IJ Brewery

Spring has (meekly) sprung, with leaves popping out of branches seemingly overnight despite still cool weather. Despite daytime temperatures still barely topping 50 degrees, people are flocking to outdoor markets and sun soaked cafe terraces.

While walking through the Dappermarkt, an outdoor market in the Eastern part of Amsterdam similar to the Albertcuypmarkt that I've shown several times, I realized that I was very close to the Brouwerij 't IJ, and that it might be a nice time to have a beer and see how people were reveling in the sunlight.

The Brouwerij (brewery) 't (abbreviation of "het," which is a definite article used for "non-gendered" nouns) IJ (the name of a river in Amsterdam, pronounced like "eye") - or, as I usually call it, the "IJ Brewery" - is Amsterdam's most well known craft brewery. It's been around since the 1980s, and it distributes to most bars that I've been to in Amsterdam. The beers are not up to the standards of U.S. craft breweries (or De Molen, the world class brewery in Bodegraven, NL), but they are a substantial upgrade over Heineken, Amstel, Jupiler, and the other watery pils that are standard on tap in Amsterdam.

The brewery and tasting room/bar are located beside one of the most prominent windmills in Amsterdam. Indeed, the windmill leads to some confusion when I mention De Molen (again, the excellent brewery in Bodegraven). People often think of this as "the windmill brewery" ("de molen" means "the windmill") rather than the Brouwerij t' IJ.  

The brewery logo includes an ostrich standing over a large egg. I'm not sure why the creators decided on an ostrich, but the egg is a play on words in Dutch. "IJ" is the name of the river, and "ei" is the word for egg. The two are pronounced similarly, so you have the brewery on the "eye" (IJ) river with an "eye" (ei) on the logo.

I've heard some locals complain that the IJ Brewery was added to Lonely Planet travel guides recently, and this led to an influx of tourists visiting the brewery. I'm sure I arrived in Amsterdam after the brewery was added to the guidebook, so I can't comment on how much brewery tourism has increased, but I heard far more English there than Dutch. And I also heard something that might have been Russian, some Portuguese (a guess based on the Brazilian soccer jersies that a group of four men were wearing), and some French.

Two of the tourists were a British couple sitting on a bench in front of mine. I did not notice them kissing at any point until I took a look at a picture of my beer and peanuts I'd taken.

The IJ IPA with peanuts. And a kissing couple in the background.

The IJ Brewery snack list. Cheese, meats, nuts, and eggs.

Beers on tap.

Small cluster of apartments across the water from the brewery.

Boater on the water and train in the background outside the brewery.

Bird nest on the water outside the brewery.

Spring Delay

Amsterdam has been remarkably cold since I returned from Thailand a little over two months ago. There was a false alarm of spring in early March, when the temperatures passed the 50 degree mark for two of three days. Since then, though, we have been between five and 15 degrees below normal, often with strong, biting winds.

Some (though not all) of the reason for the long gap between writings about Amsterdam and travels was due to the hectic nature of a conference that I helped organize and hosted in Amsterdam last week. Researchers from all over Europe, and a few from the U.S., came to Amsterdam for the annual conference of the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association. We advertised the often beautiful, late March springtime weather as a benefit of coming to the conference. But the high temperatures hovered around 35 degrees, the lows dipped into the low 20’s, and arctic winds howled through the canal streets that I led conference guests through around dinner time.

Part of the reason for the low temperatures has been the (relatively) dry air and lack of cloud cover. When there has been enough moisture, we’ve seen little snow flurries that remind us how lousy it is outside, but that melt quickly and leave none of the charm of a solid snowfall afterward. Even last Sunday, March 31^st, saw an hour or so of quickly falling dry little snowflakes.

I took my camera out into the streets during one of these snowfalls right after I returned from Scotland. This one did leave snow on the ground for at least a day, and it showed the grit of (some) Amsterdamers in the face of bad weather. Many people biked as they normally would, only with gritted teeth and with squinted eyes that tried to keep the snow at bay.

Now, though, it feels like spring has arrived. The temperatures remain about 10 degrees below normal, but the winds are calm and the sun is shining brightly enough that even 40 degrees feels like a heat wave compared to what we’ve experienced for two months. The ten day forecast shows temperatures rising to the upper 40’s and lower 50’s, with rain and, hence, a return to normalcy. If this normalcy does return, spring will hit Amsterdam like a ton of bricks, with people skipping work to drink beer on café terraces and lounge in the parks as soon as it hits 60 degrees. 

Scotland

Some folks at the University of St. Andrews (Wikipedia info: founded in 1410; sometimes ranked as the third best university in the U.K.; in the same 17,000 population city as St. Andrews golf course) recently gave me an opportunity to visit their university to give a talk and, in doing so, visit U.K. for the first time.

I haven’t actively avoided the U.K., but I haven’t felt much of a desire to visit there either. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps going to a native English speaking country doesn’t give me the same feeling of adventure that going to a place like Germany or Belgium does. Perhaps the behavior of the British tourists in Amsterdam’s city center has given me a negative impression of the U.K. (though I should note that plenty of wonderful Brits that I know have represented their country quite well). Perhaps I perceive it as expensive, and I’m cheap (I note that I’ve also yet to visit Scandinavian countries or Switzerland, so there might be something to this).

