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.