Exodus to Amsterdam Göteborg

Queen’s Day is the day where The Netherlands celebrates the birthday of one of their queens by turning the city of Amsterdam into the world’s biggest street party. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE heads out to the streets, canals, rooftops, and anywhere else they can find open space to paint the entire city orange. Of course, being new to the area, we had to put on our orange shirts and partyin’ pants and join the debauchery.

The morning started by meeting at one of my co-worker’s apartments and hitting the streets at around 11 a.m. What followed was a good solid 12 hours of walking around and partying with roughly 1.5 million of my new closest friends. I have NEVER experienced an atmosphere like this before. DJ booths set up on street corners, people peddling their used junk, every doorway selling beer without liquor licenses, and public (VERY public) urinals scattered around in an attempt to keep things somewhat sanitary. The crowds were shoulder-to-shoulder everywhere you went, so all you could do was go with the flow and let yourself be carried along by the vibe. The weather was gorgeous, and everyone had the time of their lives.

I can hardly wait until next year.

(click images below for fullsize)

amsterdam canals, debauchery, ow my head, party, queen's day, walking

Last weekend, Shannie and I took advantage of the fact that European countries are small, relatively close together, and connected by high-speed rail lines and spent two days in Belgium with two of my co-workers and one of their significant others. On Saturday morning we met up at Amsterdam Centraal Station with Matt, Kim, and Kyla and hopped a 4-ish hour train ride to the city of Brussels.

The next two days were filled with many walked kilometers, delicious beer, waffles, peeing statues, delicious beer, giant atomic structures, good food, subway rides, chocolate shops, and delicious beer. The weather, which was forecast to involve monsoon-like downpour, held out very nicely and actually gave us a mostly sunny day on Sunday other than some morning showers which mostly took place while we were eating breakfast (waffles, obviously).

Overall, Shannie and I took over 300 photos, a smattering of which are found below. Click on any thumbnail below to view the full photo.

Also, in other news, tonight was supposed to be my international rookie debut as a field hockey goalie on the company team, but unfortunately this evening’s match was cancelled. I like to think that it’s because the other team had to forfeit for some reason, granting us a technical win and, as such, making my lifetime record 1-0. Now the world will have to wait one more week.

you big tourist Belgium, Brussels, churches, pubs, rain, RIOT, statues, travel, walking

Like true good residents of the most bicycle-friendly city in the world, Shannie and I went out a couple of weeks back and purchased ourselves a couple of bicycles. We don’t own a car in Amsterdam. We have no plans to buy a car here, because for our lifestyle, we COMPLETELY don’t need one. Almost everywhere we’ll ever need to go to is within walking and/or biking distance within our apartment, and for the occasional times we need to go beyond that, both the public transit and high-speed rail system are more than adequate.

As it turns out, we picked one of the coldest, rainiest days since our arrival to go on a bike-buying run.

Shannie hasn’t been able to ride hers that much, due to her tumble down our staircase a few weeks back, but my new bike has found use every day since. If, by looking at the photo above, you think that it looks a bit too small for me, you’re 110% correct. It was the biggest bike the shop had in stock, though, so I’m making do. Our bikes are probably 20 years old, rusty, and built like tanks. However, with the rate that bikes get stolen here, we didn’t want to fork out for anything expensive. I brought my Surly Cross-check with me from Canada, but it stays up in our apartment and isn’t used for daily commuting, since it would take about 30 seconds to get nicked.

Almost all bikes here are virtually identical, which is by design. It’s the bikes that stand out, the ones that look different that get pinched. However, this has the unpleasant side effect of often leaving me scratching my head, forgetting exactly where I’ve parked, wondering which one of the thousands of identical bikes is mine. Luckily, the inner nerd in me found a fairly inconspicuous way of telling mine apart.

I am SUCH a fanboy.

amsterdam, you big tourist bicycles, rain, walking

On Saturday Scottie and I grabbed the train and headed out for a day in Leiden. Thank you Danny for the suggestion.

That’s it in the bottom left to give you an idea of where it is in relation to Amsterdam. We wandered here, we wandered there, those Kosmans wandered everywhere. 

First to a windmill then to a church.

Okay, Scottie’s 6′ 3″… holy that door is huge! I say holy because it’s the door to the Reformed Church in Leiden. It was built between 1639 and 1649. We also noticed it has been through a few fires in its day.

There are a number of gates into the city and the majority of them have the red keys carved like the one depicted here.

