Absoluut Dood

I left Friday afternoon for a weekend in Amsterdam with my friend Liv. We met at Eindhoven Airport early Friday night, Liv having flown in from Florence and landed a few minutes before me. We took the bus from the airport to Amsterdam Centraal, a trip which costed €25 and lasted over two hours. We were fascinated on the bus by how similar the Netherlands highway is to one you might drive on in America. Firstly, for me it was odd to be back on the right side of the road. But the similarities we noticed most of all were all the car dealerships, big and bright billboards, and the abundance of space on the road. This made us both a bit nostalgic, though in a weird way. I do not particularly miss the highways in the United States, but seeing something that felt similar did evoke this kind of longing for home I have not yet felt this semester. Amplifying this was the presence of other Americans on the bus, chatting and laughing loud enough for all to hear. (This is a trope of my experience so far, especially on the Tube.) So the bus ride was a bit disorienting, as travel tends to be, especially in those incipient hours after landing.

We arrived and sorted out 48-hour tram passes, which only costed €12 for unlimited access. It was a great investment, because out Airbnb was on a tram line that took only ten minutes to reach from Centraal Station, but would have taken about an hour to reach by foot. We made it to our place in no time and were really happy with the flat we had chosen. Our host was a local, very friendly and helpful, and the flat itself was spectacular. The place is outside the center of the city, in the Docklands to the north, and the building is tucked between two small harbors.

In the morning, we took the tram into town and ate Dutch pancakes for breakfast. We figured it would be a suitable start to a brief Dutch adventure. And it was. But, the things themselves were huge, so it was a bit of a struggle for me to finish the entire thing. I am glad I did, because I wasn't hungry again until we ate dinner!

Liv had Nutella with strawberries, I had Nutella with bananas

We then began wandering aimlessly. Amsterdam is a great place to do this because it is so small and easy to get around. I surprised myself on this trip because I didn't do much research in advance and it still turned out to be a great time. I usually like to have an idea of what I want to do, but we found a good balance between pursuing the must-dos and finding things randomly.

We found a store selling Dutch cheese and those immaculate snacks Stroopwafels. The selection of cheese seemed endless, even vertiginous, from certain perspectives...

Having decided we wanted to visit a museum, we walked toward the Anne Frank House. The line, like the shelves of cheese in the store, was endless. We decided we would try to come back later. So we went off in the direction of the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum. But first, we took some time to appreciate the magnificence of Amsterdam's canals.

We walked under the archway of the Rijksmuseum to find the infamous iAmsterdam sign flocked with tourists, so we took our picture with the sign from afar, and I think it turned out to be a good photo-op.

I thought ice skating there would be fun, but the charge was €8 for two hours and it wouldn't have been worth it with so much to explore around us. We were not sure where the entrance to the museum was, so I asked a man standing behind a desk at the Stedelijk; he was wearing round spectacles and a black turtleneck and was bald (and I know these are minor details, but I can still imagine the entire scene unfolding). When I pronounced the last name "Goh" he leaned in, bemused, and asked with a tilt in his neck, "Van Hoh?" So that is apparently the Dutch pronunciation. He directed us, smiling, probably internally cursing at the insouciance of Americans. But for me there was something endearing about that moment.

So we went to the Van Gogh Museum and waited in line, which only took about twenty minutes. The Van Gogh Museum was for me a totally speechless experience. I have always loved his work and I have favorites, but it is something entirely different to see his paintings up close. The museum emphasized his relationship with his brother Theo, his source of support and love in the world, whose son would establish the museum in the twentieth century. The museum does a fantastic job of synthesizing different documents and sources of inspiration from Vincent's life: letters he wrote, novels he read, paintings he admired, a vase he painted in a still life, and the like. I was struck by an article written by his friend, Albert Aurier, who wrote the first public recognition of Van Gogh's work. Here's an excerpt that moved me and perplexed me:

From "The Isolated Ones" in Mercure de France, January 1890

In almost all his canvases, beneath this morphic exterior, beneath this flesh that is very much flesh, beneath this matter that is very much matter, there lies, for the spirit that knows how to find it, a thought, an idea, and this Idea, the essential substratum of the work is at the same time its efficient and final cause. 

I spent a long time looking at two of Van Gogh's paintings in particular: "Undergrowth" (which I had never seen before in any medium, but ended up buying a postcard of) and "Garden of the Asylum" (which I had seen reproduced many times before). Reader, if you are ever in Amsterdam, visit this museum.

We left after wandering around the entire building and encountered a political protest. The crowd was set around a stage where a band was playing reggae and the vibes were good so we lingered. A young man, probably a few years older than us approached us with a clipboard and told us a bit about the protest. It was aimed at urging the Dutch government to provide free shelter for homeless refugees in Amsterdam. The fact that this seems plausible in the Netherlands demonstrates the size and scale of things there, which is such a transition from the United States, and is absolutely refreshing.

I asked the same guy if he could tell us about a good place to get a drink. I said we wanted a good place to get a Heineken. He made a grossed-out face and said "Don't drink Heineken here. Get something better." He suggested Cafe Berkhout around the corner, and told us to drink De Koninck. This turned out to be brilliant advice. The cafe was a great place to watch people bicycling and wandering about, and the beer was probably one of the best I have ever had. Really, this beer is nectar of the gods. If I could have taken some back to London with me, I would have.

