Beginnings of Amsterdam

The bus actually got to Amsterdam 45 minutes earlier than it was supposed to. We hung out in the bus station for a while, then took a city bus to our hostel. The man at the check-in desk told us that Michael Jackson had died. We thought he was kidding and chuckled. Then he told us he was serious and we were shocked. We dumped our stuff at the hostel and walked into the city (about 45 minutes from the hostel to the center) where we got coffee, breakfast (which was brunch by that point), and sat around using wifi for three hours. Then we walked around the city a bit getting information and planning what to do for the next few days. Throughout the city we could hear Michael Jackson’s music playing from bars and cafes. It was like a huge memorial to him. We could also hear people talking about it everywhere.

Amsterdam is small, and everyone rides a bike. I knew to expect that, but there are bikes everywhere. Cyclists have dedicated bike lanes on almost all roads. They don’t slow down for people; instead, they ring their bell. Crossing the street is complicated because, at some intersections, you have to cross the bike lane, then the car lane, then the tram tracks, then another car lane and the other bike lane. None of these lanes are particularly wide, but you have to be really careful and aware of your surroundings.

There are also canals and bridges throughout the city. We walked through the red-light district where we could see the girls behind glass doors. They stand around in their skimpy outfits hoping to attract attention from the passers-by. You’re not really allowed to take their photograph as you pass, but you are allowed to photograph the neighborhood during the daytime. On the way back to the hostel we stopped and got groceries, which was frustrating because the packaging is all in Dutch and I have no idea what’s in half the stuff the store, had. There were tons of prepackaged salads, but I couldn’t buy any of them because I couldn’t easily identify all of the ingredients. However, I did find a single serving of raw broccoli. I bought that, along with a cucumber and some fruit. Our hostel doesn’t have a kitchen, which is unfortunate. Otherwise, it’s a really nice place. It’s huge and used to be a school. Everything is new and shiny and there’s recycling!

Saturday I went around to museums while Jess hung out in the hostel. First, I went to the Anne Frank House. I got there at 9:15 (it opens at 9, but they hadn’t opened yet) and had to wait on a short line. Once inside, I began in the basement which was the storage facility for the jam company that her father ran. The museum had her quotes throughout it in both English and Dutch. On that level, I watched a short video about her life and the Jewish experience in the Netherlands during and preceding the Holocaust. On the first floor, I stood in the offices where Frank’s father worked and the “helpers” spent their days. These were the people who helped hide the family. On that level there was another short video, an interview with one of the helpers: the woman who rescued and safeguarded the diary. Passing through the bookcase/door I climbed the steep stairs up to the attic apartments. The stairs were so narrow that they were almost like a ladder. There was no furniture in the apartments. Actually, most of the museum was empty. There were some display cases and some quotes on the walls, but the focus was on the text and the space. Frank’s father did not want the apartment furnished because the original furnishings were taken when the Nazis ransacked the place just after taking the family. He did allow historians to furnish the place once and record a video of it. He also aided in the construction of scale models.

In 2009, I could see the rooms and there were some displays on the walls. These were of items the family used: Latin lessons, a Dickens book, a menu for a party. There were wall markings where the children’s height was recorded. Anne’s room had pictures up on the wall. There was also one place with a small map which Mr. Frank used to track the Allies as they moved through Normandy. It was a different perspective on something which I had just seen because I had just been in Normandy and stood in the places he had marked. The apartment was tiny, especially when you think of the eight people who had lived there. It was also dark: the museum-style lighting was bright enough, but the curtains were all drawn. This made it easy to see how claustrophobic the apartment must have been for the family. After going up through the space, visitors were guided into a new building where various versions of the diary are housed in display cases. They have copies of all the languages it’s been published in including Yiddish, Georgian, and Korean among others. They also have the actual red plaid diary that Anne used.

Exiting the museum, there was a new exhibit about Freedom. Two video screens were set up in a room which had theater-style seating. One screen was used for short videos, each ending in a question. For example: Should people be able to burn the flag as a means of protest? Should Holocaust-deniers be allowed to publish their thoughts on the web? Should the Spanish government shut down the Basque-language newspaper because it suspects possibly ties to ETA? Should headscarves be banned from French schools? (The video was a little outdated because Sarcozy just banned burkas from France.) After the videos the audience was supposed to vote (yes/no) for each question. The other screen had graphs showing the results of our voting and the results of everyone who had been to the exhibit. Because I had been there early in the morning, there were not many people in the room. After the French question, three girls got up and left. I knew that these girls were French because I stood behind them in the queue at the entrance. They didn’t even say anything to each other when leaving. They just shared a glance, stood up and walked out. I really liked the exhibit because it forced people to think. Most of the videos were about different countries, making it likely that a viewer would watch one about his or her country and, therefore, be forced to think about issues that are close to home.

