Awkward in Amsterdam

Throughout my trip so far I’ve tended to book accommodation and transport to the next place on the first day I arrive at the place I’m currently at, my thinking being that this way I have a plan for when it’s time to leave without it being a worry at the back of my mind.

Back in Berlin I’d planned to do the Sachsenhausen concentration camp tour on my last day there and reasoned (not unreasonably, I felt) that afterwards I’d be in need of something a little more easy going for a while. So, I fired up Google Maps and reasoning Amsterdam was as good a place as any I sorted out a night bus and hostel and thought no more of it.

The flaw in my system, of course, lies in the fact that sometimes when I’m booking the next place to go it can be 5 or 6 days before I have to leave and when I don’t know the current place at all. At the time I booked Amsterdam I found Berlin quiet and not very vibrant or interesting and wanted something a bit more lively, but of course as time went on and I discovered more about Berlin I realised that my Amsterdam plan probably wasn’t all that great. Additionally, by leaving when I was and not hanging around I wouldn’t be able to do the Sachsenhausen tour anyway.

Still, I’d booked it (and it was non-refundable, boo!) so I’d have to stick to it. What I should have done was said “hang the expense!” and stayed an extra few days in Berlin, though probably in a different hostel. Never mind though! It meant I could add a fifth country to my travels.

I arrived by night bus (much better than night trains, in my opinion) and all was fine, I think I managed some half-decent sleep which really is about all you can ask for from a night bus. I had a breakfast of coffee and croissant and was ready to go check out Amsterdam.

Before that though, I badly needed to use the toilet and can I just say here I think there’s a special place in Hell reserved for the person or people or committee or coven who came up with the idea of charging for using the bathroom. I get the point of wanting to discourage vagrants but it’s an especially cruel trick to play on travellers when you’re about 2 minutes from having a very public, very embarrassing accident and all you can find in your pockets are Swedish kroner, your S-bahn ticket and a chocolate bar wrapper.

Muttering and feeling sure this was somehow connected to Brexit I finally found the 70 cents and was able to avoid embarrassment for a short time at least and stowing my luggage in Centraal Station I went out to have a look around.

(A sidenote: when travelling something that makes me giggle inside is on hearing a different language to pretend the speaker is quite, quite mad and talking utter gibberish and not a language at all. This is much easier to play when people are speaking Dutch because the language sounds so much like English).

(I realise this game might make me seem quite, quite mad).

Amsterdam is the first place on my trip that I’ve previously been to — I came here with a couple of friends some years ago and all of a sudden I remembered more about the place than I had in Berlin.

Most crucially, I remembered that I don’t like Amsterdam very much. As a place I think it’s fine, nothing that a bit of a tidy up wouldn’t fix (they have a lot of litter) but the worst, the very worst thing is the amount of people. Everywhere was busy, and not even busy with locals, it seemed to be loud groups of English tourists (and this was in November, it must be utter Hell in the summer).

My least favourite was the girl complaining loudly to her friends that their group of 5 had to share with a “randomer” in their six person room. She said it with such vitriol, as though it was a personal affront that she should have to share with someone she didn’t know. As an almost full time randomer myself I luckily haven’t had to be in a room where everyone else know each other and can only hope it stays that way. I felt sorry for that randomer, and decided to help out by drowning the girl in the canal. (Not really. But I’m pretty certain I accidentally splashed her when I stomped through a puddle).

The hostel itself was quite pleasant, with a large room and decent privacy compared to my Berlin bunk. It wasn’t the best location, situated in Diemen in the middle of what seemed to be an office complex. At least it was reasonably quiet despite being directly under the flight path, and also unlike my Berlin hostel there were people around to chat to.

My dorm buddies were much more entertaining than in Berlin, especially a giant called Omar who would always introduce himself in an extremely loud voice “HELLO. I AM OMAR, FROM EGYPT. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” which really seemed to alarm one of the other guys. He was a pleasant guy but his introduction does need a bit of work to not sound like an interrogation.

I don’t know if it was the near-constant rain or that I’d enjoyed Berlin so much but I didn’t seem to have much enthusiasm for wandering around and really had to force it. The canals and parks dotted around were really nice, but at the time didn’t really seem worth getting soaked for, especially as I’d been here before. I seemed to spend most of my time dashing for cover, waiting for the rain to stop.

During my wanderings I stumbled across the famous Red Light District, for some one of the main attractions of the city. I found it just so seedy, and being basically a British gentleman traveller from about 150 years ago attempted to beat a hasty retreat to somewhere safer but every street I seemed to go down though was in some way seedier or more explicit. Brief glimpses in the shop windows would lead to questions in my mind of “What? How? Why would you..?”. I decided it was safer to concentrate on my shoes.

Feeling very awkward and out of place I decided to go to the Anne Frank House, but apparently it’s online tickets only right now and I couldn’t buy one for any of the times I was around which was a bit frustrating, so I went to the Verzetsmuseum instead. This is the museum dedicated to Dutch resistance during the Second World War. It feels like quite an overlooked museum, it’s not in the centre (thank goodness) and requires a tram or metro to get there. I think being in the same city as the Anne Frank Museum hinders it too, as it’s much less famous and I think if people wanted to go to a World War II museum while they’re in Amsterdam they’d probably pick the Anne Frank one.

Well, don’t! I’m not saying don’t go to Anne Frank, but it is so difficult just to get in that it ends up taking much more time than just time in the museum. And there’s also the fact that the Verzetsmuseum is incredibly well-presented; the exhibits are all beautifully done and the audio guide (free!) enhances the experience. Rather than just present the historical facts, it presents them in such a way as to ask what you, the visitor, would do under occupation of a foreign regime — would you co-operate, resist or adapt? It’s a very interesting question and in the museum it shows you what happened to people who made specific choices. It was great and I loved it.

I was at a bit of a loss of what to do afterwards though. I did a fairly underwhelming bus tour that was way too expensive and the list of things left available didn’t seem brilliant. Heineken Experience, anyone? Yeah, me neither. I decided instead to escape the seemingly constant rain and do some laundry and have an argument with someone who was cross with me taking their stuff out of the only dryer that they’d helpfully left in there.

I really struggled with Amsterdam and felt awkward and out of place about 90% of the time. Maybe I’m getting old (I know I’m getting old) and I’m probably completely missing the point but in all honesty it seemed a lot like a place for adult children. In terms of prices it isn’t even especially cheap, so I had no remorse in helping myself liberally to the free cheese samples in the cheese shops. Next time, somewhere more sensible!

Written on November 17th, 2017 by David Seddon