Somewhat similar to Venice, Amsterdam is a city teeming with water and bridges that enable pedestrians to walk over that water, viewing it from all angles and directions. It's also a city filled with all kinds of boats – from little dinghies that sadly look abandoned with several inches of dirty rainwater sloshing around their hulls to one of those enormous cruise ships we spotted one night parked in the harbor. Houseboats line many of the canals and we were lucky enough to find one whose front (or "aft" as the listing named it) cabin had been converted into an AirBnb. Our hosts, Katarina and Ralph, have been living on and remodeling this former East German ice breaker the Anklam for the last 14 years. Katarina, a singer/musician, has impeccable taste and attention to detail, thus providing us with a cozy, comfortable living space on the water for the last 17 days.
We have a neighborhood bar/restaurant down the street that has a pool table. We can walk to a shopping area to get our groceries. And we've mastered the bus and tram schedule to navigate all the museums, sights, bars, and restaurants that the city has to offer.
Unlike Venice, Amsterdam is quite modern, with innovative architecture, excellent public transportation, and a great number of its citizens traversing the city by bicycle. It took us awhile to get used to walking and crossing the streets with the bicycles wizzing by, but we've heeded Katarina's suggestion to "just go and they'll swerve around you" and no collisions to report.
A highlight for Lisa was our visit to the Van Gogh museum. It was quite well done (as our most things in Amsterdam), allowing us to learn more about Van Gogh's life and work and to see many of his less famous paintings such as the ones below. Extraordinary!
The boat we stayed on was docked on Borneo Island, near Java Island, not far from the Jakarta Hotel. These names are all references to the historical presence of the Netherlands in the East Indies, going all the way back to the 17th century. Many merchants in the Netherlands at that time became extremely wealthy through the trade in spices and other goods to what is now called Indonesia. (This is also why you can find such good Indonesian food in Amsterdam today).
The Dutch fought an entire war, and killed upwards of 15,000 Burmese people, all so that they could maintain control of the lucrative nutmeg trade. Essentially, European food tasted like crap until Europe colonized the East and West Indies. The sweetness and spiciness that sugar and seasonings from the far reaches of the globe brought to Europe was so desirable, and so addictive, and so wealth-generating, that it reshaped global commerce, global race relations, global political power, and global cuisine. We live in the aftermath of these early days of global capitalism, nearly 400 years ago, when European nations began to ransack Asia, Africa, and the Americas for raw materials and labor.
The best place to learn about this history in Amsterdam is at the National Maritime Museum, which has done a pretty good job of documenting this past and acknowledging its harms, both in the past and into the present. They also have a replica of a 17th-century Dutch East Indiaman sailing ship that you can explore and walk around.
It's worth ending by acknowledging that Amsterdam has three or four operating lesbian bars, and that we visited one of them. Despite its brutal colonial past, contemporary Amsterdam has a reputation for tolerance.
And thus we say goodbye to Amsterdam, and to the three-month European leg of our sabbatical. We are carrying so many memories and knowledge and experiences back home with us.
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