent a few days back in Amsterdam crashing at Jen and Mark’s place and exploring the city while they were off at work. The first day was spent just wandering around the canal district. Apparently the “Venice of the north” has over 100km of canals and 1,500 bridges, but I didn’t check the validity of that factoid. What is interesting though is the layout of the canals. In the old part of town, laid out in the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, town planning decided to build a series of semi-circular canals which linked in at both ends to the harbour. The design was practical both for defence and transport of goods (beer was specifically mentioned a couple of times).

On my first day the weather was good, but it’s been pretty awful ever since. As a result, most of the rest of my sightseeing was indoors, though Amsterdam does have some cool museums. I checked out the Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank house. As well as seeing some of Van Gogh’s most famous artworks, it was really cool to see the transition of his work from his first ever oil painting, through mimicking of other artists styles and finally to his trademark style of expressive blobs of brightly coloured paint. I already knew of his mental illness, ear cutting off incident and suicide at age 37, but I didn’t realise that he only started painting at a late age and did most of his best known work in the last two years. He initially worked at an art dealership but left to do religious work, and was later largely supported by his art dealer brother, Theo, who worked hard to promote Vincent’s work both during his life and after his death.

The Rijksmuseum is the granddaddy of Dutch museums. Founded in 1800 it has an incredible collection centred on the Dutch Golden Age. During that period, in the 17th century, Dutch science and art was amongst the most acclaimed in the world, and their naval power gave them privileged access to the trading ports of Asia. The collection in the Rijksmuseum reflects the power and wealth of this age, though due to a renovation of the buildings only about 100 of the best pieces were on display. This wasn’t actually such a bad thing as I got to see them without spending a whole day looking through all the hundreds of Rembrandt paintings. The day I went I wasn’t in such a museum mood so this was a good thing.

Like at the Van Gogh museum I already knew a fair bit about the story of Anne Frank when I went to the house she was hidden away in, but I still learnt more by going there. Actually the thing that surprised me most was the size of the rooms they sheltered in. That they were so big. I mean I still wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped inside there for 2 years of my life, especially with seven other people, but it surprised me that nobody questioned 3 rooms of a building that could clearly be seen from outside but that couldn’t be accessed from the building it was attached to. Anyway, at some stage someone did and all the inhabitants were sent off to concentration camps. Only Otto Frank, Anne’s father, survived and was at the forefront of campaigns to promote Anne’s diary, save the house from demolition in 1955 and turn it into a museum dedicated to telling the story of Jewish persecution during WW2. Even today nobody knows who gave up the inhabitants.

Apart from museum hopping I also did a few other things in Amsterdam when I wasn’t enjoying the beautiful apartment and fantastic cooking at Jen and Mark’s. On my last night I went out to dinner with Jen at a really nice restaurant, the type of place that has a set menu designed by someone who probably has a degree in foodology and calls himself a cuisine engineer. Whatever happened in that kitchen the results were divine, and we had a great night of wine and chatter before cycling home through the red light district. That is indeed a strange place. It’s one thing to hear about the small rooms/cells with full length windows where women draw the curtain once a client has been lured in, but quite another to see it in action. Maybe it’s because I’m the wrong gender, but there wasn’t anything overly erotic about a line of bored but trying-to-be-sexy young women standing behind full length glass, their white underwear glowing in the UV light. Anyway, it had to be seen and even though I do in some ways approve of legalised prostitution (seeing as it’s going to happen anyway), from what I heard/read the situation of many of the women can be as precarious as prostitutes anywhere. Another big draw to Amsterdam for many people is legalised marijuana, though I have to say that I didn’t indulge (and no, I’m not just saying this cause my parents read the blog). I did go in to a “coffeeshop” but only to print out a few pages. The owner didn’t charge me – here’s to more pot smoking businessmen!

I left Amsterdam, making use of the same lift-sharing website that I’ve used before and made my way back down to Munich. After a weekend waiting for businesses to open up again I was off racing, trying to sort out all the things that need to be done for Brett and I to move to Germany. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were full and intense days, all the more so because today, Thursday, is a public holiday. I’m happy to say that all the things that definitely had to be taken care of have been sorted out and I’ve decided that I can afford (time wise) to go to Prague for a few days. For the longest time it seemed like nothing was getting ticked off my to-do list because all I was doing was the background research. Then all of a sudden that research has paid off and I’ve been running around ticking things off like a squirrel on amphetamines.

So I leave here tomorrow night for Prague, spend a few days there exploring the city, taking photos with my newly cleaned camera and hanging out with a friend Brett and I met in Moldova. Then I head back to Stuttgart to see the relatives again briefly before flying to London to see friends and sort out the Uzbek visa. I’ll meet Brett in a few weeks, we’ll have a couple of days in Riga and then fly to Tashkent for a month of travel in Uzbekistan. I can’t wait to see more of the old Silk Road.

Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank House, Munich, Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh