anzac

The mornings are getting warmer. I'm standing beneath the Wellington Arch in the middle of London city in just jeans and my coat but the air is still and I'm not cold. The first thoughts of sunlight are on the horizon. There is a big whispering crowd around me that sounds very much like home. Then, underneath the voices, a didgeridoo starts, so low it's barely audible, and it seems to pull all the other sounds into it until the only thing moving in the morning is that one low and lonely sound.

This is the start of the dawn service for ANZAC day, ninety-nine years after the fact. I'm with more Australians right now than I've met since I left. I'm not sleepy like I thought I'd be. There's this attentive energy in the crowd that makes me forget how early it is, how little sleep I've had. 

The didgeridoo stops and a man is talking, an English accent with slips of Kiwi in the vowels. He reminds us why we're there. The numbers and the places I've heard many times, but that never cease to amaze me.

War is so dumb. So dumb. I don't care if it's political and economical and there's ten thousand facets of it's horrific existence that I don't understand. I am willing to proclaim it dumb in the full knowledge that I know nothing about it. Except the killing. I've heard about that. And that, too, I proclaim to be dumb. When a human claims some kind of right to kill another human, it's like humanity loses its grip on itself. It lets itself slip just a millimetre more. I guess that's what I think about war. I see no sense nor reason.

I know many people feel the same way. I also know that  many boycott memorial ceremonies, because they don't want to participate in the act of 'glorifying' war. That kind of makes sense. There is a shiny ceremonial nonsense that comes with the wearing of poppies and the reciting of poetry. Actually, I felt kind of weird going to the ceremony, for that very reason. In the days leading up to Friday I was conflicted. Of course I don't want to support the institution of war. But I want to remember. And I want to do it with all the other people who are remembering, because shared experience has such a power about it.

War feels far from me. None of those close to me have died at its hand, though some have suffered. Just the rocky edges of my home country have hosted international battles. I'm lucky. But when the man standing below Wellington Arch at dawn reads letters written a century ago, I feel close in other ways. These soldiers were like me. My age, certainly, and with similar concerns. And we're both on the other side of the world. Well sure, I came by my own will, and I Skype my mum weekly, and am not in constant fear for my life, and I can choose to leave at any point without having to shoot my foot, even, but I'm still a long way from what I've always known. When I read the words of boys from the trenches I feel like don't have to stretch my imagination too far to cross those ninety-nine years.

And that's what I want to do. I love the humanity in empathy. Because when you're sad for the soldier whose best mate died in his arms, you're not sad simply that it happened. You're sad because you're imagining what that felt like. If you're like me, you're sad because you've got that rock heavy feeling in your guts like, that could be me and my best friend. Hell, imagine that. Then imagine it one hundred thousand times. That's what I'm thinking about when I'm standing at dawn and the sweet salute of the last post is drifting out over the crowd. 

What I'm not thinking about is patriotism, or politics, or even war, really. 

I'm not thinking, These men died for their country. 

I'm thinking, These men died. 

I'm not thinking, Thank you for the political influence that your death probably had over my current situation. Not really. I'm thinking, I'm sorry, but not because it's my fault, or because I'm here reaping the benefit of their deaths. I'm thinking I'm sorry because humans can be shit. Because there were boys younger than me seeing things men couldn't handle. I'm thinking, I'm sorry you had to be a part of this history, and I hope that maybe this present can learn something. 

I stand for an hour and listen to the words of people who, like me, don't see the sense in it. This is not the glorification of war. I don't know why I was worried it might be. There is no talk of winners or losers. There's talk about the memories of those who served. 

But hold up. Don't I think that listening to military leaders preaching messages of peace to the crowd is a touch confused, a bit ridiculous? Hypocritical? You bet I do. But I see that they're doing what they think is right. I don't believe one of them would willingly start war. For the most part I believe they prepare armies to fight, in the hope that they won't have to. It's not my style, sure, but I think they have as much right to do it this way as those at home have to boycott the ceremony because that's what they feel is right.

I realise, or remember, some time when the sky is in half light, that no matter what situation you're in, everyone is experiencing something different. The girl beside me in the grey North Face jacket might be feeling swells of patriotic pride. The man blocking my view could well be thinking, Gosh darn, I really do love how this ceremony glorifies war so much and stuff, and probably we should go march on Luxembourg immediately. There are doubtless a huge number of people standing around me who have the pictures of dead relatives behind their vision, for whom this ceremony is a funeral, every year, that allows them to remember family love. And there are probably plenty like me, who are standing here just asking to be reminded about the condition of being human, and what happens when that gets complicated.

It doesn't matter. Everyone is here to remember the dead. And those who didn't come, for whatever reason, I hope they're remembering too. As far as I'm concerned, the more that people remember -- the more we feel the injustice in the deaths of those before us -- the better we keep tabs on our own humanity. Lest we forget. 

amsterdam

The trip from London Gatwick to Amsterdam Schipol takes half as long as the trip to the airport from my flat. The flight is shorter than driving to the Gold Coast from Brisbane. The European continent just feels impossibly small. It will never cease to amaze this Australian that I can fly less than an hour and not be able to speak the local language. I feel like my trusty Easyjet plane barely gets above the weather. It’s like the momentum from take-off just carries us all the way there and the engines are only engaged to add a bit of background noise to the still sky.

Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s been to Amsterdam loves it. Considering most of them seem to have gone in the winter, when the trees are bare, the canals frozen, and the sky infamously grey, I consider this an impressive feat. It’s a testament to the city’s charms.  

