Plucky Survivors See Europe Day 69: Amsterdam

I’m actually surprised it took this long for me to catch a cold.  With all the people I’ve been around and all the things I’ve had to touch – from banisters to straps on subways to door handles and beyond – I’ve been swimming in a veritable petri dish of germs for 10 weeks.

It’s not bad – a bit of a cough and congestion – but it does mean that I had to take my Amsterdam to-do list and shred it through a windmill.  As much I want to go and see and do in this incredible city, I also don’t want to overdo it and make myself even sicker.  Still, I got more accomplished than I thought I would.

The first stop of the day was STRAAT, the museum of street art and graffiti located in the NDSM Wharf neighborhood.  This area used to be a wharf, hence the name, but now is being redeveloped into a BoHo meets SoHo district with lots of newer buildings mixed with older industrial ones converted to new uses.

One of the latter is a building in which they used to build ships, now converted to STRAAT.

I’ve talked in these journals before about my usual reaction to traditional art, which is, to be frank, boredom.  While I can appreciate the technical and creative artistry, looking at paintings of kings or big busted women or fruit or landscapes does nothing for me.

Street art is different.  First, there’s the scale.  These are murals that you’d find painted on the sides of buildings and the amount of time and attention to detail it must have taken is astounding.

Then there’s the emotion.  Some of the works were whimsical or even funny but a lot of them were filled with anger, rage, fear, grief, and, in some measures, hope.

I was moved to tears by a couple of them.  One featured a boy, whose eyes were obscured by barbed wire.  The artist was inspired by a photo of a child in a Syrian refugee camp.

The other showed a scene of a woman in a chair receiving chemo, but above it the same woman as a warrior.

The other thing that I loved about this exhibit is how many of the works featured women, people of color, and indigenous people.  You don’t see a lot of that in places like the Louvre, where 99% of the paintings are of white people.

If I was feeling 100%, I would’ve spent hours there – it was just that powerful and if you’re ever in Amsterdam, it’s worth the taxi or Uber to get there (there aren’t any good public transportation options).

Right outside the STRAAT was the IJ-Hallen flea market, which bills itself as the largest in Europe.  I didn’t walk through the whole thing, but I believe them.  It was an enormous area filled with tables and racks of everything imaginable – clothes, toys, records, books, housewares, tools, vintage everything, musical instruments, and beyond.  One guy had an entire table of old cords and plugs. 

I needed something to eat at that point, so I stopped at Brunchdale, a café that serves only dinner.  No, I’m loopy on cold medication.  It serves brunch, of course.  I got scrambled eggs on toast, chicken sausage, bacon, and a big smoothie of apples, bananas, and strawberries.  The bacon was weird and I didn’t eat much of it, but everything was good.

Down the road a piece is the NXT Museum, which was my NXT stop.  See what I did there?

NXT is a new media museum, using light, sound, and digital technology to create art.  The exhibition spaces are very dark so getting through the museum was a bit of a challenge and some of the installations seemed more designed to overwhelm the senses than to enliven them, but it was still a cool experience.

From there it was back to the hotel to rest and then I headed out for the World Pride March.

My original intention was to go to the starting point and do the entire march, but that was about four miles, and it was beyond my capabilities today.  Instead, I took the subway to a place on the route about a mile from the ending point.  I was early – the march hadn’t reached there yet – so I sat down at a Turkish restaurant called Maydonoz and had some tzatziki and bread with roasted Turkish chicken.  Middle Eastern/Greek food has been good to me this trip and this was no exception.

The march finally got there and I watched for a little while and then joined in, crossing one of the canals and ending at Museumplein where the concerts and festival were happening.  I won’t say the experience made me forget I was sick, but it was definitely salve for the soul.  People from all over the world coming together to celebrate our community – it was very powerful.

They haven’t published an official crowd estimate yet, but I heard from a police officer that it was at least 100,000. 

I only have one thing for sure on the agenda tomorrow and that’s the Anne Frank House, which I bought tickets for weeks ago.  Whether I do anything else will depend on how I feel. 

Two more days in Amsterdam and then I fly home!