Regardless of the reasons why I hadn’t visited the U.K. earlier, this visit ended up being a great experience. St. Andrews was as tiny as you’d expect for a town of 17,000. The woman who ran the bed and breakfast I stayed in had a Scottish accent that, to me, almost seemed like a parody of all the accents I’d heard on television and in movies. She was nice and charming, and she talked with me for almost 30 minutes about her trips to the U.S., including multiple visits to Scottsdale, Arizona of all places (as you might expect for someone from St. Andrews, she and her husband played multiple rounds of golf when they visited Arizona). 

Path leading up toward the St. Andrews Castle

The shores of the North Sea in St. Andrews

St. Andrews Castle

I lucked out with the type of weather that hits a Scottish February once a month during my Saturday morning in St. Andrews. The clouds parted and sunlight beamed down against the grass, the sea, the sand on the beach, and the textured blocks of stone that made up the ancient cathedral and castle. 

St. Andrews Cathedral

St. Andrews from the top of the cathedral

Headstone in St. Andrews cemetery

After spending Friday afternoon and evening and Saturday morning and afternoon in St. Andrews, I stayed in Edinburgh Saturday evening through Monday morning. Edinburgh was beautiful – one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen – and its architecture remind me of the small older parts of Gent, Brugges, and Leuven in Belgium. Sunday morning started with big fluffy snowflakes, which transitioned to a misty rain before the sun broke through the clouds for an hour or so in the afternoon. The city had much more elevation change than Amsterdam, with snow covered mountains in the distance, the Edinburgh castle/fortress on a large hill in the middle of the city, and the rivers going out to the sea below. 

The renowned Dirty Dick's in Edinburgh

A Punk IPA at the Brewdog tap room

The scene on Saturday evening was comically consistent with some of the less positive stereotypes of British drinking life. After diner on Saturday night, some psychologists and I walked around a section of Edinburgh looking for a quiet place to have a beer and continue chatting. In the thirty minutes of walking from noisy packed bar to noisy packed bar (at 10:00pm), I saw men drinking from flasks on the street, piles of vomit on the ground, men passed out drunk leaning against the walls of buildings, and…ahem…full figured women wearing outfits that included some of the shortest skirts I’ve ever seen in public and tops that barely contained their breasts despite the 35 degree temperatures. When I walked home around midnight, similarly dressed women barely managed to walk without tripping in their high heels.

So, that was a fun, albeit isolated, verification of some stereotypes. Overall, though, this part of Scotland was beautiful, friendly, and a fantastic place to visit.

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand, but it’s only one eighth the size of Bangkok. It was billed as a more cosmopolitan, international city than Bangkok, and a highlight of many tourists’ trips to Thailand.

View from the patio of my guesthouse

The Western gate surrounding the old town

It lived up to the billing in some ways, and it disappointed a bit in others. Like other Thai cities, it was not designed for walking or biking. On many of the roads, only a few feet separated the edge of the pavement from the adjacent buildings, and the cars and trucks that whizzed by were sometimes inches from my body. The dogs that were listless and semi-nomadic in other cities were well-fed, territorial, and aggressive here, and they often charged, barked, and snarled if you got too close to their house. The locals recognize all this, I suppose, since they almost exclusively rely on driving or hitching rides on the taxi/trucks that pass through the town. This, along with the mountainous surrounding terrain, does not do great things to the air quality.

Although Chiang Mai was not quite the Portland of Thailand I had hoped for, it was wonderful in many ways. Beautiful temples were scattered around the old city center. These temples were not like the ornate monuments in Bangkok. They felt more “in use” to me – less there as monuments, and more there for worship.

The liked the vibe of the travelers better than that in Bangkok or Koh Samui. Rather than partying hard, as in Bangkok, or simply taking a European beach vacation, as in Koh Samui, the tourists seemed to be more oriented toward eating Thai food, taking day trips outside the city, taking Thai cooking classes, and exploring temples and markets.

Learning about rice in cooking class

Tip, who made excellent smoothies

Chiang Mai did offer a lot of options for a traveler. I took an all-day Thai cooking class, where I learned how to make green curry, hot basil stir fry, coconut soup, spring rolls, and mango sticky rice by hand. I got four massages and drank a fresh smoothie every day. I went to a night market and drank local fruit wines and ate street foods with the locals. Pauline, a French girl I met in Sukhothai, and I went to a temple on a mountain 15 miles outside of the city, and we walked around the immense Chiang Mai zoo after.

Pauline and me

And, as all good things do, it came to an end after five days. The three weeks of living out of a large backpack, experiencing warm and sunny weather, eating at restaurants daily for under five euros, and spending time mostly with my thoughts and my books (though occasionally with fellow travelers) ended. I flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and then I had an eight hour wait in the airport before my fourteen hour flight home. And then, like magic, I was back in Amsterdam, where snow and ice blanketed the ground and clouds obscured the sky. And, hence, back to reality.

Worry not, though; spring is just around the corner.