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.

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.

Biking in the Netherlands

Hired from Starbikes, 2013

I wasn’t sure until the day I left whether I was going to hire a bike again or use public transport. In the event I went for the bike and didn’t regret it for a moment. Oh, such freedom. A bike in Dutch is a fiet. Amsterdam and as far as I can tell most of of the Netherlands has bike lanes usually separated from road traffic. Unfortunately, mopeds are allowed to use them too. 

In December 2013 I went to the Amsterdam tango festival TangoMagia, as it happened the last such festival. I enjoyed the experience of the Netherlands - the gay couple I stayed with, the surprise of the straightforward Dutch, the cycling culture, seeing an old friend and his family, the people I met; all this as much or more than most of the dancing itself, with a few exceptions.  I learnt from local Dutch travelling in for one or two events and over time from other locals, visitors and expats that the Amsterdam milonga scene is considered very “closed". Looking back, I probably had as many good dances then as I would expect to now.  I hired a bike to get around. I guessed then from road signs that a bromfiet must be a scooter - which to my mind interprets as a bike that goes brrm brrrm. I wondered if that was a girl or a boy thought process. 

When smaller, my younger son lay in the kitchen and pushed cars along the floor or alphabet letters across the fridge making boy-like engine or exploding noises. He also loved - and destroyed - my lipsticks so much that eventually Santa brought him one of his own.  I rather like the third gender idea or if not so explicitly that, at least the fluidity and greater freedom from social norms, the individuality it permits, accepts and celebrates. 

Why, anyway, are mopeds allowed on bike lanes? It seems to defeat the purpose of a civilized idea.  At that time an expat in Amsterdam had told me: 

The tolerance of bromfiets in the "bike" lanes shook me to my core when I moved to Amsterdam. How could an otherwise rational and efficient society think it a good idea to allow vehicles four times the weight and three times the speed travel in the same space as defenseless cyclists, who are at the core of the current Dutch national identity? How could they put mothers and babies on bicycles at risk like this?  My negativity increased when I was almost killed in a high speed collision with a bromfiets in Beatrixpark. I ended up flipping 270 degrees over my handlebars and landing on my back, sans helmet, with my front tire destroyed.

That’s the other thing, the Dutch don’t wear helmets. Only tourists wear helmets. I don’t know exactly why this is. I have heard a slew of tales recently about people, some of whom I know and the latest only on Friday, who were saved from brain damage or death in cycling accidents because they were wearing a helmet. I wear one now - usually - because I cycle on roads and my kids need me, but no-one I remember who grew up in the seventies did and  I have never become used to it.

Cycling with the Dutch is a liberating experience. Even so, on this most recent trip before pulling onto the cycle lane I remember thinking: You just have to go for it. If you have sufficient personal conviction to be able to walk into an unknown milonga alone you can probably join a Dutch cycle lane.  In both it's probably a good idea to keep your wits about you and your emotions in check. I watched a cyclist turn right  with conviction on a red light and wondered if it was another Dutch person with their own interpretation of the rules.  Then I remembered cars can do this in California too. Yes, you can, a blonde woman I asked replied. Thank you! I said, pushing off. Just watch for the pedestrians! she called, laughing, as I headed for the pedestrian crossing just around the corner. 

I have biked off and on all my life but Dutch everyday cyclists grow up with A to B type cycling as opposed to British style recreational weekend biking which, outside a few well-known biking towns can seem dominated by men and boys and MTBs or the much-caricatured middle-aged men in lycra, goggles and funny shoes. Many Dutch cycle routinely and so are fit and cycle fast.  I grew up with this kind of cycling in Germany, though the population in rural Lower Saxony around 1980 was admittedly less skewed toward the young and hip. Women rode bikes with dress guards.  In Amsterdam ordinary people bike as fast as serious central London commuter cyclists.  Fifteen or so years ago, for about five years, I used to be one of those clocking up many miles a day in and around London. Being female, riding a heavy sit-up-and-beg Dutch or German style bike, avoiding most main roads and wearing my ordinary clothes, not high-vis jacket and gelled shorts I was not a typical London cyclist. I have cycled off and on since then, but nothing like as much and in Amsterdam felt out of practice. 

The reason biking in Amsterdam can feel a little risky is because some rules feel more like guidelines and it all happens at speed. You are not supposed to go down a one way street, but people do. You are not supposed to bike down pedestrianised streets, but some do and sometimes the police fine them. Pedestrians are not supposed to walk on, or worse, step out suddenly onto bike lanes, but some do, especially when drunk or in tourist season. It seemed to me there are lots of close shaves at intersections - people make snap judgements involving pedestrians and, especially, other fast-moving bike users.  Things generally seem to work out OK though remembering my correspondent it can be serious when they don't.

In 2013 I had hired a bike from StarBikes behind the station, near the IJ (water). The owner, who might have been a Dutch-speaking Australian, was friendly and easygoing. Best of all they had plenty of bikes for people my height. You might be able to get (but should probably ask for in advance) bikes with a large plastic crate on the back. Many Dutch bikes have these. It would be inordinately useful for a bag, dance shoes and clothes you take to change into at the venue, especially if you are out and about beforehand. 

This time I hired a bike from Discount Bike Rental which also had good reviews and was a bit nearer my accommodation.  More particularly it was in the centre which I had seen next to nothing of on my last trip. In the cold and darkness of winter 2013, dance-focused, I had been like a moth drawn to light. The decision of whether to wander round cold streets or go dancing had not been hard.

This time I emailed the shop beforehand to see if they had a bike, a good plan in holiday time said the owner. You choose between back pedal or handlebar brakes. I am used to and prefer back pedal. Besides, it leaves your hands free to hold your phone to navigate google maps (I am not recommending this!) and also to use your bell. No one is worried or embarrassed about using a bell in the Netherlands.  In egalitarian Scotland where even a whiff of perceived uppitness can give serious offence, using a bell can feel presumptuous but I doubt the Dutch care about such sensibilities.  I am not  sure  the Dutch get embarrassed about anything.  They are just very pragmatic. How liberating that must be.

I went to get the bike on Friday evening as soon as I had checked in to my accommodation. Cost was 8 euros/day plus one euro optional insurance. StarBikes I see on their website today charge one euro more for 24 hour rental. Upon enquiry they said insurance is not included but 2,50 extra per day.

Some places e.g. Macbikes by the station, rent bikes branded as tourist bikes. If you get a non-tourist branded bike make sure it has a distinctive label or tie something on to it so you can recognise it when you come to hunt for your bike among scores of others later. I was haunted by the thought I might accidentally lock my bike to someone elses. Always do lock your bike, not just with the built-in back wheel lock.  The bike might seem big and too heavy to wheel away on the front wheel when locked on the back wheel but my mother's German bike (with dress guard!) was stolen in York because I had only used the back wheel lock and in Amsterdam professional gangs operate.  So use the heavy duty chain that most bikes have wrapped around the saddle post when not in use. Although crime in general is apparently low, bike theft is rife in the Netherlands.

If you want to take your bike on the train, bike supplement is 6 Euros/day (not per journey) but if you get a folding bike (and fold it aboard) it goes free. In July and August there aren’t any restrictions about when bikes can go on trains. More info about bikes and trains here.

I am sure they do in the suburbs but I saw no children riding bikes in central Amsterdam. I saw a dog standing up in a crate on one bike, on another one toddler on the front and one on the back of their father’s bike (they had helmets). Slightly outside the centre I saw children sitting in bakfiets, box or cargo bikes but that was all. I am not surprised; between the tourists, the bromfiets, the numbers of people cycling and the speeds the centre is perhaps just a bit too crazy for children.  Besides, the street I cycled down to get to the centre, Haarlemmerdijk, becoming Haarlemmerstraat reeked, not unpleasantly, of weed.  Still, I felt like a child myself when, marvellously, the road where cyclists had halted upon warning alarms, rose vertically right in front of me to let a boat through.

On this trip I only had the bike for 36 hours but it had taken me across Amsterdam twice, to Leiden, to Amersfoort and back to Amsterdam. I had chatted to lots of people and felt relaxed and free. I felt absurdly attached, not to the bike itself but to the feeling of getting around so easily by bike. I had to give it up on Sunday lunchtime because the hire shop would be closed by the time I got back from Rotterdam but it felt like a wrench. I found out today Starbikes will allow you to drop off the bike and key after hours when you leave them your credit card details.  I have a notion I did this with them before, but unless you write it down, you forget!

