Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester

At the end of November 2016 I went to the milonga weekend organized by El tango de mi corazón.  Strangely, there is no mention of it on their website. The milongas were in Ramsbottom, a small market town on the northern boundary of Greater Manchester with Lancashire. 

When in summer 2017 thoughts turn to autumn plans I hope I remember I swore in 2016 not to spend all of November in Scotland. I had felt entombed in Perth having been ill for most of a very cold month and was finally feeling better. What a relief to be setting out somewhere different.  It was a wrench though, leaving the strong, insistent, "don't go" embraces of my children, even if for just a night. 

At 0830 the morning light was beautiful upon the hills towards Crieff and on Ben Vorlich. The sky behind Stirling castle to the south was streaked the colour of honey.  As it does so often from that rise to the north, the castle looked ethereal and mysterious. I had had too many self-inflicted late nights followed by early mornings.  I could feel them catching up with me and, unusually, stopped for a fast brunch of coffee and good soup at over-commercialised Tebay.  From the motorway I drove across moorland before dropping down into the village of Ramsbottom, nestled among hills. I had a sense of descending into the history of the industrial revolution. In Manchester the spirit of that time which created ‘Cottonopolis’ is everywhere - in the red brick buildings and in the great cultural legacies of that city.  There was a similar feeling, on a different scale in this valley.  Ramsbottom used to be a mill town for printing and textiles. A sense of the nineteenth century permeated the place. There is a summary about the town by their heritage society here.

On Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon I went to the dances. 

On Sunday morning I walked around the perimeter of Ramsbottom village. In Nuttall park I read about Nuttall Hall (no longer extant) which had been built and lived in by a pre-welfare state local textile entrepreneur and philanthropist, William Grant. As I walked on, now parts of Ramsbottom were shabby or frankly derelict. 

Still, the town seemed quite wealthy with many smart, busy and apparently successful restaurants, including one vegan eatery which surprised me in a place not much more than a sizeable village. I heard from the locals I stayed with and others I met around town that the people who live here generally have good jobs, most working in Manchester some fifteen miles away. The town is I was told a foodie destination. A friend and I had eaten well on Saturday night in her good choice of the cosy Hungry Duck and the staff were very pleasant.

 I walked on, thinking how times had changed since the nineteenth century sharing of private wealth on projects of “public benefit": libraries, concert halls, hospitals and public buildings.  I could not see much of public benefit gong on in Ramsbottom. A little later however I heard from staff in another establishment that the Eagle and Child, a successful gastro pub was known in the area for “creating training and employment opportunities for young people who are not in education, employment or training”.  The Eagle and Child seemed respected and well thought of - both for its business and for what it is doing for the community. 

There are plenty of walks in the area.  Here is just one and one following a sculpture trail: for example

The church looked better outside than in. There is a brass band - naturally, for this part of the world. The station was twee with coloured lights. It was also the cover photo for the advert for the milonga weekend.  The station looked a bit fake to me but it does have real trains and you can do a real rail-walk tour of the area:

All of these things were about what you would expect for a village like this. Somehow I was not expecting: 

Apparently the name means 'wild garlic' in Basque because one possible origin of Ramsbottom's name means...wild garlic. Baratxuri had the feeling of a foodie wine bar serving  'pintxos' (pinchos) and tapas.  Levanter, the sister restaurant round the corner I was told is more of a place with tables and table service.  It won neighbourhood restaurant of the year.  In fact, I find it gets a great write up under 'Levanter Fine Foods' in the Guardian.  But Baratxuri was both smart and informal with good seating for solos.  I was pretty sure the food would be good.  It was just what I was looking for. 

The owner is apparently a nut for all things Spanish.  He started with a paella pan on the street.  Over a good brunch sherry I watched him standing behind the cook, checking everything, involved in everything, finger on the pulse.  I was not surprised he was successful. In this landlocked place a little warily I had the octopus.  It was memorably delicious. So good I was glad I had skipped breakfast because then I had the lobster croquettes and they were good too.  I would definitely go back.  Actually, I would go to Levanter, round the corner next time.

Milka girl, chippy guy

Outdoor swimming reminded me how different the UK mentality especially about rules is to say, Switzerland, which in terms of personal freedom and your own leisure time I found refreshingly non-interventionist. Switzerland by the way is regularly considered one of the top places to live, the happiest, the best though it ceded the number one spot this year to Denmark.   I guess it attracts a lot of smart people to work there, who earn well.  Maybe I'm making a big leap here, but just perhaps the Swiss government thinks it shouldn't patronise their citizens and visitors so it lets them make more of their own decisions even about simple things like where to swim and how to swim.

I had a libertarian friend who lived in Geneva for years and said it was dull and conservative but he loves London.  I was impressed when I went to Switzerland twice a few years ago. I took the children when they were perhaps pre-school to Geneva for a few days when my husband worked there for six months.  Once I went to see a friend in Zürich.  I found the country pretty, efficient, well-cared for, the mountains were astonishingly beautiful, the weather was great, people seemed relaxed, well-off and happy. It was gaspingly expensive.