The next museum I visited was the Rijksmuseum, dedicated to the 17^th Century “Golden Age” in the Netherlands. I must have missed that bit of European history when I was supposed to learn about the Spanish, French and English fighting over Dutch territory. Apparently that was the case until the Dutch finally overthrew the Spanish after the 80s years war (1568-1648). Anyway, they established a republic, got some ships, started sailing around the world and became quite powerful. The lower floor of the museum focused on their wealth and acquisition of goods. My favorite room was dedicated to doll houses that rich women would maintain as a status symbol. These were elaborate and could cost as much as a modest (life-sized) canal house. The doll houses had several floors and miniature furniture much like the ones I played with as a child. These however were made of much more elaborate materials. The other interesting room on this floor was one which housed delftware. This is the name for blue-and-white pottery made in Delft to replace pottery of the same style that the Dutch imported from China. They started making their own version when they could no longer import because of a Chinese civil war in 1657. My mother later informed me that we have a piece of Delftware at house: a plate.

Upstairs was dedicated to Dutch art, which is one of my favorite collections in most museums. Because the Netherlands was predominatntly Protestant, there was little religious art. In most other countries, the Catholic Church commissioned most of the artwork, especially large scale works. In the Netherlands, artists produced small paintings and preferred landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. I wish they had more portraits by Frans Hals because I like his lose “rough” style. His subjects always seem happy because he gives them life instead of painting stiff, traditional portraits. The museum had landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael and his uncle S. J. van Ruysdael. Jacob is the better-known painter, but I like the uncle’s work better: he keeps the horizon line low and paints lots of sky. Even more than their works, I discovered that I really like the riverscapes because they remind me of Cape Cod. I saw many more at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The museum had a bunch of Rembrandt’s paintings including “Nightwatch,” his largest painting and the first painting of a militia company in motion. It’s a huge painting that was actually cut down from its original size because it was moved to a smaller space. In it, Rembrandt depicts all the wealthy men in one militia company that defended the city. Some still life paintings I really liked were those by Adrian Corte whose small paintings were of a few fruits or vegetables rather than an entire table-full.

Then there were the Vermeer paintings. The museum only had three because one was on loan. The first one I encountered was “The Little Street” (1658). This painting is what it sounds like, a picture of a little street in Delft. In it, he depicts the buildings rather than people (his norm). He applied the paint thick in some places, and thin in others. He also used smooth brush strokes in some parts of the painting and rough ones in other parts, like the bricks, for example. It’s a peaceful street scene, but not as great as some of his other works. I prefer his intimate depictions of women placed in a white-walled room with the light entering from the left. “The Kitchen Maid” (1658) is one of those paintings. In it, he used dots (kind of a mini pointillism) to show the reflection in the bread and the woman’s skirt. You can only see the dots if you look really closely at the painting. Vermeer was a genius with light. His third painting at the museum was “Woman Reading a Letter” (1663), another intimate scene, though not quite as iconic of his work.

Behind the Rijksmuseum was the Van Gogh Museum. I had purchased a museum pass (it’s actually an annual student membership to many Dutch museums; it was only 22 euro and it more than paid for itself). One floor of the museum was dedicated to Van Gogh’s work and life. The other two were used for another exhibit and another wing was loaned to the Stedelijk Museum (modern art) which is closed due to remodeling. I had not realized Van Gogh only painted for ten years. When he was 28, he decided to become a painter. He basically dropped everything and started painting constantly. His first five years as an artist were spent in the Netherlands where he painted dark, realistic, “pleasant” paintings. He then moved to Paris where his brother worked as an art dealer. He spent the next five years of his life (these were also the last five years of his life) in France, where he painted the works which made him famous. The museum had some of them, including “The Bedroom” (1888), which was a really interesting painting: very flat and planar with each plain representing “sleep” and “rest.” The colors were brighter than his Dutch paintings and, therefore, this painting was given a much lighter tone. Van Gogh was crazy. He cut off his own ear, then spent time in a mental institution, took himself out and shot himself. The museum had one of the last paintings he made: “Wheatfield with crows” (1890). This painting is more typical of the works he is famous for: it’s brightly colored and the brush strokes are flowy and loose. People think the crows represent “death” and that this painting was meant to foreshadow his death.