Just going for a stroll in the park. Thought I’d rest on one of the cannons, you know, totally normal playground equipment.

We found this gate as we were leaving a cemetery. Please note the skull and crossbones situated on the posts. In the cemetery we found a gravestone that also had a skull and crossbones on it… hmmm.

This is me at the Rembrandt statue. Rembrandt? But didn’t he live in Amsterdam? Well yes, but he was born here!

Rembrandt’s plaque and the alley where he was born. Exciting stuff people! See the mom riding her bike with her kid in the wooden box in front? Totally normal, you see it everywhere. I love it when I see 4 kids stuffed in the box with a dad puffing his way down the street… classic. 

We started the day with a windmill so why not end the day with Scottie behind a windmill? Just standing on a bridge enjoying the afternoon. And thus our wandering came to an end in Leiden. A lovely day was had by all.

leiden, you big tourist churches, Rembrandt, walking, windmill

Yep! That’s right. Shannie wandered for a total of 22 kms yesterday! Crazy? Why yes, yes I am.

I went to see Anne Frank’s statue which is on Merwedeplein. I know some of you have already found faster routes to accomplish said task but my goal is to get to know the city. So off I trekked in search of her statue. 

 The park is encompassed by a triangle of buildings that looks to be all one complex. The Frank’s residence I believe was 37C. I read that tidbit of information somewhere and have been unable to retrace my research to know absolutely. In any case the residence has been restored to its original 1930’s set up and is a writer’s residence for 1 year at a time for writers who cannot write freely in their country.

 I then retraced my steps as a test for myself. Along the Amstel River there are many true houseboats… 

I turned down one street too soon after a bridge I crossed and it was all head scratcher from there on in. A local, thankfully, was kind enough to come to my aid. Off I went to meet Corinna for a walk in Vondelpark and again I lost my sense of direction. Eventually she told me to meet her out front of the Riijksmuseum which is a hard building to miss. A stroll in Vondelpark with a stop at the Blue Tea House topped off the afternoon.

Today I decided it was time to hit the books so where to go to find some solitude… the Bibliotheek of course! Along my walk I passed Centraal Station.

So many buses, trams and subways. There is a significant amount of construction going on along that entire strip that I walked the wrong way. Bike paths are generally in red brick with pedestrian paths in grey. Well, the grey quickly disappeared and was replaced with a yellow curb. I suddenly had busses turning to the left of me and swarms of bikes to the right. Being an agile light-footed wonder I avoided contact and quickly found my feet beneath grey bricks again. *Whew* I eventually found a pedestrian who looked like he knew where he was going and followed him to this walkway that took me straight to the library.

It is such a wonderful open air concept library with plenty of work space available. Each floor is dedicated to a specific collection that is written in large letters on the ceiling of each escalator. There is also quite the security presence that I didn’t dare take out my camera for fear of it being confiscated. The top floor is a cafeteria so people could spend an entire day without having to leaves the premises. Hmmm, what a thought.

amsterdam, you big tourist Anne Frank, bibliotheek, houseboat, walking

Today was market day. Right around noon we put our walkin’ pants on and saddled up for a hike down to the Albert Cuyp markt, a large (4 blocks long, at least) open-air daily market in the De Pijp district of Amsterdam. Google Maps puts it at a 3.4 km, 41 minute walk from our place, through what is quickly becoming very familiar territory to both of us. Today also included the first real steady drizzling rain that we’ve seen since we arrived, which seems to be pretty standard weather here for most of the winter/spring seasons — those of you from cities such as Vancouver and Seattle will be well familiar with this. Shannie felt that the rain actually made her grow. She’s still just as short as ever, though.

Plenty of new sights, sounds, and smells at the market. Not only were there mannequins for Shannie to pose beside, but also stacks of severed fish heads for sale and even a couple of bike shops. Much of it was typical Farmers Market-esque fare (lots of fresh vegetables, baked goods, crafty knick-knacks), but there were also some things we didn’t expect to see, such as drug stores and lingerie shops.

Shannie, being much more the open-air-market connosieur than I am, felt that it had a good “vibe” about it, and that the general bustle about the market showed that the locals knew exactly where their regular stops were, and the tourists were able to walk the entire strip and take it all in. A good mix of cultures, both local and foreigners (like us!).

amsterdam, you big tourist de pijp, market, walking

(There, THAT should be a sufficiently attention-grabbing title.)