We might think of Switzerland as being a controlled, rule-bound, efficient place, especially the German side but in 2013 I saw teenagers throw themselves off posts with abandon into Lake Zürich.  They would use anything handy of some height.  And what a joy the ?bäder were: open air places, cordoned off parts of rivers or of the lake for swimmers.   They were natural swimming pools with places to sunbathe and usually including a cafe or bar. A fair, if unspectacular swimmer I could barely hold my own against the natural river current at Unterer Letten. You end up flung against metal bars at the end if you don't haul yourself out at various steps beforehand. I can hardly imagine such pleasures would be allowed in the UK.

The bäder on the lake had floating pontoons one could swim out to, and sprawl deliciously, on the warm wood, like basking seals, the sky azure, the sun high.  Too simple and decadent for Britain. Too much enjoyment and all at your own risk.  This kind of summer living makes nearly everyone walking around slim and brown and fit - like an advert for Switzerland in fact. I think of them as Milka girls though I doubt they touch chocolate and I don't think Switzerland has produced Milka for years.  Milka was actually named eponymously after an opera singer, but she was Croatian.

Bäder living and Milka girls to represent Britain?  Wouldn't our version look more not unlike Therersa May, perhaps a younger more brunette version, say a tough business-woman sensibly well up on her rights, smiling confidently into the camera.  Or perhaps an overweight bloke grinning at you over the paper of his fish supper - all beer and rain and British good humour. The kind of guy you can supposedly depend on in a Henry-V-at-Agincourt situation. You what? 

I want to avoid a misunderstanding about soldiers.  Real soldiers. I have been let in to a military barracks or 'patch' by cheerful, courteous, squaddies on hour after hour of guard duty at the barrier on freezing winter nights hundreds of times. They are trained, professional, competent, reliable, resilient and invariably good humoured.  

Green Amsterdam

 

Arriving back in Amsterdam straight from Antwerp my plan was to leave my things with my new Airbnb host and go straight out to the afternoon smilonga in Oosterpark. It was another lovely day. The city had a buzz. Compared to Antwerp it felt alive. Seen from the bus I caught at Centraal station the NEMO science museum looked like part of a ship with what seemed to be a garden built upon it. I felt at home. Not knowing much but on this the third trip to the Netherlands since August, having the basics of navigation and orientation by bus, bike or train.  That sense of independence counts for a lot.  Not having that sense, nearly twenty years ago in Munich meant feeling trapped.  Being able to get around was one of the reasons - another being lower crime rates - that I felt more at ease in Amsterdam compared to my first ten days in Buenos Aires when I walked everywhere.

North Amsterdam was green with reeds, canals and lagoons. I saw some tiny, hut-like houses and many allotments. It was hard to reconcile with Ben Coates' view in Why the Dutch Are Different:

Dutch gardens, although they seemed to be smaller than British ones were not generally neat and trimmed but had a cultivated wildness about them that I liked but which might be called messy in the UK. I remember a neighbour in Scotland tutting over another neighbour's lavender which, like ours, fell over their own path.  What a mess that is! she said looking over the fence.  Admittedly the poor lavender looked bedraggled after rain.  But I liked the smell of as our legs brushed past or when we reached down to rub our fingers along the flowers and smell them.  Life is made of such lavender moments.

The community project, Het Groene Dak (green roof) location of the Tuinhuis milonga, with its larger, linked gardens was like that too. The project has been going for twenty years.  Everyone I spoke to agreed that the Netherlands was a small country with a water problem, then and now and a lot of people and that there was a true sense that nature had had to be tamed for that to be possible but the people I met all enjoyed nature, gardens and the natural world.

I was staying quite far from the centre between the Oostzanerwerf and Kadoelen neighbourhoods in north west Amsterdam. It was one of the few Airbnb spots left in Amsterdam for that night.  It is near Het Twiske, a park and lakes where I think I was told you can swim.  It reminded me of my friend Laura, host of the Tuinhuis milonga saying she had gone swimming in the deep, clean Maarsseveen near Utrecht. Swimming in lakes seems relatively normal in the Netherlands. It used to be in Germany when I was a child. Here, in UK though you would be called a wild swimmer, part of an alternative community, transgressive, bending, often flouting the rules.  How different from Switzerland.

In Amsterdam, there was no time to charge my phone but remembering what the kind stranger had said, not having it made me ask for directions. Talking to people boosted my confidence, knocked after the Antwerp milonga.  It made life so much nicer. The Italo-Japanese couple I was staying with had a bike business and were going  to lend me a bike. I was lucky that Akiko accompanied me by bike to the free NDSM ferry across the IJ.  It docks by Amsterdam Centraal station. She was going to the flea market on the north side of the water.  You’ll have to remember the way back though, she said. The route did not seem straightforward but her confidence in me was fortifying. Just remember 'Molenwijk' (a large store) she said and you’ll make it back from there. First I had to learn how to pronounce it. On the way she told me interesting things about Japan and that she and her partner had specifically chosen Amsterdam because it was a tolerant, English-speaking city and that they were able to stay here due to a recently discovered ancient accord between Japan and the Netherlands dating from a time when the Dutch were apparently one of the only western people the closed Japanese society would trade with.  She said that even now, as a mixed race couple socially it was easier for them to live here than in Japan.  I also heard the lovely news that they were expecting a baby! 

The sketch shows my plan on how to get from the NDSM ferry to Oosterpark only some 5km away; admittedly not much of a map but rather more than I had had to get from Antwerp to northwest Amsterdam. 

I had noticed several times on the ferry, how few people had their heads buried in their phones as is usually the case in the UK wherever strangers congregate.  Most were chatting.  A local café, 'Delicious',  in Perth has the sign featured in the header photo.  The Brits need to be told to look up, out of their phones! But sure enough, this does happen in this café in a way it doesn't in other establishments despite that Perth is a reserved place.  Snobby say Dundonians, ignoring that Perth, though almost blindingly white is what might be politely called socially diverse:  police crawl every street in the town centre on a Saturday night.  The cafe is small and people acknowledge one another. All ages drop in to sit in or take-away. Over, say, a quick bowl of their very good soup - costing less than a large coffee in other places - you might well exchange a few words. You are almost expected to hear - Dutch-style, I suppose - snippets of local news: the Forth Bridge is closed, the owner's holiday plans, the weather for the weekend.  Another reason you do is that mercifully there is no piped music, or if the radio is on, it is very low. 

Once across the IJ and on my own again I saw a lady also on a bike with what looked to be the sort of rollable bike paniers I had been looking for - the kind you can turn into luggage for a trip or into a shopping trolley for town. At some lights I tried perhaps over-optimistically to ask about them. The lights changed, we set off but I realised she thought my gestures had meant I was telling her something was wrong with her bike. After several minutes of farcical confusion we struck up a mobile, friendly conversation in on her side Polish-accented Dutch and English on mine. Since I do not speak Dutch I was surprised how much I was able to understand. She did not speak English either, having grown up during the Soviet domination of Poland.  She had moved to the Netherlands several years previously, learned the language and loved it here. What I had taken for rollable paniers was in fact some other kind of wheeled trolley she had picked up for a song at the flea market. With the conversation I lost track of the way but she said to follow her and we parted pretty close to the park.

Empty Antwerp

To raise my spirits after the El Sur practica I decided to have a look at the city park. The day was sunny and it was only a few minutes cycle away. As I arrived I came across two dogs fighting. Then I saw a couple on a bench arguing loudly in French. The day was beginning to pick up a theme.  The park was of reasonable size but with arid grass and dusty paths around a stagnant looking lake. I cycled round it marvelling how this could be the city park. It was late afternoon. 

I was delighted at this low ebb to rediscover drawings by my children in my notebook from when, out somewhere I must have given it to them to pass some spare time. The spiky sketches of lava girl and shark boy lifted my mood a little.

The few cafes I saw were mostly empty. I hoped the happy people were away at the seaside.  I was rather wishing I had done the same and chosen a Saturday night milonga somewhere in the Netherlands. At this stage of the day, when in doubt what to do next there is always the aperitif option.  I found several ordinary looking cafe-bars on a sort of square formed by the intersection of several roads on Montignystraat. It lacked atmosphere but I couldn't find much else around. Prices were on the steep side. I ordered and watched a car that didn't give way nearly get hit by a tram.  A minute later a cyclist swore as he saw his route partially blocked by a van. All my observations in this town so far had been of cross, unhappy people not co-operating with one another. 

I wrote down the address of my host’s house and of the evening's milonga to come - El Centro - before my phone shut down. In the time before I learnt to travel with a backup battery I had left the charger at the practica.   Happily, the young guy at the table next to mine lent me his phone so I could sketch a map to get home and to the milonga.  He had hitchhiked through South America.
- Haven't you ever travelled before?  he said.
- Well, yes.  I said, thinking: Not the way you have and remembering all the brave Spanish-speaking Euro-travellers I met in Buenos Aires who hopped from country to country with narry a thought while I wrestled for ten days with my fear of getting on a bus in that city.
- Are you so reliant on your phone? he said. Why don’t you ask people?  I thought I just had but this excellent advice was to resonate many times across the coming months. It no longer surprises me the positive and lasting effect small encounters with strangers can have but I appreciate it every time. He was kind, taking my phone to a couple of bars to enlist various friends who worked at these to charge it for me. He had recently returned from the walk to Santiago de Compostela.
- Everyone who walks has something to work through, he said.  - Everyone who walks alone, he qualified.
I said: People often discover that dancing tango too.    He was at a loss now, antsy:
- It's a bit depressing.  I'm thirty-five.  Everyone in my life is getting married and having kids but I was never made that way.  Then, more optimistically: So I'm going to Thailand to be a diving instructor!  I told him I thought that was great and that there were many people who felt like him.

I reminded myself there are even some like me:  not exactly married married, not off on single adventures either. Somewhere inbetween.  A bit like my dancing, I thought:  most of the time not a girl  in heels, in skirts and in my place but for sure not a guy either.  I only felt half-rueful.  The other half, as I thought of my family, my children and the ideas, roles and places I have still been able to explore, felt very lucky.  I have rather a lot of freedom.  Wistful?!  I chided myself.  For what?!  You have your cake!  I knew I was fortunate in very many ways.  What is marriage supposed to be anyway? I thought, forever wandering down sidestreets, mental or otherwise,  And who says?  Supposed for whom?, echoing my friend in another context:  Normal for others?  There is no normal for others.  Normal for you?  Only you know :) 

- What did you think about dad saying I shouldn't be gadding about to milongas in "my situation"? I asked mum.

She smiled as though she'd been waiting for this.  I felt slightly reassured.
- And not wearing a wedding ring! she said more seriously, that evidently being the sticking point for her.
- The milongas aren't dens of vice you know. And I don't like feeling owned by symbols.  I'm not good with jewellery and my rings were lost or stolen.
- Mmm, she said, sceptically at the surfeit of reasons.
- The milongas are no more about picking up people than other hobbies. It's one of many social environments.  Besides, it's a small world, I said, still piling up justifications.   The trouble that kind of thing causes when things go wrong: divorces, separations, broken engagements, re-partnering.  All the small scandals, the realignment of friendships.  It isn't worth it.

I was struck by how empty Antwerp seemed. In this city of half a million inhabitants where was everyone? In November in a bar in Dundee I fell into chance conversation with Bouli Lanner, the Belgium director of the bleak, deep, funny film The first, The last. I asked him about Antwerp. He seemed unimpressed and dismissive of that city.  The mayor was right wing and the city had turned conservative but it hadn’t used to be that way. Now, business was full flow. The cultural buzz had gone he said, but it was there in Ghent.  Antwerp on the river Scheldt is one of the world’s biggest ports. It is, perhaps incongruously also a fashion hub and the centre of the world when it comes to diamonds which constitute some 5% of the country’s exports. But what, really,  I wondered have high fashion and diamonds to do with most people?  

My father has been ill and I have been going to see him most days.  I asked him recently where was nice in Belgium.  He looked back across many years and shook his head:  Losing my marbles he said, uncharacteristically. Then, more resiliently: I always forget the name of that place.
- Those statements aren't that compatible dad, I pointed out, relieved. Bruges?
- Yes. Beautiful, he breathed.

The next day on my way to the station I met some helpful, friendly people on the bus. Although some of the individuals I had met were nice, I was demoralised by my experiences at El Sur and the El centro milonga and the city in general.   I found a cafe-bar near the station for coffee where a confirmed-looking alcoholic was having a beer at 1030. When we see that in mainland Europe we think it’s a shame. When I see it in airports and train stations in Britain it seems all too normal.   I was about to leave the city but did not want to, under this cloud.   There has to be more to Antwerp than this.

At the last moment I hopped on a tour bus outside the station after the friendly bus driver had helped me find a charger. Most shops are shut in Antwerp on a Sunday.   The city it turns out has a long history and is packed with museums and interesting cultural places to visit. 

Its most famous folk tale, memorialised by the city's Brabo fountain is rather gruesome. The giant Antigoon lived by the Scheldt exacting a toll from passing sailors. If they refused, he cut of their hands and threw them in the river. Eventually the young Roman Silvius Brabo, cut off the giant's own hand and he died. Apparently one version of the etymology of Antwerp is related to this idea of hand-throwing.

Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Brabo fountain and Antwerpse handjes

You can mull on this as you eat the well known local product, Antwerpse handjes with your tea. By this stage I couldn't help feeling the city brand might benefit from a general overhaul.

Perhaps I am wrong about Antwerp. Perhaps I was unlucky or saw with the wrong perspective.  I said to a friend:  I could go back to Belgium to try to find out more, but need motivation.  Luckily, for a small country Belgium has a wealth of cultural heritage.  Still, there is lots I'd like to to see were I to return to Antwerp, not least: more of the historic centre, and the Plantin-Moretus complex. Also the Cathedral of our Lady, the Botanics, Rubens' house, Antwerp's own MAS museum an de Stroom, the Red Star Line museum and the parks Spoor Nord and Middelheim.

In the tourist information centre in the station I picked up some literature to read on the train. I asked the guy what the difference was between the Dutch and the Belgians. He chose his words carefully: Belgians are perhaps more reserved, he said. Other times I heard a blunter view of the Dutch: loud.  Occasionally I felt crass was implied.  Although I might sometimes agree with the  former description, I have seen few of whom I felt the latter was true, and met none.

So how did the Dutch view the Belgians?  I had heard things like dull, rule-bound, conformist.  I had even seen an advert for a liberal sounding milonga in the Netherlands the gist of which had been something like:  We welcome all sorts, you can sit where you like and if you're from Belgium and need to keep your seat we can accommodate that too.  That sounded pretty much like the liberal-minded, cheerful, direct Dutch, not too worried about stepping on toes: "We'll try not to but if we do, it's how we are!"  I asked a friend with some experience.  His report was, unsurprisingly mixed, also tolerant and characteristically agreeable.  All in all... individual Belgians come in all sorts... like a box of Belgian chocolates.  I find the Dutch I have met by chance and those I know reflective, reasonably unbiased and fair-minded  - qualities I admire. 

