RING OF CANALS (for the photos of the canals, please click on the blank space above the name of the canal and follow the link, those are pictures off the internet. photos of schinkel and amstel river are from my camera)
5/29/2012
I will do one more day of museum visitation on I AMSTERDAM today. Tomorrow will be my last day of museum spree, saved for the museums that I AMSTERDAM does not cover, like Anne Frank’s House. It is a pleasant day for museum hopping. I am studying my museum map on the Metro. My plan is to do back and forth zigzagging among the ring of canals so that I can both visit the museums I would like to and also walk along the rest of the canals that I haven’t covered, yet. By the end of the week, I will indeed have walked along all core canals, their interconnecting branches, Amstel River, and Schinkel, all probably twice.
Amsterdam Museum is my second most favorite one. It is a crash course on how Amsterdam came to be. Sure enough, Amsterdam is the story of rising bourgeoisie in Europe. When the rest of Europe was still rotting within the grip of the old ways inflicted upon the peoples of Europe by the Holy Church, Amsterdam was a safe haven for all that survived severe discrimination, expulsion from their lands, harsh treatment due to their religious beliefs, on and on and on. This welcoming attitude was very timely to help Amsterdam prosper since it was the time of Inquisition, the horrible catastrophe stirring up Iberian peninsula. Wealthy Sephardic Jews were welcomed to Amsterdam with open arms, not clear whether just because of humanitarian causes or because the newcomers had lots of wealth and/or entrepreneurship skills to bring along. Let’s be on the trusting side and believe it was the former since Amsterdam also allowed the poor Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe flood the city.
I must say I enjoyed most of my encounters in Amsterdam and at times I did feel like "I am Amsterdam".
Singel was the earliest canal that was built around the medieval city of Amsterdam and served the city well from 1480 until 1585, when Amsterdam started bursting its stitches with a desperate need to expand. It is now the inner-most canal in Amsterdam's eccentrically spread semicircular ring of canals.
Singel Canal Herengracht
Smart, entrepreneur spirited Amsterdamers of the city council decided to establish a more comprehensive canal system around Singel for many reasons. The ever increasing population of Amsterdam desperately needed more developable land to accommodate growth. New land would open up new opportunities for business and trade. Win, win. They developed a comprehensive map of the current canal system to become. However, they certainly did not have the funds to build it all in one breath. Instead, they built the system in sections, sold the land they gained by the new canals pumping out the water that was and still is always at bay to drown the city. Construction proceeded from west to east, across the breadth of the layout. The first phase was started in 1613 and was finished around 1625. Canals followed one after the other.
Herengracht (Lords’ Canal) was named after the elite and wealthy that governed the city in the 16th and 17th century, who built their double wide mansions with inner gardens and coach houses lined up along the canal. The mansions were so big and deep, the coach houses, which were on the far end of the inner gardens lined Keizersgracht, which became the third canal of the city.
Keizersgracht Prinsengracht
Keizersgracht (Emperor's Canal) was built as the widest of the three major canals; it was named after the Roman Emperor Maximilian I after all. Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal) was named after the Prince of Orange and is the longest of the main canals. With Northern Church, North Market, Anne Frank House and Amsterdam's tallest church, Western Church, this is, historically one of the most impressive of the canals.
Brouwersgracht Schinkel Canal
In addition to these core rings, Brouwersgracht connects all four major canals, once the center of warehouses accepting and distributing spices and silk of Asia, now adorned with houseboats and home to numerous little cafes, restaurants, and coffee shops; the most expensive-to-live section of Amsterdam. I must mention the distinct difference between a café and a coffee shop, by the way. One needs to go to a café to have a beer, coffee, or a sandwich. It is a different story with coffee shops where you will most likely be served, weed, hashish, and many other varieties of “pleasure drugs”. Although my daughter’s voice “Mom, you need to try weed at least once, you will make more sense when you lecture on drug endangered children, trust me.” along with a “don’t think you’ll get anywhere with her on that” type of a smile from Bill, is ringing in my ears, nothing in the coffee shops is that inviting really. So, I pass. Cafes in Jordaan on the other hand, are exceptionally inviting. I learn later on that locals have voted Brouwersgracht the most beautiful street in Amsterdam.
Mid day, I will take a break before visiting the Hermitage Museum, Houseboat museum, De Oude Kirk, and De Nieuwe Kirk, with my ice cream bowl in my hand from the famous Dutch ice cream shop on Brouwersgracht. Sitting on the bench next to me is a middle aged woman attending a stroller next to her, at the other end of the bench. Eye contact, I smile, she smiles. We start chatting, it is that easy. There is no door a genuine smile can not open when there are no back burner agendas except for “I’d like to get to know you.” She is resting on her way to her daughter’s houseboat docked along Brouwersgracht, from a stroll with her granddaughter. Her daughter, a physician; -“Oh, really, so am I. What does she specialize in?” “Oh, yeah? Interesting. She is a gynecologist, and what about you?” “I am a pediatrician.”- is married to an officer in Dutch military, who is on his way to the A-B-C Caribbean islands that still belong to Netherlands, residual from the good old colonial days. Where they import most of their insured, registered prostitutes from, my blood is boiling over again. They are, the physician daughter and her family, that is, on their way to the Caribbean. The grandmother, thus, is doing her best to spend as much time as possible with her granddaughter, before the little treasure flies away. I wish her well and head to my next stop, the Old and New Churches, which will become another highlight in my Amsterdam trip.
Old Church is from thirteen hundreds, both are open to art exhibitions nowadays with no masses. How can masses be held in Old Church, which is in the middle of the Red Light District, anyway!? The New Church has a photography exhibition during my visit “The Roma Journeys” by Joakim Eskildsen, chronicling life stories of gypsies from Hungary, Romania, France, Greece, Russia, India, and Finland. The photos take me back to Turkey, to the Roma neighborhood in Izmir, where most families lived in either low quality project housing or in individually “built” shacks made of tin, literally, tin walls and roofs is what I am talking about. I always felt ashamed of allowing human kind live under such conditions as if they were “canned”; people instead of sardines. Fortunately within the last couple of decades, they were moved to better-built and more humane neighborhoods subsidized by the State, at least that is what we are told. Looking at these photographs, that shame and pain come back. There are other Roma world citizens living under similar conditions, no surprise. I hope part of the revenue from this exhibition can reach them.
As I leave Oude Kirk, Amsteel River, and thus Red Light District, my head is down once again as chocolate beauties with minimal amount of material covering their “business tools” hit my visual field here and there. Nobody can convince me that these girls younger than my daughter made an informed and conscious decision on selling their body was THE THING they wanted to do with their lives. There must be a line where free market philosophy should give in to “Some goods are not for sale!” I head to the Metro station a bit defeated.
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