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Articles tagged “holland”

Across Northern Europe: A second thought on museums in Amsterdam

by Brook Silva-Braga on Aug 24, 2007

You should never agree with yourself too often, at least that’s what I’m thinking today, so I’d like to mention a few museums that are worth all of our time. Some readers may remember an anti-museum post a little while ago, though more readers may have stopped reading after that one and are missing out on this mea culpa.

There are plenty of very good museums in Amsterdam, but the three I visited were Van Gogh’s, Rembrandt’s, and Anne Frank’s. Museums dedicated to one person tend to be really interesting; Picasso’s museo in Barcelona may be my favorite anywhere with work spanning from his childhood to old age.

But in Holland’s capital I first stopped into Van Gogh’s temple with work spanning seven of the ten short years he worked. In contrast to my experience with Picasso, I came away from Van Gogh’s museum with less awe rather than more. The work we always see from Van Gogh (Starry Night, the sunflowers, the self portraits) hews to a familiar and wonderful style. But a fuller sampling of his work revealed a scattershot, groping attempt to find that style. One portrait looked like a rough Rembrandt, many like so-so Seurats. But they also helped you understand the steps he took to reach his own iconic style. Most striking to me was Pietà (naar Delacroix), a painting of Mary and Jesus with a pallet so identical to Starry Night that it had to be put to canvas with the same physical paint (both were completed in 1889 but that’s as far as my scholarship goes on this one).

A couple canals away is Rembrandt’s house, where the master lived for two decades before creditors came calling. There are only a couple Rembrandt paintings here, but dozens of his etchings are on display and many are amazing. The various rooms of his multi-story house have been restored to approximate the furnishings he knew but it has a slightly sterile, fake feel. At one point a security guard started fiddling with the painting tools in the studio, underscoring that the original items are long lost. Still, the studio where most of Rembrandt’s work was created is inspiring. The light in the room has the soft, flattering quality of his portraits.

Another excellent display is at the entry, where a broken vase and other items sit just below a painting of the same items. Comparing the vase and the painting reveals the hyper-reality of the art and also the natural imperfection of the pottery which you might otherwise hold against the painter rather than the sculptor.

If you’re walking through Amsterdam and see a thick line snaking around the corner, you’re probably at Anne Frank’s House. It was after 8pm when Sabrina and I got there but the line persisted. Better a line than an over-stuffed museum.

“I feel really bad being German here,” Sabrina said. I tried to commiserate by mentioning the War Crimes Museum in Vietnam.

Still, I thought I’d make the most of her presence by using her as a translator but we were both surprised to learn the diary is written in Dutch rather than German. Anne was just four when the family moved to Amsterdam, it was another seven years before they went into hiding.

The first most striking thing about the Frank house is how big it is. Most Amsterdamers would be happy to have an apartment as big as the secret annex. Most Amsterdamers, of course, don’t share their flat with seven others without leaving for five years. When we’re talking about experiences as horrific as the Franks we’re apt to think of it as an unmitigated hell, but the relative spaciousness of the annex is maybe an example of our narrow conception of hell (and/or the way its been presented to us in film and story). Regardless, it didn’t have to be small to be awful.

It was a pleasant, wet night in Amsterdam when they closed the museum on us. Sabrina sat on the back of her bike and I peddled hard up the little canal inclines, proud to keep the bike upright with someone on the back. I flew to Copenhagen the next morning and I’m no Tony Bennett so I took my heart with me. But the airline must have been more sentimental, cause they left my bag in Amsterdam.

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Previously on Across Northern Europe:

Brook Silva-Braga is traveling northern Europe for the month of August and reuniting with some of the people he met on the yearlong trip which was the basis of his travel documentary, A Map for Saturday. You can follow his adventure in the series, Across Northern Europe.

Across Northern Europe: The Elusive Dutch Drivers License

by Brook Silva-Braga on Aug 17, 2007

I met Ella, Hilde and Amber in a Stockholm hostel two years ago this summer just after they went to the Roskilde music festival. They were roadtripping from their home in Rotterdam, Holland and we got along famously. So famously, in fact, they invited me to drive south to Denmark with them in Hilde’s sister’s tiny car. It was an act of generosity, yes, but also one of convenience: I could drive.

Though all three were well into their 20’s, only Hilde had her license. Driving in Holland just isn’t so simple.

To be fair, Ella knew her way around a steering wheel, having taken several dozen lessons as part of Holland’s rigorous, expensive divers-license gauntlet.

“I was taking lessons two to four hours a week,” Ella said today, license now in hand after completing an eight-month process that took her sister three years.

But back in 2005 in a Swedish parking lot, a perfect metaphor played out for the difference between American and Dutch driver certification: It was the Dutch learner teaching the American licensee how to drive.