The train to Rotterdam was noisy with fretful children, no-one waiting for people to put things away and lots of pushing in the gangways. I felt tired. Without sun the flat landscape punctuated by pylons and wind turbines was depressing. What would it be like in winter? I wondered, and found out when I watched The First, The Last. 

The sun came out in Rotterdam. I waited in it for my connection, feeling immediately better. But how without a phone was I going to find my way from a suburb of Antwerp to a remote suburb of north western Amsterdam - my next Airbnb destination? A quick sketch and a few notes.  It worked a dream!

Utrecht to Antwerp

The IJ, looking north and the free ferry.

Laura had invited me to stay the weekend in Utrecht but she was just back from looking after people on a transatlantic flight.  She had gone straight into organising a milonga as well as hosting me. I figured she more than most needed her weekend to rest and recover.

I had looked beforehand for milongas in Amsterdam for the Saturday night and emailed many DJs in the area to find out about their music. Either the music, the location or the video I had seen of the place hadn’t seemed right.  I have since found out Saturday night is not the main dance night in Amsterdam.

These enquiries turned out to be unnecessary because when I checked accommodation for that Saturday with two weeks to go there was not one Airbnb room to be found in Amsterdam or for miles around for under £100/night. The same was true of hotels apart from dormitory style hostels and I’d camp before I’d sleep in the same room with strangers.  Nothing seemed auspicious.  I decided to look elsewhere.

Jo Switten had been recommended as the kind of DJ I might like and I had seen he would be playing in the El centro milonga in Antwerp.  I was curious to see if I noticed any differences between the countries in the short time I would have in Belgium.

Looking for my platform back in Amsterdam I asked one of the invariably calm and clear rail officials. I was to hear from three different people three completely different pieces of information about whether and when to make a connection in Rotterdam but these contradictions were always conveyed with helpful reassuring certitude.  Deciding to give myself up to the vagaries of the Dutch train system I sat at one end of the empty platform in the sun under a huge blue sky for half an hour, sipping the fresh mint tea that is popular in the Netherlands and watching the boat traffic and the sun playing on the IJ. I felt calm, content and that life was very good. It is hard to think why life could be so good alone on a station platform but in the right circumstances it is so.  I am often happy in stations.

Happiness!

Decades ago I read something by Bruce Chatwin about train doors, stations and travel. I find few things so evocative and full of promise as the sounds of train doors slamming (or they used to), the guard’s whistle. It is a moment poised between the life you know and the life you don’t when anything could happen - a chance encounter, a new destination, life full of curiosity, novelty, surprise and interest.

On the train an older American man in the seat behind me was chatting to a compatriot, a young woman travelling round Europe who seemed to be a chance encounter of his own. He mentioned that you could swing on top of the A'DAM tower and sure enough, I saw it. I saw wonderful green walls and thought for the nth time how fun and progressive city this felt. The American behind me seemed an experienced and relaxed traveller interested in history and music. He commented on the difficulty of finding reasonably priced accommodation in Amsterdam these days. He praised Prague, Vienna and London, the first two also places I would like to explore and where I would like to dance. I thought, not for the first time, how good it is to hear the calm, relaxed voice of experience, with nothing to prove and everything to share with those interested enough to hear.

Going to Rotterdam the landscape is quite extraordinarily flat, calm and completely unsuited to drama. Perhaps that is why the Dutch seem so undramatic - clear, firm, having conviction but not given to histrionics. 

Photo credit:  P.J.L Cuijpers

My earlier experience of the Netherlands was some mostly unmemorable trips for work, a virtually forgettable day at a bulb festival as a child and occasional trips to fruit and vegetable markets in places like Venlo and Roermond when we lived just across the border.  Aged about twenty I shaved my head.  When we went on one of these market runs dad didn't want to hold my hand in case - precisely because it was one of Europe's most liberal countries - people thought me a boy and I his younger fella.  Whether they'd care was beside the point.

I knew the landscape was flat but had forgotten so much:  there really are lots of canals, drainage channels and dykes between the fields, which seemed generally smaller than British fields.  Placid Friesian cows munch the very green grass on the land reclaimed from the sea. Or, there are endless glasshouse, this part of the Netherlands being known now for its flowers.  Ben Coates in his book talks about how in the mid 1800s the average Dutchman was 5'4.

   

There truly are lots of windmills, once used to drain the land and then variously repurposed.  Now from numbering hundreds in a small area, there are more likely to be dozens.  I was told today those remaining are often homes or open as special attractions.  A friend who dropped me at Schiphol in December drove me along a dijk under a huge Dutch sky.  The landscape around Wormerveer had an unfamiliar, watery kind of beauty that I started to appreciate.  A Dutchman with an openness characteristic of the people and the land, said the distant horizons are enjoyed by those who appreciate control and no surprises.  More used to the high hedges of Hampshire, the skyscrapers of central London and the wooded Perthshire countryside I found all that openness slightly alarming.