I arrive in the haze of a Monday afternoon in spring. It’s the fifth time I’ve been through Amsterdam Centraal train station but the first time I’ve actually ventured outside it. I just don't know how that happened. It turned out well though, this time. The mild yellow sunshine and the cousin company and the beautiful canal-side suite (funded by aforementioned cousin company) were just some of the things I would definitely have missed in the winter. The weather is just divine, and the trees are covered in a sprinkling of vivid green shoots. I have to restrain from taking a photo every time I see a pretty canal, because they're all pretty, and there's lots. I save the camera for the extra-especially-beautiful ones. And ones with steelples or ducks.

Amsterdam city is well-planned. I know that seems like a lame place to start, but bear with me. The canals are arranged in concentric circles from the central square, where the first occupants dammed the Amstel river. Hence, Amsterdam. You’re welcome. In true Dutch style, the names of the canals are arranged in a way that the rest of the world wouldn’t have tolerated at the time they were named. The central canal is the Herengracht, the gentleman's canal. After this comes Keizersgracht, (for the emperor) and Prinsengracht (the prince). It goes something like: in the seventeenth century, when the canals were built, it was the men who ruled the city, and the men were like, stuff ya, royalty, we run this show. Or something. The more I experience the Dutch way of thinking, the more I kind of love it. They’re clever folks. They invented the concept of the modern stock exchange, so that one man would't lose everything when a ship sunk. And there is a whole hidden complex called the Begijnhof built by women, for women, in the fourteenth century (when I thought men were busy dominating everything without exception). Then there’s the whole general open-mindedness thing that the place is renowned for. It all just grows on me more and more.

As well as that, there’s cheese. Great cheese. The woman who leads our cheese tasting (yes, I did a cheese tasting) is chuffed to a concerning point about the unique microenvironment in her cheese ageing warehouse. The thought of thousands of sweaty wheels of cheese being wiped by hand week in and week out doesn’t get my blood flowing, but I do enjoy the product. Wine, also. Wine and cheese with a tiny little guillotine for making ideally thin slices. And we are asked to fill in a worksheet and have it signed at the end, which appeals to the part of me that misses sucking up to high school teachers.

John books a group cycle tour, which ends up being a private cycle tour. This is to our advantage. Our guide is casual and informative, and we pedal lazily through the city for a few hours under the bright green buds that sprinkle the trees. We have a generous coffee break. I have a latte in the sun on a bench beside the statue of a withered old man. He was apparently a regular at the café, and on his death the local community funded a statue to be built outside. He makes a soothing coffee companion.

We see the oldest wooden house in the city. All the others burnt down. We see a wall covered in the unique gable stones that used to adorn the façades. And I learn another thing I like about the Dutch way of thinking. It's something like, out of sight, out of mind. We visit an old Catholic church fronted by a hat shop. The doors inside are rigged up to hallways for a quick escape for the Catholics who were attending illegal ceremonies inside. Apparently, as long as no one can see it, it's okay. Sounds like the kind of policy that makes life easier. And the Dutch are all about that. 

De Wallen, the red light district, also has blue lights. I'm glad we take a tour (again an accidentally private one, a blessing), because otherwise I wouldn't know a bunch of interesting things, like that the blue light ladies actually aren't ladies, and that I've looked awkwardly through the window of what is apparently the first ever condom shop. I also know the going rate for girls, and their standard business structure and window rental agreements. I know a little of the business politics. Our guide tells us all this with the kind of ease that comes with familiarity. She also might be drunk. I can't quite tell. She's wildly pro-prostitution, so she's the perfect place to get the un-politician-ised version of Amsterdam's reputable nightlife. 

Our guide sends us through a door into a narrow hallway. She says, I'll wait out here. I can't go in every night or they might get mad at me, you know. John and I look at each other like, where are we going, exactly? The hallway is lined with more 'windows', only these ones don't have glass. A girl looks us both up and down and says, in a better English accent than I could ever do, Can you make me a cup of tea? I can only imagine how timid we look. I'm just dying for a cup of tea, she says. She manages to make tea sound sexy, which is a feat. We emerge into the cool night air at the end of the hallway and I'm not quite sure how real the whole place is. Everything tonight feels shiny like plastic.

After all that we're all up for a drink, me and John and our maybe-already-drunk guide, and we end up spectacularly losing trivia at an eccentrically decorated gay bar. For our efforts we are awarded a Dutch cookie tin filled with chocolate and a utensil designed to make your fried eggs into the shape of a duckie. So, good news all round. The wine flows. We're in party town. I need not elaborate.

A heady night leads to a headsore morning but we make it to the Van Gogh museum the next day like the dedicated travellers we are. It's the only art museum I've been to recently that I leave feeling like I've seen everything there is to see, in a few hours, and actually retained the information. It's an appropriately focused collection. For this reason I've decided it's one of my favourites.

The other museum worth a mention is the house of Anne Frank. The hidden annexes that housed her Jewish family during the war remain unfurnished and cool. I stand in the middle of the little rooms with my eyes closed, trying to hear the conversations of the past. I wonder if the tap above the chipped stone basin in the kitchen would still run water if I turned it. The walls in Anne's bedroom are plastered with pictures of movie stars and I recognise a few. History feels recent. It's easy to picture the family creeping around, trying to stifle tears and laughter, trying to make a life worth living within these walls. It's all very haunting and beautiful and memorable.

The whole of Amsterdam is memorable, really. I leave wanting to come back again, which is a good sign. I'll join the hordes of people who swear Amsterdam is a fantastic city. And with a flight that takes less than an hour, I have no reason not to return soon. Yes, my head is still attempting to wrap around that. I'll get there in the end.