Though I’d been driving for nearly a decade my mastery of the stick shift was non existent and since that July afternoon I’ve often credited Ella with giving me the direction my various amateur instructors hadn’t: basically encouraging me to ride the clutch as I started in first gear. She had plenty of chances to offer advice as I stalled and sputtered and the giggling Dutch girls asked if I was sure I had my license.

Amber would like to drive too but she’s held back by a common complaint: It’s just too expensive. Before you can spend several hundred euros taking the theoretical and in-car exams you need the green light from your instructor. Typically that comes after 40 or so lessons (though Hilde’s mom had more than 60 when she finally attempted to get her license in middle age). Each lesson is roughly 30 euros, bringing the total cost over $2000.

The various hurdles are paired with a general sense that driving just isn’t necessary. Holland is biker-friendly and covered with train tracks. But still, today, it was nice to have the driving option as they headed to another music festival, Holland’s own Lowlands festival.

“When you have your license you get the feeling that you need it,” Ella said. “But really there’s very good transportation without it.”

An old van pulled up to Ella’s apartment and the Dutch girls piled in with some other friends. Though two-thirds of the trio are now street legal, they were still bumming a ride.

“Even when you have your license,” Hilde pointed out. “You still need a car.”

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Previously on Across Northern Europe:

Amsterdam To Go Smoke-Free?

by Willy Volk on Jun 21, 2007

Quick: When you read the word “Amsterdam,” what springs to mind?

Right! All those funny little glasses from which the Dutch drink beer. Those crazy Hollanders.

Those crazy Hollanders will soon be drinking their beer in smoke-free bars, after a smoking ban comes into effect in July 2008. The ban covers all restaurants and cafes — including the city’s 300+ coffee shops, those gezellig little haunts where people go specifically TO smoke.

So how does a business founded on providing an environment in which to smoke survive if said business must be smoke-free? Fortunately, the proprietors of pot will be allowed to set up a separate room or glass partition behind which people can smoke. Customers will not be served behind the partition. The government says this will protect staff from the effects of second-hand pot smoke.

Protect staff from the effects of second-hand pot smoke? Um, isn’t that why staff applied to work there in the first place?

Where On Earth (Week 11): Amsterdam

by Willy Volk on Jun 8, 2007

There were lots of good guesses in this week’s Where on Earth, but only one person got it right: Richblackmon was correct in thinking that this fruit stall resides in Amsterdam. In fact, this image was captured near the Leidseplein, a popular square in the vibrant city.

In December 2000, I was traveling from Africa to the US for a month-long home leave. I hadn’t been since I’d left, in July 1998.

We decided to arrange a 3-day layover in Amsterdam in the middle of the return trip. Western enough to feel like home, but foreign enough to feel like I was “transitioning,” Amsterdam served as a brilliant stop-over. We visited the Van Gogh Museum. We toured Anne Frank’s House. We drank beer from those funny little glasses the Dutch serve beer in. But the thing that sticks out most in my mind was the fruit. Maybe it was because I had been living in rural Africa for 2.5 years, but the fruit sold in Amsterdam seemed to me the best in the world.

We ate strawberries the size of Roma tomatoes. The raspberries were the size of ping pong balls. The colors of the fruit were so vibrant, so dazzling, and so rich that I inspected each one carefully before devouring its sweet juiciness. We ate some traditional Dutch meals, but most of the time, we ate from street vendors and fruit stalls. It was amazing. And this picture perfectly captures that.

If you ever visit Amsterdam, be certain to buy some of the fruit and sample it. You’ll remember it forever.

Would a Dutch Smoking Ban Mean the End of its Famous Coffee Shops?

by Jonathon Morgan on Apr 20, 2007

There’s plenty of reasons to visit Amsterdam — the people, the culture, the beautiful, walkable city — but let’s get real: the place is famous for its coffee shops, where patrons come to sit back, relax, and smoke a couple doobies. But like other European countries, the Netherlands is considering a ban on smoking tobacco in restaurants, cafes and bars — so will this signal the end for the country’s pot-smoking tourist traffic?

The answer, in short, seems to be no. Namely, because the clientele at these establishments aren’t actually smoking tobacco. Those who like to smoke their marijuana mixed with tobacco (a circumstance in which the ban probably would apply), will most likely get around the restriction simply by mixing their dope with something else. “You can bring parsley or old socks if you want, cut them here and smoke them, nobody will say anything,” one Dutch politician and coffee shop owner told Reuters News.

A ban — which could go into effect at the beginning of 2008 — might even mean good news for the makers and distributors of marijuana smoking paraphernalia, such as pipes, bongs, or other oddball contraptions potheads have dreamed up for the sake of improving their high.

So don’t worry, it looks Amsterdam’s tourists will be getting stoned wherever they like for the foreseeable future.