My friend pointed out an open air windmill museum. She is an artist and said one of the the windmillsnow produces artists paint which is sold all round the world.  Their sails spun, also calmly.

Utrecht

People have asked me why I decided to go to the Netherlands in August in the first place.  It is so easy to forget these things.  I have said: the cycling, the tall men to dance with, the fact that there was a new direct flight from Dundee to Amsterdam.  But in fact I recall now these were not the reasons.  It is true I wanted to find taller men for dance but that was not the main reason.  I did plan to hire a bike and the cycling turned out to be a big feature of the trip but that was a pleasure properly discovered after I had got there. The flight was indeed convenient but it was not at all the determining factor.  In fact I went largely because I wanted to visit La Bruja, a milonga which had been cancelled at fairly short notice after I had booked my flights.  The timing of my first trip had been planned around this milonga after seeing the very slick video of the encuentro organised by the same people.  Even though the music in the video was not live with the dancing (which is the way to tell if the dancing really is good), it was very well edited.  I liked the embraces,  the separate seating and most of all the style of the whole thing.  It looked a bit like Buenos Aires in Europe.  I still wanted to see the regular milonga run by that organiser.

Besides, I had enjoyed my August trip to the Netherlands so much - the cycling, the laid back, friendly people; the milongas too, mostly for the novelty I suspect but I had particularly liked the Cuartito Azul milonga (review), in Rotterdam, and the setting had been lovely. Most of the guy dancing at that milonga had not been great but I had had a very pleasant afternoon there, met nice people and enjoyed my dances with them very much.  I wanted more of that sort of thing.  I asked my husband if I could go back for a weekend the following month and was delighted when he said yes. Did I? he said, when he came in while I was writing.  I think he thought I was asking already about some new trip but the chaos accumulated over Christmas and while I was away on the last trip is still lapping around us so there are no travel plans as yet.

First stop this time was Utrecht and the Tuinhuis milonga (review) on a Friday night in early September.  I was not impressed by what I saw from the train.  The area around the station was an enormous building site.

I walked for what seemed ages through the railway station which somehow became a labrynthine shopping mall. It expelled me unexpectedly in a pretty, historic pedestrian street full of bars and cafes with people enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. There were curious smells of unfamiliar aftershave and baking. 

Very low on phone battery I went looking for a cafe that would let me recharge but found myself captivated by the huge spire of the Dom tower, dating from medieval times.

It pulled me towards it as I imagined it must have done to travellers for centuries. Inside the dom looked austere but I read later it was stripped during the Reformation. It seemed in remarkable condition for a 14th century building. 

On the way to the Dom I had seen down a side street part of the word "Winkel" on the side of a building. Jacob, who had moved to Utrecht, had told me this was the venue for a local milonga. I have since heard the floor can be sticky but I hear all kinds of different things about the same floor. I decided to have a look. 

The bar was beside a canal and had a terrace just catching the last of the afternoon sun. I was lucky to find a spot and ordered cava and some croquettes, the vegetarian equivalent of bitterballen a popular dutch snack, which I hadn't yet tried. 

So unlike the UK, no one was on their phone. Many people were engaged in conversation with friends, mostly two or three men together at a table, or two or three women. Some just watched the world go by on bikes or on foot. One table of guys cracked jokes with the tables around them, chatting and flirting. It was a good atmosphere. Most of the clientele was aged about 35+. Later when I walked to the bus I saw trendy cafes a little further along with younger clientele and coin operated boats on the water.

At my cafe several women were drinking something temptingly deep pink in Dutch beer glasses. In the interest of cultural exploration I ordered a small one - Wiekse rose, a fruity red beer made by Heineken. As I sipped it I was struck - incongruently - by how by healthy and relaxed Dutch women looked. They were not slim, not waifs, but not too heavy either. In general they looked capable, active bikers and most of all, happy in their skin. I wondered if that would still be true if I asked them but the people I would be most likely to talk to were tango dancers and many tango dancers everywhere are a one or more sizes smaller than the average, with some notable and alluring exceptions.

 I dragged my case over cobbles and missed having a bike. You can see so much so easily and quickly by bike. You can just explore, follow a whim. You are not tied to a route or a time. It is healthy and liberating.  I had looked exhaustively into hiring a bike on this trip but when you are not starting and finishing at the same place and your trip involves crossing the border by train to Belgium it all becomes complicated.

I hung about opposite Sumo for a bus, a bit disconsolate when I could be on those cycle paths, but enjoying the sun. I caught a Number 7 to Simon Bolivarstraat, 15 minutes away.

My friend Laura was hosting the milonga and I was invited for dinner at her house nearby.  When I arrived she was singing and her friend Henk was playing guitar. We ate a delicious vegetarian meal and walked  to the venue, a sort of freestanding wooden building with glass windows, to  to set up the milonga.  It was in the middle of the tangled but well tended community garden which felt like a series of dens. It was only a short distance but I had to take bearings to be sure not to get lost.  By the time I had returned from setting up, got ready and gone back to the milonga it was well underway. The feeling there was relaxed too. 

