Amsterdam: Functioning, Full of Life and Non-Judgmental

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

The Dutch live in a land saved from the sea. “We water manage every square inch of our country,” says Jim, a Dutch friend. “If you don’t control the water, it will control you. We’ve been consulted by many cities that face flooding dangers: Venice, London, New Orleans, for example. They want to know where they might stick a finger in the dyke!”

About 27 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level and the 60 percent of its population there surely faces problems as our planet warms up. Whether the change is a natural cycle or due to burning fossil fuels must be academic to the Dutch who seemingly face both challenge and change with equanimity. Whereas its population increased from 4 to 5 million Dutch in the 17th century, when the Netherlands was the wealthiest country in Europe, now its present multicultural population is 17 million -- of whom only 7 million work. This fact must give locals pause. It’s no surprise to find the country’s top income tax reaches 75 percent. “Furthermore the Dutch language is like a throat affliction,” says Jim. “This creates problems for our huge immigration population.”

And maybe for visitors. Until recently you could stop any young Dutch person, ask for directions and get a reply in English. Now you have to be more selective about whom you ask. Visitors will see another change if they want to photograph the celebrated windmills: only 1,000 remain of the former 13,000 that dotted the landscape.

Amsterdam, the capital, remains the first contact for most visitors. Schiphol Airport is the third largest in Europe and, in our opinion, the best. Government attempts to levy an eco tax on airlines and passengers was voted down in midsummer 2009 when its economic effect (that it reduced traffic) was finally understood. At Schiphol elevators take passengers down one level from the baggage carousels to the railway station and then it’s about fifteen minutes to the railway station in the city. You are spilled out into the city’s main square, a scene of busy almost frenetic activity. A quarter of a million people pass through the Amsterdam Centre station every day.

Everyone in Amsterdam seems to be on the move: trams, trains, busses, canal boats, bicycles … and travelers wheeling their luggage to the port, usually an easy walk despite some cobbles, or dodging into a nearby hotel. We stayed at the 363-roomed IBIS hotel at Stationsplein 49, about 150 yards west of the railway station front doors, a great choice discovered for us by the Amsterdam Reservation Center at the Amsterdam Tourism and Convention Board. The I amSterdam online service and the card that provides over 30 free and 20 discounts to attractions and restaurants is a great buy. You can get it online and tailor it to how many hours you want coverage for. For example, 24 hours costs €38, 48 hours €48 and €58. We used our cards, all on the first day, for a canal trip, the tram ride to the famous Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum where entry was included.

The canal boats and the tram stops were right across the street from our Ibis Hotel. The Dutch can be delightfully accommodating, although when those busy people are talking to each other in Dutch you would think they were arguing.

We asked the canal boat ride desk if we had time to grab lunch before the cruise to be told, “Sure, we are here for ever,” and when we asked the Ibis receptionist if breakfast would be available the day we left early for the airport, she replied, “Absolutely. The breakfast room is open from 4 AM to 12 noon – at least.”

Even at night the city bustles with energy, maybe especially at night.

When visitors walk out of their hotel in Amsterdam they find  a city with 65 miles of canals with 2,500 house boats where a permit can evidently cost as much as a one-time fee of €385,000 and a city of more than a million people “with more bicycles than people,” as the saying goes. That’s not quite true, though you’d sure believe it as you survey bicycle parking lots seemingly the size of football fields and dodge irate bikes when, as a stranger, you innocently invade their space. The population of Amsterdam is about 1.3 million and bikes are said to total about half a million but they are everywhere and they do allow car-free zones that surely make sense.

We visited the Van Gogh Museum to enjoy the works of that tempestuous and tortured man. We have written about our search for him previously and were anxious to get on to the Rijksmuseum to get a feel for the country and all its painters.

The Rijksmuseum surely looks like Amsterdam Central Station. No wonder. It had the same architect. Of the city’s four million visitors more than one million come to this gorgeous museum. We had a guide there which helped us understand this little country that dominated the known world in the 17^th century.

What we like about Holland’s history is that its incredible accomplishments were achieved by its merchants. They created the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and yet they had a vision from nothing other than a sailing expedition that returned from successful trading with the Sultan of Bantam in Java. The government gave the new company permission to form a navy and an army, even build forts and establish colonies. The accomplishments of the Dutch East India Company were the achievements of merchants – not, as in medieval Europe, the Church or, as happened in Venice, the aristocracy. Says HistoryWorldNet, “Wealth accumulated in Holland at an extraordinary rate [during this time] … creating an entirely new form of society … with great significance for later centuries, … a foretaste of what later is often described as the bourgeoisie.” 

The Rijksmuseum captures all this brilliantly from a model of the 1698 74-gun Dutch man o’war William Rex to the magnificent Van der Helst 1648 painting Banquet in Celebration of the Treaty of Munster. The photograph we shot below is courtesy of the Rijksmuseum but a more detailed shot can be seen here at the Freebase web site.

The banquet painting at the Crossbowmen’s headquarters depicts a celebration of the end of the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands. Eighty! What a depressing number of years for nations to be at war, worse that the thirty of the 30 Years’ War but supposedly better than that of the 100 Years’ War.

Our guide told us fascinating stories of how the Dutch painters, before 1600, painted landscapes or still lives that nobody wanted. Those subjects evolved as background for portraits. Then artists started to specialize and along came Aert van der Neer with River View by Moonlight. He was the only 17^th Century painter to specialize in landscapes at night.

We think of artists starving in attics someplace and historically they were, indeed, poor business persons. The Dutch painters were more pragmatic. If a Dutch merchant wanted to be part of a group painting of, say, a dozen people, he would have to pay the artist 100 to 200 guilders. The original guilder was made of gold (hence its name) but later it was made of silver. By our calculations the gold in 100 guilders in 1650 would be worth about US$1,700 today.

We could see visitors looking with curiosity at The Meagre Company painted in 1637 by Frans Hals although Pieter Codde had to complete the painting. The story of how this work was painted is fascinating and can be read online here courtesy of the Rijksmuseum website. Comparing that finished painting with Rembrandt’s famous Night Watch shows how the Rembrandt approached his task differently but he was a genius.