Hiya folks.
A while ago I replied to a PM of Dys's, saying that I would be happy to meet any of you coming over to Amsterdam in May. May 3-5 or something it was, right?
So, I'm a bit slow. So I only realised this weekend that - well, you might have heard me talk about this new job I was offered, and eventually accepted too. It's in Budapest, Hungary. And I told 'em I'd start May 1. So it looks like I wont be in Amsterdam when you folks are.
Sucks.
Course, I can pass on tips and stuff on what to see - though they'd be nimhish tips.
For example, make sure of one thing - well, of two things, when you're in Amsterdam. Go to the Zeedijk. Its right by the station. Go there and stroll down, leisurely, have some food in the Thai Snack Bar looking out on the street, and above all lounge about in the fabulous cafe Latei at the end of the street, where everything inside is also for sale. (It's the place I call home - I go there and literally soak up a sense of security, hominess and comfort and love for people, that carries me in its hands for the better part of a week. I feel more safe, warm and at home there than in any other place in the world, right now). Buy Chinese cookies at Hoi Tin and stop by for a coffee or a jenever in the pub on the corner midway through the street, thats been there since 1752 or something; and have another at the beginning, the "head" of the street by the station where there's a lovely Belgian cafe (Het Elfde Gebod). Stop by the comics store and blink at the SM-gear in Demask. And above all, sit somewhere and watch - the little Chinese girl walking up this way then the other with a cheerfully-coloured schoolbag; the English louts on a trip to the capital of weed and mushrooms; the junkies hanging about on the corner and arguing; the tourists and the locals. The pretty Buddhist mosque. The many Chinese stores with all kinds of stuff. The long-closed cafe of Bep, still with pictures in the window testifying to how old-Dutche "gezellig" it was. That's one. (Here's the
Zeedijk's very own website).
But two is, take the train, and arrive at Amsterdam Central from the east (no, thats not how you come in when you come from the airport, alas). The views are quite splendid. Mostly to the right, where the water of the Ij shines and the modern fairytale architecture of the Java Eiland rises behind the defiant slogans on Pakhuis Afrika, the one remaining squat in the middle of ever new riverside office development that's stamping up out of the ground. But thats why you should take the train - preferably when it's dark already, or when the sun is setting, that's beautiful too - and make sure that, when it approaches the station, you sit on the
other side - the city side. For there, the moment before you pull in to the station, you'll have the water to your left as well, and behind it, the whole old inner city with its churches and roofs and lights and picturesque promise of "you're entering Amsterdam now", the glory of ages! You've got to do it
now, because right there on the railway's embankments, you'll see the cranes and the piles; they're building. More offices, and expensive apartments to buy not rent. It will be high and ugly; a literal
wall of new development, a wall of stone, glass and all the resistant solidity that does not budge to your look. It will be a wall in between train and city, for the first time depriving the eyes of the arriving traveller of the city's twinkling welcome. A curse, I say, on ambitious aldermen and their ruthless belief in Progress. May Amsterdam survive, always.
