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.