After decompressing in the cafe, we walked to Vondelpark, the largest public park in Amsterdam. Being there validated this romantic idea I have of Europeans being very active and happy people. Everyone there seemed to be running and on a bicycle, and smiling while they were doing it. We even saw a guy dancing like Napoleon Dynamite on a pair of rollerblades with a boombox playing funk music beside him. I began to think this was my kind of place.

We sat by a large pond and watched the birds chase each other around, and the sky turning from light to purple to black.

We decided it was time to find some food. We wanted a cheap but traditional Dutch meal. We didn't exactly find something Dutch but it was cheap. For dinner, we ate Schnitzel at Cafe Lusthof, a cozy restaurant that for some reason called to mind old Europe, though I don't know why. I didn't mind the meal, but I didn't love it. Still, of course, I am glad I tried something somewhat local and traditional.

After dinner we walked back to the Anne Frank House where we made it just in time for the last admission. I have never read Anne Frank's diary, but she has always had a kind of mythic presence in my understanding of the Holocaust and World War Two. I was moved, but it was an ambiguous experience for me. Touring the house, I felt like I had to engage my imagination to really experience the place as tourists are intended to experience it. But, for some reason, this felt a bit shameful. Again, it was an ambiguous feeling being there, but very sad and melancholic for certain.

Our next destination has an ironic place in the itinerary: the Red Light District. It was, emotionally, an inappropriate follow-up after touring the Frank family's hiding place. Still, I don't think I would have liked the place on any occasion; the Red Light District is scummy and pretty uncomfortable to walk through. There, we saw some unprintable things, which, though disturbing and shocking, were fascinating to observe as a cultural outsider. It seemed, somehow, the main drag of Amsterdam's nightlife, but this is the perception of a tourist. Even though there were many people walking through the area with friends and drinks and songs, out host later told us that it is a huge point of contention in the Dutch government and that most people from Amsterdam do not go there often, if ever.

Venturing through here made me think of the Dutch photographer, Ed van der Elsken. He began his career in the 1950's in Amsterdam, taking what might now be considered traditional photographs of urban life. Here are a few examples:

I got thinking about Elsken because of the shift, later in his career when he worked in Paris, where he developed his style to be much more provocative, sexually explicit, and shocking. So, I wonder how growing up and starting out in proximity to this neighborhood and its history might have influenced his later work. He had a really productive career as a photographer and many of his photographs are extraordinary. I had forgotten he was Dutch until I saw a postcard of one of his photographs in a shop that day.

The next day, we took it easy and wandered around a bit more. Our host suggested we take the train to the airport instead of the bus, because it is much quicker, a bit cheaper, and at least takes you through the Dutch countryside. She also suggested we have breakfast at Dwaze Zaken, a cafe a short walk from Centraal Station. We explored a bit more, bought some Gouda and Stroopwafels (of which my supply is dwindling too quickly now...), and then settled into a cafe for breakfast. We eventually found Dwaze Zaken, where we had a last drink before heading back to Eindhoven. The train ride offered magnificent views of the Dutch countryside--the kind that called to mind Van Gogh's drive to replicate the beauty of pastoral life.

Here are a few last photos I took of the city before we left:

Amsterdam Centraal Station

Sint Nicolaaskerk (Saint Nicholas's Basilica)

I know, this is a long post, but I saw so much in this city and have so much to say about it!

So, I will explain the title of the post. I encountered this phrase at the Van Gogh Museum on one of the captions for a painting. I laughed when I saw it, my thoughts first reminded of The Dude from "The Big Lebowski." Then I read the translation on the caption from Dutch to English. "Absoluut dood," the caption told me, means "absolutely surpassed" in English. Cool, I thought. If I ever learn Dutch, I will go out of my way to use that phrase.

Then I searched the phrase in a Dutch dictionary online, still captivated by it. The dictionary told me "absoluut dood" means "absolutely dead." Wow! That's a huge leap from "absolutely surpassed!" The caption was saying Van Gogh had absolutely surpassed a period of artistry in his career, transcending his former skills. But it was really saying, apparently, rather that a period of Van Gogh's career was absolutely dead in relation to another.

But I have been wondering how "Absoluut Dood" might be transposed as a kind of caption for Europe itself. Here we are, months away from the seventieth anniversary marking the end of the Second World War, a time at which Europe was absolutely dead. Now, in 2015, a traveler can pass through a city like Amsterdam and ignore all things historical.

Do places ever shirk their histories? Will Europe always be“Absoluut Dood” in the directly translated sense, as a result of World War Two? Or is the phrase qualified in the translation that I encountered at the museum -- has Europe “absolutely surpassed” its history? I wonder about this because of a frustration I felt in Amsterdam: that each of my mindless steps was passing over centuries of history that I did not know about. In one canal block, I might have stepped where someone died of Bubonic Plague, where Rembrandt first locked eyes with Hendrijke, where Jewish families were taken into captivity, where students protested in response to the Prague Spring of 1968--perhaps all in the same step. And despite all the trauma of memory and history, everyone in Amsterdam seemed so happy and friendly and helpful.

So, what I am asking is this: what place does history have when we travel somewhere? And if it does have a place in a weekend itinerary, how do we engage with it?

As a result of all this pedantic clatter, I think I am in need of a good snack.

Thankfully I brought back a small wheel of Gouda. It was a terrific trip with Liv, and I am already looking forward to future travel plans!

Toedeledoki! (Dutch for farewell!)