gin soaked girl

This blog is about me and my adventures in the land of gin. Yes, gin is a country and I've visited it often. In fact I've conducted a passionate love affair with the place. Bought the t-shirt and definitely been to the duty-free. Along the way, I've been to a few gigs and undergone a bit of a personal renaissance. This blog celebrates the art of growing old disgracefully. Roll up. Roll up. Come join the fayre!

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

It's all a bit of a whirl...

A long weekend in Amsterdam, 7-10 July 2007.

Amsterdam in my imagination used to be simple to define: big red cheese; boys with fingers in dikes; chocolate box windmills and oversized clogs. This is how the maternal liturgy went. So was it fair? Turns out that there’s a lot more to the Netherlands (to use its proper moniker) than I once thought, and I am now in possession of a much more sophisticated image and conceptualisation (ok, so I’ve been watching Shrink Rap) of the country.

Ok, there are cheeses of all kinds, not just Edam, and clogs, also of all kinds, (including furry clog-type slippers and clog-shaped plant pots), but the boys holding back torrents and chocolate box windmills were conspicuous by their absence during my visit. The truth is that the Netherlands is a prosperous modern country with a touch of Germanic Puritanism still, but also a great deal of the atheistic, laissez-faire spirit of the age and an enviable pragmatism when it comes to matters of transport and housing.

Question 1: what do you do when you don’t have enough room on the roads and need to get from A to B? Answer: buy a ramshackle but lightweight and practical bicycle and park it in a high-rise, multi-storey ‘bike-park’ that houses thousands of similar apparatus. Also, plan your city so that there are cycle tracks running along every main road and tributary and acquaint motorists with the idea that they do not ‘own the roads’ and have to accomodate different modes of transport when it comes to sharing space.


Question 2: what do you do when you run out of space to build new houses and apartments and there are lots of young people coming into the city? Answer: take to the (inland) seas and form a Bohemian-influenced houseboat community that brings a welcome touch of New Age quirkiness to the wider community. No need to worry about such insignificant issues as being seen naked or exposed in your domestic activities by passing tourists on candlelit tours of the canals and backwaters. Just give a short wave and go about your business.


Question 3: Feeling a bit fatigued on a Sunday afternoon, a bit down in the dumps with the sudden blast of torrential rain or thunder and lightening? Then take a seat at one of the many roadside cafe/bars (not to be confused with the plentiful collection of 'coffee shops' that serve a wholly different class of punter) and relax your bones. Order your favourite Belgian or other lowlander-type intoxicant (that's a Leffe Blond, Westmalle Dubbel or Palm beer for me) and think about your favourite things. Oh and if your hungry, indulge in some Bitterballen, but only if you're a truly dedicated carnivore.

In short, Amsterdam is the capital of a strangely antithetical city: both Bohemian/libertarian and stoical/Puritanical at the same time. A melting pot of influences just like every other major European city.
Oh and one small droplet of knowledge that I managed to collect on the trip; the Netherlands is definately not the same as Holland, which refers only to the western part of the country (2 out of the 12 provinces), so therefore do not use this term as it might be construed as a touch on the pejorative side to the inhabitants of the remaining 10 provinces. NB. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. GSG.

1 Comments:

  • At 9:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Uitstekend. Het was een mooi weekend.

    jx

     

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