Walkabout, August 17, 2013

I followed up two weeks of intense (4.5 hour per day, plus two hours of homework) Dutch language classes with a weekend of catching up on some work, cleaning my apartment, waking up at 4:45am on Sunday for my fantasy football drafts with my friends from ASU, and, finally, taking a four hour walk around Amsterdam on Sunday.

The rains that were falling when I work up early in the morning stuck around for another five hours, but they did not return despite the low, fast moving, and occasionally dark clouds that floated over Amsterdam for the rest of the day. Even with warm weather (~68 degrees F, or 22 C) and beautiful skies, the streets were almost empty as late as 12:00pm.

View from the bridge over the Amstel near my house

An aside: construction projects are constantly littered across Amsterdam. It helps keep up the fantastic infrastructure, I suppose; I do also wonder if it is a strategic form of government stimulus to the economy.

Keizersgracht, one of the canals around the center of Amsterdam

A houseboat on the Amstel. You can see the ladder connecting it to land on the left.

I'm cheating here - this was taken on Tuesday, five days ago.

The center of Amsterdam bustled a little more, mostly with tourists. The French were everywhere, and I'm not sure if I heard more English, Dutch, or French while walking around. As always, the tourist crowd navigated the streets and traffic customs a bit clumsily, but it also brought an infectious sense of curiosity and joy. 

A typical scene in the center of Amsterdam: fast food and sex shops flanked by old Amsterdam buildings and split by narrow streets. Passersby glance into the sex shop windows while eating fries and falafel. 

Read the Bible, the book for you. Given the (lack of) religiosity in Amsterdam, I'm guessing that this is a less-than-serious message.

A pair of (I think) Italians who tried to navigate this map for several minutes.

After walking around the center for a while, with stops to purchase craft beer, practice Dutch in a coffee shop (the coffee kind, not the weed kind), and grab a sandwich from a deli, I ran across a Sunday used book market near Waterlooplein. I walked through the tents to get a feel for the (as you can see below, older) crowd and the types of books that were being sold. After browsing for a while, I found a table that had Dutch children's books. I leafed through several before identifying two that were (hopefully) around my reading level, and I bought them with the intention of using them to keep practicing my Dutch.

A crowd that was a bit older and a bit more local than that around the Red Light District.

My two new Dutch books.

And, finally, I took a stop by the FOAM, Amsterdam's photography museum. One exhibit detailed an American unit stationed in the Eastern mountains of Afghanistan. It showed men in their early 20's in various stages of boredom and terror, and it detailed some of their thoughts regarding their service and what it meant to them, their country, and the land they were occupying.

A scene of a side of photos of U.S. soldiers sleeping, with battle scenes flanking it.

And, finally, here is the little gem of beer I purchased during my walk around town. Dutch Imperial Russian Stouts, each of which were aged in a different type of barrel. I'll need to get a small group together to compare the tastes, since having all five to myself in one sitting would cause some serious problems (they're all ~11% alcohol).

July walkabout

It has been a very busy summer, with a trip to Miami to give a talk at a conference and do a lot of science related things in mid-July, two friends staying in my apartment during visits to Amsterdam, lots of students to work with, many bootcamp and spin classes, an intense (4.5 hours every day) Dutch class that I'm currently enrolled in, etc. I took a break to decompress by doing one of my favorite things just before my trip to Miami: walk around Amsterdam with my camera and take some pictures of Amsterdam.

It's been a remarkably warm and dry summer, at least by the standards set by my first two summers here. These pictures were taken during one of the first nights of our sustained summer weather, and people were out in droves to enjoy the late sunshine and lingering warmth.

"Brug" is bridge, so this is the Dirk Van Nimwegen bridge

A view of the Oudekerk (old church), which is in what is now the Red Light District, and which hosts the World Press Photo exhibit annually.

Coronas are popular in Amsterdam. This was not mine; someone left an empty on a dock on the Amstel.

The sun setting over the "skinny bridge" on the Amstel

A police boat on the Amstel

Sunset over the Amstel

Bike path along the Amstel, on the way from my apartment into the center of Amsterdam

Cafe bordering the above pictured bike path

One of my favorite views of Amsterdam: the Zuidekerk (south church) from the south

A surprisingly quite street on the way to the center of Amsterdam

The Westekerk (west church) at dusk

Houseboat museum at night

Den Haag to Haarlem

High temperatures have hovered in the mid-80’s – about as high as they get around here – for the past week. A few stray summer thunderstorms have passed quickly over Amsterdam, but skies have largely been clear. It looks like we’re in the middle of the elusive, unpredictable Dutch summer.

My friend Yoel, who lives in Utrecht and works in Tilburg (both cities in the Netherlands), suggested that we take a bike ride on Thursday, when the winds were forecast to be calm and the skies were forecast to be sunny. Since I’d taken a Northern route in my past few rides, I suggested that we take the train south to Den Haag and ride back north toward Amsterdam from there, along the North Sea coast.

So, after biking to Amsterdam Zuid (train station) and buying my train ticket– as well as the “supplement” for taking my bike on the train – I took the 40 minute trip from Amsterdam to Den Haag and met Yoel (who was coming from Utrecht) in Den Haag Central Station. After a bit of wandering through Den Haag, we found the correct bike path and were on our way north.

The path snaked from a few kilometers inland, where we were surrounded by grassy sand dunes, to roads that passed between the beach and seaside restaurants and hotels. The number of hotels and restaurants along the beach was remarkable; I’m guessing that there are no more than 30 days out of the year when the weather is sunny and warm enough to want to spend much time on the beach, yet apparently there is enough demand to keep business going.

The sun was indeed unusually warm and bright for the Netherlands, and, although I didn’t get a noticeable sun burn (in terms of red skin and pain), I have experienced some peeling since Thursday. Yoel and I stopped at the Jopen (one of the more famous Dutch craft breweries) brewery and restaurant for lunch and a beer in Haarlem and, after 55km in the saddle, we decided to take the train from Haarlem to Amsterdam rather than biking the addition 20km alongside the car filled highway.