I saw plenty of Dutch cyclists without lights at night. In Rotterdam I commented on this to a Dutch guy I had met at a milonga the day before.  Like me he was going back to his town by train and we went to the station together.  Oh yes, he said You can get fined. I was, last month, 50 or 60 euros. He said one day the police decide it’s bike light checking day and they clean up.  Despite this incident, his lights were tiny.  Though we were cycling late at night they still weren’t on.  How come you have such wee lights? I asked.  The police gave them to me, he said. Do they give them to everyone? I asked. Yes, that is a very Dutch thing, he said. They fine you but also set you right.  I was getting nervous. We were sharing his bike, with no lights, going down a one way system the wrong way.  I was in the saddle.  Though several years older than me, smaller and very lithe he was standing up behind like the circus artist I could believe he might be in a slightly different life. The following week I saw a photo of him doing a secure-looking handstand. I was very glad my husband couldn’t see me. Sometimes, you act just like a teenager, he had said more than once usually wryly but somewhere between annoyance, despair and frustration.  I could quite see he has a point. Besides, the police would have a field day with us. Who actually gets the fine in these circumstances? I said.  Oh, you, said the local, lightly.  I decided, all told, it was time to grow up and walk.

Amsterdam: Getting there

I decided to go to Amsterdam to dance, for no other reason than it wasn’t far, the guys are tall and they have a cycling culture. Then I discovered fly.be had, earlier this year, started a direct flight from Dundee to Amsterdam. You can already travel to Stansted from Dundee. Dundee airport is only 25 minutes drive from where I live. My mum, to whom people just want to tell useful information, learnt that future plans are for the airline to extend connections to Paris and to one of the Channel islands. I booked a flight for about six weeks ahead, mid August. In my mind, mid August is when children in Scotland go back to school (why?). In school-holiday focus I somehow managed to ignore the fact that for the rest of Europe it is prime holiday season.

The children and I had packed a lot in to the holidays with two trips to Manchester and a lot of day trips and picnics. As a result I left it until two weeks before departure to book accommodation. I have never found this task so difficult. 

For convenience and safety I did not want to be far from the night time milongas to get back to my accommodation. A lot of my friends stay in hostels which makes travelling easy and very much cheaper. If I didn’t mind the sheer publicness of hostels, never mind the noise, I might too, but I do and I generally like and need sizeable chunks of time by myself. So I looked at Airbnb as I often find private homes closer to the milongas than hotels. Ordinarily I might often get a room for £40-60. Now it was more like £70-80+ and really at the top end of that - for rooms that were not en-suite. Trickier still was trying to get somewhere suitably located for public transport back from the late-ending milongas. 

The Friday milonga looked fairly central but the Sunday milonga, La Bruja, was further out near an area I had biked through en route to one of the TangoMagia venues, two or three years previously. I’d been told not all the area was that great. Although cycling is a great option in Amsterdam, I haven’t found a place that will let you drop off the bike late on a Sunday night and I would be away before opening time on the Monday. If I was going to have to wait for public transport in that area I wanted it to be easy. 

I looked at hotels too, but they were all £100+/night and not central either. Hopping then between Google maps, Airbnb and booking.com I began to get frustrated. My first choice of Airbnb host (a new host) didn’t respond, the second said the place wasn’t available. Finally I found a place but parts of the Airbnb site seemed to be down or glitchy. Eventually my son pointed at a place about as central as I was likely to get in west Amsterdam. It had its own bathroom and looked nice. Once the airbnb fees were added on it was still an eye-watering £100/night with no breakfast. Then my hairdresser told me about her package holiday to Turkey for two thirds of that and I thought what a fool I was.

By now I felt relieved to have found somewhere but fatalistic about the trip. I thought I’d booked too late, at the wrong time and the dance experience of Berlin and of Stuttgart loomed over me. With extraordinary lack of self-knowledge I decided to think of it as a tourism trip rather than a dance trip. 

Forget perfume at the airport or picking up last minute things in Boots.  Dundee airport is dinky. There are a handful of short-stay car park spaces. It felt wonderfully anachronistic that you can still park in these for free for the first half hour. There is a wee cafe with a cold drinks cabinet, some sandwiches and a bookshelf providing a free book exchange. I liked it. On the other hand, luggage was checked draconically for size. Not that it seemed the staff had any commission-fuelled zeal to charge extra but the flight was full (both ways it turned out) and any oversized luggage would have to go in the hold. Had I checked my hand-luggage for size? I mumbled something about never having had an issue and miraculously got through. I set off the security alarm repeatedly and while I was thoroughly frisked the chatty security lady kept up a cheerful patter in much the way that some professionals rattle off distracting chat when you’re about to undergo something unpleasant. It was a friendly place but with only one security scanner, you want to be either first or last in the queue. It felt very...local.