The special exhibit wasn’t great, but the modern art museum’s exhibit was nice. It wasn’t fantastic or large, rather one room dedicated to artists in the 1920s and another dedicated to the 1960s. In the 1920s section, there were works by Dutch De Stijl artists. These included “Contra Composition V” (1924) by Theo Van Doesburg. He used primary colors like Mondrian, but his lines are diagonal to show “restless dynamism.” I also liked a painting by George Geosz called “The Rabble Rouser” (1928) because it was somewhat dada – about a nightmare – but there were cartoon heads that had political meanings and the colors were muted. The works were around a curved wall. The artist’s name along with the city and year the piece was created were painted in black letters below each piece. The exhibit focused more on European artists for the 1960s section which I was glad about because I’m so used to seeing only American artists in that category. Instead, I learned about Yves Klein whose gilded panel called “Resonance MG16” (1960, Paris) was a large gold-leaf panel covering concave recesses. The best piece on the floor was the precursor to a piece we saw at the Tate Modern in London. It was a video called “Neo-Classic” (1971) by Robert Morris, an American. He filmed an exhibit he put on at the Tate (then London’s Tate Gallery) where he had three actors give a performance with his wooden objects. These “objects” were the same things we got to experience in the Tate turbine room: a large hamster wheel and the same slides and things to climb on. It was strange to see an almost 40-year-old representation of something I got to see in reality a few weeks ago. Especially considering that I thought it was new because it was in the Tate turbine room which is a large, open space used for special exhibitions only.

Wandering back through the city, I went next to Rembrandt’s House. He lived there when he was at the height of his career, from 1639 until he had to sell everything in 1656 because he went bankrupt. He wrote a list of everything he owned, so historians were able to recreate the rooms. You enter the museum through the basement where you see the kitchen, which was large. Then I went upstairs to the entrance room and his bedroom. At Rembrandt’s time, people slept in box beds – a kind of armoire with a short bed. They actually slept sitting up because they were afraid they would stop breathing if they lay down. The upper floors of the house were Rembrandt’s studios. Here, I watched a demonstration of how paint was mixed during the time period. I also saw his engravings which were incredible. The amount of attention he paid to the details and the care he took in creating the plates is evident in the prints. Unfortunately there weren’t many on display because most of the museum was showing his friend’s work. Jan Lievens was considered a “child prodigy.” He and Rembrandt did work together – in one series of prints, Rembrandt uses a figure from Lievens and adds to it.

That evening, Jess came to town and we met up and grabbed some groceries for dinner. While sitting on a bench, we discovered that pigeons really do eat just about anything. We got one to eat raisins with egg salad on them. Then we walked to the red light district, went to a bar and had beers/cider and fries. We sat on the sidewalk watching people go by. The bar we had picked had hilarious rules. People were allowed to smoke outside, but not inside. You could drink inside or outside, but only if you had a table outside. People were getting yelled at for taking their drinks outside with them while they smoked. There was a doorway next to the bar that had to remain unblocked, but a table could be placed within three feet (not too close, but it still blocked the residents from entering their building). The fries were good and the cider too; it was a really nice night and we enjoyed being outside.

Then we walked the red light district at night time and looked at the girls as we passed by their doors. Each girl stands behind a glass door which is lit with a red fluorescent bulb above it; most have black light inside or next to the door. Some of the girls are pretty and have nice bodies, while others are more full-figured. A few didn’t bother wearing skimpy clothing, but most had on thongs or short, tight skirts. People wave to them as they pass and we did see at least one guy going into a room. Some girls had their curtains closed to show they were “busy.”

Sunday we took the train to The Hague where we visited the Mauritshuis. I had always wanted to go there, but didn’t understand where it was when I first started studying art history. I was confused as to how there could be a town called “The Hague.” I didn’t understand the way a town could have “the” in its name. The Mauritshuis is an old palace, so the collection is shown in small, intimate rooms and the building itself is also on display.

