Pirates of Amsterdam

The morning of the 15th, I caught a train from Paris to Amsterdam (a really nice train actually). It put me in Amsterdam Centraal Station.

Amsterdam mostly looks like this:

Here is a particularly beautiful vantage point near the Rijsmuseum:

The canals are surrounded by beautiful trees, boats are docked all along, and of course every square inch of space is taken up by bikes.

I rented a bike and rode through a quadrant of the city. There was a drawbridge along one of the major canals

and you can see here the accommodations for shipping:

I must admit, my overwhelming impression of Amsterdam was that it is a pirate cove. No one cares what you do; anything's fine as long as it's not hurting someone else. The canals were clearly designed so that everyone could bring loot right to their doorstep. The Dutch had the biggest array of privateers, which would literally steal from and plunder other ships at sea (especially the English). But because they weren't part of the official navy, it was OK. Amsterdam is literally a pirate headquarters legitimized.

See, everyone has their own little boat in case some cargo needs to be ferried somewhere in the dead of night:

The streets of Amsterdam are chaotic. There are so many bikes which go whichever way they please, even backwards along a one-way (from a car's perspective) street. This one bit me as I waited for a car to stop and started crossing, and a bike nearly ran me over. The cyclist gave a great deep-throated "YAAAAARRRRRRRR!" to let me know I was being stupid as he passed. I told you they were pirates.

I spent a fair amount of time hanging around the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam's most famous museum...

with beautiful gardens

If you timed it right you could get inside this fountain and only be a little wet (I put my camera away first though)

There was wonderful music

(more on that later). It was raining a lot of the day, and I took pictures with my phone rather than my camera (ditto for while biking), but I don't have those here right now. Some shots I did take while taking a break:

I really like the rain in that previous picture. If I'd known it was going to turn out so well I'd have tried a slower shutter speed so you could see the raindrops like meteors. And here's the sun for contrast (yeah I probably shouldn't be pointing my camera at the sun but sometimes the effect is so nice):

I wandered further, towards the Anne Frank house museum. I didn't think it would be open, because it was 9pm at this point. But it turns out the museum admits people until 9:30pm (and closes at 10pm, though they are careful to only impart this last information in the Dutch screens, not English). And the line was pretty short, so that was a stroke of luck. When I passed by the next day, the line was around the block and through the next block too. I hear there are often 2-3 hour waiting times. This is a very famous place in a very small space.

At first I was kind of annoyed because I didn't think anyone would have wanted this kind of attention from the world in their private spaces. I think so many of the visitors were not really appreciative of the events that led up to Anne's family going into hiding. They were just here because it was famous. Then I thought, Anne wanted to be a writer; and she is. She wanted her story to be known. And now it is, even if one has never read her work, the museum gives a short tour of what happened.

And in a way, the people of the Netherlands must feel that this is a very important moment in their history because it was the moment when their social contract broke down. Amsterdam was no longer a pirate city. Otto Frank moved there because he felt it was a very free place to be, and throughout history, it mostly has been.

None of which matters to the birds, of course.

I tagged along behind a tour for a little while, listening to descriptions in Dans Square etc. I guess I could have actually arranged to pay for this, but did I feel guilty? Of course not. Arrrr.