Today was another walkabout day, and if I thought that Shannie put me through my paces on Sunday, I was mistaken. The problem we’ve had so far is that jet lag has been a killer. Getting used to the 8 hour time-zone shift has been difficult. We’ve been taking naps every afternoon and then finding ourselves both wide awake at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. Our plan today was to be out all day, and not allow ourselves to be home to take naps at all until bedtime.

This plan involved us walkin, it would seem, through all of Christendom and back. We didn’t even get to every location on the agenda Shannie put together, and by the time we staggered back to the apartment to cook some dinner, we’d knocked well over 10 km out of ourselves.

Granted, there were some few extra kilometeres that weren’t factored into the original equation.

Fun game: decipher the map below to determine where the extra kilometers entered the schedule! First one to find a million wins!

Also, the aforementioned “Hooray for Boobies!” Yes, a good portion of our stroll took us right through the heart of the Red Light District. Now, Since Shannie and I strictly obeyed the “NO PHOTOS” sticker on every window, this’ll have to suffice, thanks to Google Image Search:

That’s basically what it is… girls behnd a street-level (secured) glass door, with a little intercom you can speak to them through. You talk to them, if they like you, they open the door. It’s all very businesslike (well, except for all of the exposed flesh and skimpy underwear), these girls are professionals (they’re unionized workers with full health benefits), and the only reason I know exactly how the entire process works is because I watched it happen right in front of me a good couple of dozen times over the course of a few blocks.  Let’s not kid around… legalized prostitution is a huge part of the economy here. Even the Lonely Planet tour guide book for Amsterdam has an entire chapter devoted to it (it has another chapter entirely devoted to the marijuana-serving “coffee shops,” but that’s for a future blog post).

Through the course of our day, we also managed to snap some architectural photos, some pictures of a huge Saint Bernard in someone’s living room, and drink wine in Rembrandt’s Corner, the little pub next to the Rembrandt Museum. Now that we’re home and supper has been consumed (pan-seared salmon with rice, garden salad, and white wine), we’re off to meet a couple co-workers for a nightcap. To the pub!

amsterdam, you big tourist boobies, jet lag, red light district, walking

Today’s been a walkabout day. If you’re unfamiliar with life in Amsterdam (which I COMPLETELY was before the possibility of moving here), there’s a few important things to realize. They are, in order of importance:

• Driving is for suckers.

Bicycles and foot traffic rule the order of the day. Now, the thing about me is that I’m generally not a huge fan of walking. Biking, definitely, but walking has always been Shannie’s thing. She’s the one who walked 45 minutes each way to school every day. Not that I don’t think that walking isn’t a viable transportation option, no, my problem with walking is that I get bored. All I can think about is what else I could be doing with the valuable time that I’m spending travelling at 0.5 miles per hour, and how much faster getting somewhere by bike would have been.

Living in this city could finally change that for me.

Because everything here is so densely packed, every few meters brings about something completely new to see and experience. That’s the beauty of living in a city where the core was built and designed before the age of the automobile. The streets are small, narrow, and the city center is planned around foot, bicycle, and horse traffic.

So today we walked. We needed to find a drugstore for things like soap, shampoo, etc., and the local grocer by our apartment had such a small (and expensive) selection that we opted to stroll to find someplace else. The closest place that was open on Sunday was about a 20 minute or so walk from here, so on went my walkin’ pants and hither and yon we went.

And interesting things did we see.

As a pedestrian here, you’re at the very friggin’ bottom of the Right Of Way list, just below cars. Bikes go where they want, how they want, with or against traffic, and everyone else bows to their royalty. As a walker, you learn very quickly to look both ways before stepping off the sidewalk lest you find a 30 year old steel bicycle ridden by someone old enough to be my great grandparent send you flying.

We also discovered a fantastic tiny little sandwich shop. Shopkeeper spoke very little English and understood even less, but Bacon is apparently a universal language.

Interesting sight of the day: apparently Amsterdam the entire northern hemisphere is going through a strangely cold winter, Amsterdam is experiencing something that hasn’t happened for quite a number of years.

The canals are freezing solid.

Every local sporting goods store is completely sold out of ice skates, as Amsterdammers are flocking to the canals, ponds, and other bodies of water in droves. As a Canadian, seeing skaters out on the water is a daily occurence for 10 months out of the year, but here it’s such a rarity that everyone’s jumping at the chance.

Even those without skates were getting in on the action.

amsterdam, you big tourist bacon, bicycles, walking