Five years after my introduction to Vermeer’s work, I was finally seeing the town where his best-known painting hangs. “Girl With a Pearl Earring” (1665) is located here. It’s not actually a portrait, but rather an example of a Dutch tronie, a painting based off of a model but designed to show an expression or style rather than an exact portrait. The reflection off of her earring is enough to make the painting “a great.” In 1881, the painting sold for the equivalent of one euro. It would go for tons more if sold today.

The museum had only two more works by Vermeer. One was “Diana and Her Nymphs” (1653-4). One of Vermeer’s first works, this painting is large and shows five females in a woods scene. They’re outdoors, which is strange for Vermeer. After his lifetime, someone painted the dark, tree-filled background with a bright blue sky. In 1999 historians discovered that Vermeer intended the background to be brown and they, realizing it could not be restored correctly, painted the background black. I was pretty put-off by this because ethically I don’t think the work should have been changed. If it could have been restored, that would have been best, but changing it in this way was not appropriate. The third painting of Vermeer’s was “View of Delft” (1660-1). It’s his other townscape (see Rijksmuseum) and again he used pointillism ot show reflections in the water and on the ship. Vermeer had a short life: he died at 43 and really only painted two works a year. There are only 37 paintings attributed to him. During his life, anyone in town could own one of his paintings, including the baker of Delft. He was basically forgotten in the 18^th century, but rediscovered in the 1850s when people began painting reproductions of his works.

The Mauritshuis had some other paintings which were interesting. These included a series by Cornelis Troost. Calle NELRI (1739-1740), he was an actor who did five paintings that are like a play showing the effects of drinking too much. I also found more riverscapes I liked, including those by Aert van der Neer (1650s). Apparently Cynthia Nixon (Miranda from Sex and the City) was at the museum when we were there. I didn’t see her, but Jess did.

After the museum, we wandered around The Hague a bit. There was an Iran-related demonstration in a plaza. We couldn’t understand any of the languages being spoken and there weren’t that many people there. The only police presence was a bike cop and a security guard from a nearby building. We walked around the pedestrianized streets browsing at the stores there and having a really hard time finding the train station. This was because all the signs led us to the same place. Finally we asked, went there and hopped a train to Delft.

Delft is where Vermeer was born, lived and painted. We found information kiosks where we could print out maps of the city. We walked through the downtown which is full of canals and pedestrian-zones to the Vermeercentrum, a museum on his life and work. First we watched a video about him, then we saw reproductions of all of his works (none of the originals are in Delft anymore). Upstairs the museum had recreated his studio and we could pretend we were in one of his works. Then we read about his techniques and his use of light before going upstairs again to an exhibit on symbols of love in his paintings. The museum was closing shortly after we got there. We managed to see the bulk of the space, but didn’t get to spend much time in the hands-on section in the basement. It taught about his friends and Delft during his lifetime. We bought a map that took us on a Vermeer walking tour. We saw the church where he and his mother were buried as well as the house he grew up in, the house his father grew up in and the house he and his wife bought. Throughout the town there were cubes with information about his paintings and his life. The panel about “Girl With a Pearl Earring” inaccurately attributed the role of the girl to Colin Firth instead of Scarlet Johansson (Colin plays Vermeer). We had a good laugh reading that.

We then used one of our printed maps to take a Dutch East India Company (VOC) walking tour of Delft. We saw some buildings where VOC administrators lived as well as the main warehouse and office building. Delft, with is canals, was a really important city in its height. Today, it’s really charming and a great place to walk around. We wished we had come here earlier in the day, or at least that we had more energy, because it really was a tranquil, pretty place. People were sitting outside at plazas, relaxing and enjoying the day. It was a nice side trip outside Amsterdam.

Monday we woke up and took the tram to the Jordaan district, which was the poorer part of the city in the 1800s. Now, it’s full of galleries and fits in with the rest of hipster Amsterdam. We peaked into windows and walked through a flea market. We wandered around the canals trying to see into as many houseboats (really more like floating houses) as possible. Some were quite posh and really nicely decorated. Passing more trendy cafés, stores and galleries, we crossed the city and wound up in another flea market where we spent a few hours looking at old postcards trying to find places we’d been to or knew well. Then we sat at a café for a while. We found an awesome place serving bagels, coffee and fresh juices. I had a soy latte, while listening to John Mayer and Jack Johnson and using the internet….so homey.