 I learnt on my trip to Tango Train in Amsterdam in December that a Dutch friend is about to move to Utrecht to be more centrally located for dance in the Netherlands.  It is the Dutch city I would most like to visit again. It is historically significant in the Netherlands and the wider region, there is much to explore and it has a lovely vibe.

The boas

Virtually everyone working in or around public transport I found helpful but the station staff and Dutch boas were especially lovely. 

I first encountered them at Amsterdam centraal. Are they station staff? I checked with Pieter months later: I don’t think so, he said, looking at one of the photos of the guys checking my tyres - carrying cuffs is not for everyone. I hadn’t even noticed the cuffs.  

Then he sent me the translated explanation of a boa:

F: How interesting. So they could move between environments, perhaps?

P: No... not exactly. Each of them is a boa, meaning they have certain power (to write fines, investigate, make arrests... although citizens can do that too)

F: Oh, but if you're a train boa you stay on the trains?

P: In certain professions you need the possibility to "maintain the law" to a certain degree. Those professionals will need a BOA certificate. Accordingly, to make maintaining easier and clearer to the public, they usually wear some kind of uniform as well. Forest guards, train inspectors, parking inspectors all fall in this category.

F: Oh, so a boa is not a profession, it is an accreditation for certain professions?

P: Indeed.

In Amsterdam Central station in August I approached three staff on the barriers about taking my bike on the train.  They told me you can take your bike on an Intercity type train (off peak and in July/August). I had a €6 supplement for my bike but was already through the barrier. They scanned my tickets for me. The hired bike was a real workhorse, big and heavy, built to withstand...everything.  Whereas fifteen years ago I used to lug, daily, a heavy bike up and down a fire escape in London these days I avoid it if I can. I asked the men how I could get up to the platform. One of the guys carried the bike up the escalator for me past the sign saying “No bikes”. Another came with him. At they top they hadn’t finished. 

- Is your bike hired? they said. 

- Yes, I said, surprised. 

- Are you coming back today?

- Yes. 

- We are going to check your tyre pressure for you. 

 They seemed to use a kind of app on the phone belonging to one of them. I wasn’t sure whether to believe this but they seemed in earnest. They seemed satisfied. 

- Is this a service for tourists? I said thinking I might tease them into confession of a joke. 

- Yes said the younger guy, seriously. 

- Do you check everyone’s tyres, or just tourists? I asked bemused. 

- Only the people we like, he said with a grin which made me wonder again. 

This was starting to feel like gallantry which I enjoy as much as the next girl though it struck me as at odds with Dutch ideas of independence and equality. 

It didn’t end then with a courteous nod and a turn on their heel. They went to see about getting my bike on the train. One of the other cyclists on board seemed to be saying the train was full but by now I had complete faith in these modern day urban knights. Sure enough they arranged for someone to fold up a bike. Suddenly there were three fully sized and two folding bikes on board and I was ushered on by these, to me, heroes of the Dutch transport system. I felt very spoilt and very grateful! 

The second encounter was at Leiden station on I think the same day. The guy on the right in the top photo is well known on the Dutch dance scene. He organises cheap dance trips all over the world. He and I had found we shared ideas about how the commercialisation of learning to dance tango was unnecessary, harmful and exploitative. It was so rare for both of us to find someone who also saw this that we were surprised and delighted. 

We were both travelling on after the Leiden afternoon milonga (review) to the Amersfoort evening milonga (review) by bike and train. We asked, separately for information about our different trains home later - Frank in Dutch and I in English.   Then we got the lift down to the exit level.

There was the same guy who had given us the information upstairs now hurrying down the stairs towards us, smiling, a little awkwardly, evidently with some query about which he seemed a bit bashful. He spoke to Frank in Dutch. I was deeply curious. What did this tall, handsome young guy  - Wim - want to know? He explained a bit in English that in his job he met and saw a lot of people but we were different in manner. He wanted to know where it came from. 

Afterwards I asked Frank again what exactly Wim said he thought we had but Frank said precisely he didn’t name it, being no more specific than “something about us”.  Clearly he thought it was something good.  It had been a nice afternoon. I suppose we had an openness, a freedom, a happiness about us.   Evidently, we were not a couple being unconventional heights, uncouplelike and asking for separate trains. 

I think Wim asked if we had a particular belief because I remember laughing and that we said we had been dancing Argentine tango, that it can have this effect and that it does change people.  We invited him to the milonga later when he finished work to see for himself.  He looked like he was thinking about it but we never saw him again.

Should my family ever move to the Netherlands, given my experiences so far I would say to my children: model yourselves on these guys: alert, curious, enquiring, polite, smiling, courteous, helpful.

Meeting Amsterdam

Fountains in Haarlemmerplein 

I had decided not long before arriving to hire a bike rather than get around by public transport. My accommodation on Spaarndammerstraat and the different milongas I was thinking about going to were not close to each other and bikes are quite the fastest way to get around here. On the half hour walk from the Airbnb to the bike hire place I saw more of the city than I had during 3-4 days spent at the Tangomagia festival in the winter of 2013/14. 

Then I had stayed on Waagdragerhof just off Piet Heinkade in an apartment right by the water.  Apart from one milonga in the Duif church the milongas then were in the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, the Kompaszaal on the KNSM-eiland and in Dansmakers, a dance space just across the water by the Motorkanaal in Amsterdam north.  When you dance at night the day often doesn't get going until late morning.  Cycling between these and my accommodation  during the chilly afternoons and nights I felt ashamed I had seen little of Amsterdam besides that prettily illuminated stretch of water.

The city now was warm and picture postcard. Tall, thin, well-maintained houses several hundreds of years old overlooked canal bridges designed for people and animals rather than cars.  Walking along the Brouwersgracht a few people had gathered to look at a home more house than boat listing heavily in the water.  Further on local dog walkers in jeans and t-shirts hailed each other lazily as they walked down the centre of the road. There are plenty of places you can do this in London's Zone 1 but not as near to the centre. Amsterdam's centre feels to me a lot more human and - notwithstanding the speeding bikes - less frenetic than London.  The odd scooter went by but in this city of three quarters of a million people these roads were, if you avoid the well known bike routes, not as busy and dangerous for children as they are in my town of some 45,000 people.  Do cars stop at zebra crossings? I wondered at a slightly busier street and, stepping out, found that they do. There are in fact remarkably few cars because in this sensible city the pragmatic Dutch know there isn't a lot of point taking cars into a capital, especially when everyone cycles.  But do the bikes stop?   Later, I was surprised to see a cyclist stop at a pedestrian crossing because when at speed I knew the temptation is not to.  Then I noticed the police car behind him.

A small boy rolled lazily on the tiled floor of a smart chocolate shop. A woman went by with two children in the box on the front of her bakfiet. Cafes lined the canals, where people chatted, many with English accents. The cafes became busier and livelier as I approached the centre. It did not feel like a capital city on a Friday afternoon. Why do I live in the middle of Scotland?  I thought, far from for the first time.  Some of my more tango-central friends use more colourful terms for my chosen location.  I had not yet seen the endlessly flat Dutch countryside but since now I have I appreciate anew what we have in Scotland, even if it means thermals, hats and scarves (indoors) for several months of the year.

I made a mental note of one of the quieter cafes to stop by later . Next door a sign saying Coffee Shop was written unequivocally above the door. But which kind? I thought, wondering if I was being naive. A relaxed looking black guy was sitting outside with a roll-up. On my next breath I realised what kind and inhaled wistfully.  Months later a local told me coffee shop doesn’t mean cafe and I felt inappropriately callow remembering this was also the case twenty-something years ago.

On the way back from picking up the bike I stopped in Haarlemmerplein to get salad and fruit in the Albert Heijn supermarket. I bought juice from one of the many self-service juice pressers I had seen in shops here and took it out to drink on a bench in the sunny square.  The sun was strong even at 1830. It was relaxing sitting there. Two women chatted together next to me, drinking Becks from bottles. It didn't have somehow the same of feeling of coarseness it might in the UK.  I sat peacefully for a long time while the sun sank lower, adjusting, settling, taking things in, much I realised later as I would in a new milonga.  The incomprehensible chat and the regular sound of the bell from the nearby boat crossing lulled me.  The shrieks of excited children playing in the fountains were familiar.

Returning to Spaarndammerstraat, a little later I biked across town to the De Plantage milonga (review).

The Netherlands - Arrival

August, 2016. I couldn't remember anything about arriving in Amsterdam in 2013.  I figured I must have gone in by train.  I used the yellow ticket booths (info in English) in Schipol to get a ticket.

I asked a young woman in a natty uniform and a red baseball cap with a train-like logo if she worked there. She hesitated a moment before recovering herself and saying sorry, yes:  trains always go to Amsterdam Centraal station from platforms 1 or 2.

The chairs were clean, plastic, practical and spacious - very different to the grimy velveteen cramped seats I am used to in Scotland, never mind that Scotrail is owned by Dutch company Abellio.  The journey was fast, only ten or fifteen minutes. I was to see over and over in the coming months that the Dutch are practical, pragmatic, efficient.

I looked for a bus following signs upstairs.  There was a great view of the water, the IJ (pron. “Ey”). I realised this wasn't the right place.  A young man told me I could get the bus I wanted outside Hotel Factoria - Victoria I realised upon exit. Of course, I could have read this first.  In front of the station there is a very large square, Stationsplein full of buses, trams and people.  Plein, not far from place, the french for square, or even the place we use ourselves.   If you know the bus number you want it is easy enough to find a sign saying which stand to go to.  The stands are each indicated by very large letters beside them.  

The front of the station is worth pausing to look at.  It was designed by Pierre Cuypers, who also designed the Rijksmuseum. I don't know why he's called Pierre. He was born in Roermond and I always think of him as Pieter Cuypers though his page on Dutch Wikipedia calls him Petrus/Pierre too.

After all the trouble, trying to book acommodation the place I found turned out to be functional and fine in an area that suited me. It was a traveller's stopover rather than a home but I expected to be out most of the time. A long-term Russian émigré showed me the place and with acquired? Dutch efficiency moved on to service the next property.