Pubdate: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 Source: Georgia Straight, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2005 The Georgia Straight Contact: http://www.straight.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1084 Author: Charles Campbell Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) TOO MUCH OF A BAD THING IN AMSTERDAM The DB NachtZug leaves Berlin at 10:25 p.m. In the bar car, it's hard to tell what time period the train is travelling through. The waiter is Fred Astaire. A would-be Gertrude Stein scribbles poetry furiously into her journal, then crosses it out, scribbles and crosses, scribbles and crosses. Beside us there's a pipe smoker in tweed with a waxed moustache. And in the corner are Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, circa Easy Rider, ordering drinks six at a time. They're on their way to Amsterdam to smoke pot, after directing a spate of commercials. As the train clatters into the night, the bar car slowly empties, and the passengers dream their way through an old century. At 7 a.m., an unexpected breakfast of coffee and croissants arrives at our elegantly panelled sleeping compartment. We pull the blind to see country fields blurred by spring dew, morning haze, and the train's relentless motion. By a level crossing, a dozen purposeful sandy-haired cyclists are waiting, helmetless on their one-speeds, as though it's 1962. The fields give way to modern warehouses, which give way to the classic 1889 Centraal Station at the heart of Amsterdam. Even at 9 a.m., it's like a scene from a hippie Dickens novel, where pothead Fagans offer to help the marks with their luggage. And it's here that you must make your central choice. Do you stay downtown, close to the tourist stands selling wooden-shoe fridge magnets, the "coffee shops", nightclubs, and the famous red-light district, the Walletjes, where once-attractive women stand in white boat underwear under black lights, waiting to be propositioned by hairy-backed British soccer yobs? We have a reservation at a B?&?B 15 minutes from the centre of Amsterdam, but outside the train station a balding American hotelier in a Guatemalan vest offers us a room two blocks away at the Groenendael for half as much. We take it, and that is our first mistake. Our room isn't ready when we get there--it is early in the morning--so we leave our bags with a fellow who offers assurances about their security that he himself seems to doubt. Then we go looking for fries. We find them, and they are astonishingly good. Unlike much of our Amsterdam experience, they are entirely free of irony and contradiction (unless you're mean-spirited enough to note that they are Belgian). In Vansterdam, many people romanticize the liberalism of our Dutch sister city. Tolerance and diversity are good. But imagine our city's pot cafes, dressed up with rather more style, side by side with Gastown T-shirt shops, two blocks over from the Seymour Street hookers, who are presented to the world in glass enclosures about the same size as the on-stage shower stall at Number 5 Orange. And because pot is available in the ubiquitous coffee shops, the street dealers try to sell you crack. And there are British soccer loogans in town for an international club match. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But these things pretty much own the centre of the city, and the station's location obliges tourists to go through this part of Amsterdam to get to any other part of it. After wandering gobsmacked through all this, we finally find a seat at a bar that seems to offer the prospect of quietish early afternoon bliss by a canal. I order a De Koninck, hoping that a fluitje of that famous Belgian beer had managed to make its way across the border. The waitress looks at me like I am a Nazi. "What's that?" she asks, warily. I explain. "I'm sorry," she says, without any indication that she means it. "This is an Irish bar." Welcome to Amsterdam's internationally renowned culture of service. A friend once told me that in Amsterdam a large beer is known as a grootpils, but in the rest of Holland they call such a thing an Amsterdammer, and now I am beginning to understand. Excess is a defining characteristic of the city. Unfortunately, it's usually charming only in small quantities. At dusk, we find ourselves two canals away from the centre of town, and a little more at ease. We have dinner at an Indonesian restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet. It's okay but very expensive, and a lesson in the fallibility of guidebooks. Back at the hotel, we find that our room has a bird's-eye view of the noisy bar across the street, and we resolve to look for alternative accommodation. The next day, we flee the city to the famous Keukenhof gardens near Haarlem--it is April, after all. But the gardens, touted as the world's largest at 32 hectares, are a bit more relief than we're really looking for. It's a bus tourist's paradise, but a sane person can only truly enjoy a certain number of tulips. The place is a lesson in the real virtues of the gardens of VanDusen and Butchart, where diversity as opposed to quantity is a key virtue. It seems we're slow learners. We return to our new room at the Centrum Hotel (free showers, no curfew!) near the centre of town, where you're sometimes obliged to book with the bartender. When we take our bags upstairs, there is an unmade bed strewn with a stranger's clothes and a improvised device for smoking. At the bar, when we draw attention to the matter, we get the "fly in my soup" treatment, then a nod and a wink, then the intimation that the staff might have to be reminded of their obligations. Yet I must acknowledge that this is part of what I came for. It's like watching Cops, or reading about the Michael Jackson trial. You don't always approve, and you feel vaguely cheap on account of your interest, but you can't help the rubbernecking. And truth be told, I couldn't go to Amsterdam without availing myself of the benefits of the euphemistically named coffee shops. They are everywhere. The Greenhouse, Barney's, the Grasshopper, the famous Bulldog and its offshoots. We pick one, the name of which somehow escapes me. The menu features an array of buds such as White Widow, and a wide selection of hashish. I choose a gram of black Afghani, bum a cigarette to roll it up, and feel much more relaxed once I've smoked some. Then we wander away from the centre of town. We find an almost empty little cafe with a counter along the open front window. The Indonesian food here is wonderful and cheap, and not just because of the effect of the hash. The staff are congenial and attentive. We are beginning to understand the extent of our mistake. Amsterdam is a city of concentric circles, defined by the canals, and while you must visit its first circle of hell, enclosed by the Singel Canal, you don't want to live there. The next day we head five canals out from the centre of town to the Museumplein. Here we find a very different Amsterdam: families lolling in sprawling parks, fleets of cyclists, students painting in the shade of big trees. We choose the newish Van Gogh Museum over the sprawling Rijksmuseum. Europe has a lot of stuff, and they put the old stuff on display. Some of it is pretty good stuff. But how the museum organizes its stuff makes all the difference. The Van Gogh does it as well as any. It's astonishing to see Van Gogh's short, brilliant arc displayed with such simplicity and elan. He painted for just 10 years, beginning with dark, brooding portraits and landscapes influenced by his Dutch forebears. Then he went to France and went crazy. Seeing his art in sequence, you can feel his sudden inspiration, and his precipitous descent. For four short years, his hands painted while his mind burned. He cut off his ear, then shot himself in the chest. He sold nothing. One wonders if he even understood his own genius. The curators at this museum certainly do, and they understand how to complement it with a wide range of historical and contemporary work that reveals both Van Gogh's specific inspiration and influence and the virtue of contemporary art that indulges insane impulses. Afterward, we wander around the eccentric modernist exterior of the museum (known locally as the Mussel) and out into its spacious grounds. I don't see a single pothead, crack dealer, or soccer yob. And only the occasional bed of tulips. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda are nowhere to be found. I wonder why it took us so long to find the real Amsterdam. - ACCESS: Schiphol International Airport is Europe's fourth largest, and it's a short train ride to Centraal Station. Hotel Groenendael, (Nieuwendijk 15, [31] 20 624 48 22, http://www.hotelgroenen dael.com/), costs 50 euros for a double. Hotel Centrum, (Warmoesstraat 15, [31] 20 624 35 35, http://www.centrumhotel.nl/) costs about 70 euros for a double. For God's sake, find a pleasant bed and breakfast or a small hotel away from the centre of the city, which can be had for around 100 euros. Rent a bike, so that you can avail yourself of the central district's dubious sleaze and fabulous architecture but also escape it easily and completely. And go in April or May, when the weather, at least, is likely to be beyond reproach. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin