2013 May 27
Dear All
I am using the net service at the hotel. I could not get the tele-cards as the shops were closed on Sunday and with the mobile the network was not coming on.
So I am here. No idea as to what to do today. May be I will just walk around. It was touch getting guidance from reception this night as the bar marijuana and music was too loud in the lobby!
May be tomorrow I could do some sightseeing. Earlier in the flight I had a good conversation with a lawyer from Hamburg who was on the way to Holland, the legal centre of Europe. He told me that Amsterdam is no Dutch anymore. It has some good things if one knows where to be in.
I am using the net service at the hotel. I could not get the tele-cards as the shops were closed on Sunday and with the mobile the network was not coming on.
So I am here. No idea as to what to do today. May be I will just walk around. It was touch getting guidance from reception this night as the bar marijuana and music was too loud in the lobby!
May be tomorrow I could do some sightseeing. Earlier in the flight I had a good conversation with a lawyer from Hamburg who was on the way to Holland, the legal centre of Europe. He told me that Amsterdam is no Dutch anymore. It has some good things if one knows where to be in.
Otherwise the grass has dominated the life. When it became the only thing in town, people moved out.
I will try to call tomorrow.
But I am fine here.
Will take it easy and probably just do the situationists derive!!
Ummma
Mon Maathu Appa Chaacha
2013 May 27
Appa Amma Srijakutta Molootty Tottappa
Post Breakfast, and after a good one at that, I was confused whether to join one of the many walking tours or to explore the place myself. The little time I had had not given me the confidence to do that myself. But after some moments of contemplation that is what I exactly did. The only plan for the forenoon was visiting Anne Frank Museum and after noon perhaps go to the relocated Van Gogh Museum (from what I understood).
The good maps that I always find everywhere in Europe as well as the all pervasive street names helped me. But for Holland the street names did not stay put in mind with their not only phlegmatic pronunciations but also the same kind of spellings! The many straats, pliens...groots...toosts...Well I finally got out and traced the Damrat street towards the relatively broad Rodstraats. I read somewhere that the street widenings of urban reforms started taking place here as well but there was opposition to it at points, so many alleys that hugged the canals and medium streets remained. So I did not find the huge Parisian streets in here.
Rodstraat went into few unnameable (sorry it was difficult) alleys and reached where Anne Frank once lived and once had to Hide. The crowd that were queuing up there let me down big time, the person at the boar tour centre told me that perhaps six o clock or earlier in the morn could help. I changed my plans. But I had so many questions what a figure like Anne rank or the 'Jewish question’ connotes for large number of people from Europe. How they place it when they negotiate their everyday and perhaps flock in umbers beyond touristic intensions around the facade to a once tragic and grey zone.
The canals along with the bicycles and Hash had to be chosen from. I chose the former. I got into one of the boats and started the cruise flanked on both sides by houses once built on wooden piles that went in deep. But the salt water did take its toll. Concrete replaced wood as did bricks in the case of building material towards the nineteenth century. All the canals fanned out and networked the city in an amazing way and fed into the lake which here is called an IJ (pronounced eye). The canals were also about defence, but for Amsterdam the defence was also from the sea...majority of the land lay two meters below sea and points event went as much down as thirty...scary stuff if one thinks into it. But the canals did a lot of that trick. Transport dominated the functionalities later. The canals were chequered according to the class character. There were houses with larger floor space once (and even now) occupied by the wealthy merchants.
We passed the only natural fresh water body in the whole region called Amstel. Damming the Amstel becomes Amstell...dammme and thus Amsterdam. The earlier references are from 1200s and relate to some tax exemptions being given to the making of such a dam.
We saw some remnants of walls at points now crowned by later additions of spires. The defensive functions during Napoleonic and Engish attacks get symbolically subsumed. The Dutch as could be gathered just from these canals are traders all along and during the golden age (these ages are the curse in world histories...the reality is that of large processes) of the 17th century there were myriad migrations Flemish, Huguenots, and Sephardic Jews (like Kochi the Helleguas came here as well from Spain....got asylum). Then post world war two and some decades further there was the second major migration from Suriname (Hindus thus become a major religious segment), and Indonesians from ex Dutch east India. Then the workers from Morocco and Turkey....the Netherlands is less than 50 percent of Dutch parentage ethnically speaking. The planological (from what I heard) reorganisation saw new suburbs springing up thanks to out-migration of Dutch.
We passed some music halls, a marine research centre shaped like a ship, and the port to the other side of the Centraal train station once built on 8000 girdles in the shape of cabins. It required a lot of architectural ingenuity to keep this sub-pelagic place to stay live! One of the announcements said that even the fish tenuously divide their space in the canal with the floor space reserved for the salt water ones and the top layer for the fresh water ones.
The boat trip ended by 12:00ish. I walked towards where I though Van Gough was being exhibited after the closing of the original site for renovation. But my reading was wrong. This was a digital presentation of his works. The original on was now functional and was a bit away. Back of my mind I knew art was not in the list of liking at least this time. But beer was and Heineken's holy birth was some kilometres away.
I did not take any metro. I walked past the Roikin street to Amstel street (all has Dutchier names). I walked back part of this way to take the right street which after some minutes took me past the final bridge to Heineken Brewery...impressive structure when one comes down the curve of the canal bridge.
Heineken filled the rest of the day, spiritually as well as temporally. The brewery with everything explained, ending with a virtual tour that makes one feel as in the cauldrons of distillations hop addition and fermentation, with water and heat adding on to the feel...I became a beer myself end of the tour. Towards the end there are lessons of how to feel and taste beer. Then there is a lot of beer. Passing through the nuanced stages of beer making (also tasking the mid-stages of the process); I have come to respect more the invention. After the brewery we got into a Heineken boat with a lively youngster guiding us further. The Heineken part of the day I will rather try ad describe with photos when we talk in person. It is difficult to write.
I had a nap at Flying Pigs till about 5:00. There is no plan as of now to revisit Anne Frank.
Will try to write.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmma
Mon Maathu Chaacha Apppa
2013 May 28
Appa Amma Srijakutta Mole Totappa
Appe happy that you liked it.
This time I was all confused as to how to move around. But somehow this came off, thanks to some energy about the city, which does not have the same effect as Barcelona or the warmth of Athens. But I would say Amsterdam was the right place for a small dip.
Hash, Canals, Bicycles, and Red-light, I thought would sum up the city. But that is not all. On the other hand there is another side to the city precisely because of these highlights. There is a continuous plate tectonics of life, with those who are in it ‘and those who feel out of it'. The lawyer I met in the flight belongs to the latter. But then there is large spectrum that is part of the games Amsterdam puts forward.
There is an air of permissiveness, not least with sex and dope, on the one hand but this doesn't seem so near the bourse streets and stock exchange...not around Zuidaas, the new finance centres. There are different levels in which the economy as well as the life runs. I have seen heritage hearts in most European cities and finance and capitalist quarters that has suffocating homogeneity. In Amsterdam the leftovers of its commercial past itself becomes the dynamic heritage that gets smoked away every day.
One hundred and ninety six ethnicities/nationalities are citizens here. The number of languages that one hears in the streets, even without the tourists, could be mind boggling. Perhaps a holy communitas could be formed out of this motley mix of people, histories, bicycles, or economies; only in hash.
I might check out by 10:30 tomorrow. I have to be at airport by 11:45. I am sure I will get the hang of the excess called Amsterdam when I get down at Nordic moderations of Bergen.
Will talk more
Ummmmmas
Mon Maaathu Chaacha Apppa
Appe happy that you liked it.
This time I was all confused as to how to move around. But somehow this came off, thanks to some energy about the city, which does not have the same effect as Barcelona or the warmth of Athens. But I would say Amsterdam was the right place for a small dip.
Hash, Canals, Bicycles, and Red-light, I thought would sum up the city. But that is not all. On the other hand there is another side to the city precisely because of these highlights. There is a continuous plate tectonics of life, with those who are in it ‘and those who feel out of it'. The lawyer I met in the flight belongs to the latter. But then there is large spectrum that is part of the games Amsterdam puts forward.
There is an air of permissiveness, not least with sex and dope, on the one hand but this doesn't seem so near the bourse streets and stock exchange...not around Zuidaas, the new finance centres. There are different levels in which the economy as well as the life runs. I have seen heritage hearts in most European cities and finance and capitalist quarters that has suffocating homogeneity. In Amsterdam the leftovers of its commercial past itself becomes the dynamic heritage that gets smoked away every day.
One hundred and ninety six ethnicities/nationalities are citizens here. The number of languages that one hears in the streets, even without the tourists, could be mind boggling. Perhaps a holy communitas could be formed out of this motley mix of people, histories, bicycles, or economies; only in hash.
I might check out by 10:30 tomorrow. I have to be at airport by 11:45. I am sure I will get the hang of the excess called Amsterdam when I get down at Nordic moderations of Bergen.
Will talk more
Ummmmmas
Mon Maaathu Chaacha Apppa
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