Amsterdam: Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll.... and Van Gogh! Part 1/2: Saturday

Wow, Amsterdam is a crazy city. Kind of makes Vegas look like Pee-Wee's Playhouse (uh, bad example) Mr. Rogers Neighborhood in comparison.

There's really no good way to sum up the city as a whole, so I'll do a little play-by-play here of what I did in my 36 hours. Commentary provided free of charge, as usual :-)

So, after my 4 hour train ride from Hannover, my first objective was to get a little red card called the "I Amsterdam card" (get it? get it?). This pricey little item was good for 24, 48, or 72 hours depending on the amount of cash shelled out for it, but gave you unlimited access to most of the big museums, unlimited travel on the local trains/buses, and various discounts on impossible to find hole-in-the-wall mediocre restaurants. I opted for the 24 hour card, which I highly recommend for anyone going to Amsterdam and who has completely lost their mind. The 24 hour card costs 33 Euro (about $45), and as the name implies, is valid for 24 hours from the time you first swipe it to use it. Here's the catch though: The museums aren't open at night! So, with each museum costing between 10 and 15 Euro per person, you'd have to see 3+ museums in 1 day. Oh yeah and on the weekends, 1 day = 9 or 10am to 5:30pm. Ever try and do that? You're basically talking ~2 hours (plus travel time) per museum, leaving approximately 10.3 seconds per priceless work of art, just to break even. Plus the 1 hour waiting in line to buy the damn card.

Aaaaanyway, after successfully being suckered into the card scam, I got a quick bite to eat then headed straight for the Van Gogh museum. Overall a very nice place, though in all honesty, it was a bit small. They had several of his most famous works (self portraits, etc), many of his lesser-known paintings, and a nice history of his life, but that was about it. Still, it was well laid out, had nice descriptions, and seemed to handle crowds pretty well. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This reflecting pool type area houses a special Japanese art exhibit. Van Gogh painted 3 works in a Japanese-art style (rare for him), which are also here. There's a reprint of one of them hanging in our kitchen, from Tew's visit to Amsterdam earlier this year. Van Gogh said 'Go to the museum as often as you can' in 1873, and the quote is reproduced in about 2 dozen languages on this big wall. Pretty cool. (Right half of the wall is visible here)

After the Van Gogh museum I was going to head to the Rijks Museum, which houses most of Rembrandt's works, but it was drizzling, the line was long, and I tend to get museumed-out very easily. So much for my 24 hour museum power trip. After checking out a nice train-tourbus accident around the corner for a bit, I decided to do what I enjoy the most: Picking a direction, and walking until I find something interesting.

Exploring the city was really nice - the architecture is beautiful, and the canal system adds a nice touch. Along particular stretches of the canal people have semi-permanently parked their houseboats, which are pretty neat:

This one has its lawn on its roof. Probably not a bad idea considering the insulation factor it gives you as well.

After wandering around for about an hour, I found myself near the Anne Frank House, which I promised myself I would see. However, the line was around the block and not moving at all, so I decided to postpone until first thing Sunday morning. I jumped on a nearby train, and sped back to the main train station to catch my bearings.

I had an appointment for a tour in the early evening Saturday not too far from the central station, so I decided to scope it out and explore the nearby area. Well, in between the station and my meeting spot was the Red Light District. Hoooooly crap.

The Red Light District (RLD, from here on in) is Amsterdam's dirty little secret, that's not so little, and certainly not a secret any more. There one can visit a coffeeshop, where they do serve coffee, but where you can also find small quantities of a particular green plant. Let's just say I saw more Bob Marley paintings than Van Gogh paintings, and VG has an entire museum. From what I read beforehand the coffeeshops expect you to stay in the shop while you partake, as it's apparently 'bad form' to go out on the streets while under the influence. The other famous, *ahem* activity in the RLD of course involves women of the night, though from experience (no, not that kind of experience), I can tell you that they're not only out at night, but 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Walking through the RLD is a very surreal experience. The area is a few blocks wide and a few blocks long, and if the local establishments were closed/gone, would be an absolutely beautiful part of the city. Canals, big trees, bridges, etc. However, add in the coffeeshops that look like they're fogged in, brothels with half naked women tapping on the glass and waving you over, and porn shops galore, and it changes the mood of the city a bit. Apparently locals mostly stay away and leave it to the tourists, which seems to be A-OK with the women and creepy guys on the corner trying to sell you non-coffeehouse type drugs.

The women, most of whom are not, I repeat, not attractive, all have their own window booth complete with black and/or neon lights, where they're dressed in either a bikini or skimpy lingerie, and standing around pointing and waving, or smoking, or text messaging, or sitting looking positively bored. If someone is interested in their services, they approach the window (which is often actually a big door with just 1 big pane of glass), speak to the women and figure out what's going to happen, then enter and disappear. Some windows have curtains that close when nobody is there, or maybe when someone is there. Interspersed between these establishments there are shops where one can buy DVDs and assorted supplies. Interspersed between these are clubs where you can pay and go watch folks actually having a go at it on the stage. Live.

I'd post pictures, but can't/won't for the following reasons: (1) Ewww. (2) Picture taking is actually strongly discouraged, usually by the big bouncer types outside of the clubs. Various signs in the windows also tell you it's forbidden, and rumors are that the brothels' security forces will take your film, or camera, or worse. Though I'm tough and like to fight bouncers on the weekend at Fight Club, I didn't feel like throwing them in the canals and embarrassing them, so I kept the camera in the bag.

After a decent dinner, I met up with my tourguide. However, this wasn't going to be just any kind of tour. I was going to take a tour on a Segway, one of those 2-wheeled stand-up scooters!

Ok, I know it has nothing to do specifically with Amsterdam or Hannover, but these Segways are so damn cool. It took me about 30 seconds to feel comfortable on it, and to move fowards or backwards all you do is lean forward/back ever so slightly, and off you go! By the end its almost like the thing is reading your mind, and you don't even notice yourself leaning anymore. Plus, not once did I feel like I was on any kind of movable platform... no hesitation, no tilting, nothing. It just felt like a step.

Sorry for the low quality of this pic... obviously I wasn't taking it, and I think the tourguide got a little too far away for the flash to work effectively. Oh well.

For the next 2-ish hours we zipped around Amsterdam, visiting several churches, canals, restaurants, clubs, plazas, and historical sights. We stayed on the scooters the whole time, stopping a few times to take pictures or cross busy streets. Though we did a get a few hoots and hollars (my favorite being from a semi-drunk Irish guy who yelled "Now that's just f*cking lazy!"), though mostly people just wanted to take pictures of us flying by. We supposedly got up to about 8-10mph, which doesn't sound fast, but it really is. 8mph on a bike is one thing, but standing up straight with little to nothing around you is another. Next time you're on a treadmill kick it up to 8mph, and pretend your zooming along cobblestone streets with cars, bikes and people around you, and you're just standing there like you're in an elevator. It's totally bizarre. Incredibly fun, but bizarre. You don't even have to hold on to the handlebars unless you're turning, so cruising along you can even do the Titanic-arms-spread-in-the-wind-thing.

But alas, eventually the tour came to a close, and I walked (ugh, how inefficient) back to the train station, caught a train to the airport (~15 minutes), and checked into my hotel. Fell asleep shortly thereafter, to awake to day #2 in Amsterdam. Read on....

**Day 2/2 post coming soon***