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.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin