Amsterdam is one of these places which evoke a response from others, no matter the nature of said response. When you tell anyone that you're going to Amsterdam, you can see at least a flicker of some passing presumption, thought or personal experience from the past. This provides one with a feeling which is equal doses of anticipation, excitement and trepidation.
We left first thing Saturday morning, parking our car at the train station and walking across to the Airport. This saw us arriving in Amsterdam at around 9:30am, leaving us with the rest of Saturday as well as Sunday to walk around and experience the city.
True to what had become our tradition of late, we had decided to camp for the evening, as Amsterdam has a camp site within a 15 minute tram ride from the city centre. We went directly from the airport to the city centre, then to our campsite to pitch camp (and to dump our bags). We followed the hastily compiled instructions from the internet, and disembarked from the tram at the correct stop.
From here the walk began to find the campsite. On the way we found what Nicola believed must be the campsite, but what actually turned out to be some form of strange cult-camp, with an odd capitalistic cautionary tale of a consumeristic catastrophe, involving structures of wrecked agricultural machinery, aluminium, steel and plastic. It took us about 5 minutes to realise that we were in the wrong place, although I admit that as soon as I saw a statue made out of some welded chains, a broken toothbrush and a plough disc it did cross my mind that this would not be an ideal or 'normal' place to camp.
Once we had found the correct campsite (adaquetely signed as we later found out), we set up our tent, left our bags behind and ventured back into Amsterdam. At the risk of summarising an encounter with a city into a few dot points, there were some distinct and significant themes which emerged:
1) An sensory extravaganza: there is something in Amsterdam for every sense we have (and probably for other senses we don't yet know about).
- Sights: mainly the people (which will be discussed further down), but also the sight of the canals. These sights ranged from the view of moorhens nesting on a piece of discarded styrofoam, to the port-a-loo which had been pushed into an aluminium boat (click the link)...
- Sounds: the continual ringing of bike bells as they ram their thick tyres into your calves.
- Smells: this is a combination of garbage (also to be discussed further down) and smoke from the 'coffee shops' which are ubiquitous.
- Tastes: mainly cheese, although the range of beers on offer at one of the bars we went to was the most extensive I've ever seen or tasted.
- Touch: again, this could be allocated to the feeling of being run over by a bicycle.
2) A garbage worker strike: this appears to happen whenever we go to Amsterdam. We first noticed the problem when looking to dispose of an empty and now unnecessary bottle of Coke. I found what I believed to be the bin by spotting a barely visible metallic object at the epicentre of a pile of rubbish which would have had to have been two metres around at the base, and piled up about one metre high. People had obviously made a token effort to put their rubbish where the bin 'would have been'.
It was a slightly disturbing feeling to throw rubbish 'towards' a bin, especially as I was travelling with a small friend who has a compulsion for recycling and a strong outlook on product packaging and waste. Troubling times indeed.
3) Freaks: Amsterdam (I'm sure it's not been forgotten) is well known for its' stupor-inducing vices, but along with this comes the after effect of said 'stupor'. The range of unusual and just plain bloody weird people in this city is phenomenal. Be it the person dressed as 'death' standing in a city square all day or the woman standing next to a skeleton dressed in a rastafarian hat, Bob Marley hair and a sweater with balloons as makeshift breasts, you know you're arrived in a place that's 'not quite right'.
'Amsterdam weird' can be pretty much summed up by the experience I had whilst consuming a rather large ham and edam omelette on our final morning. Out the corner of my right eye, I spot a man aged around 50 years, wearing a full, red bodysuit (think Britney Spears in 'Oops I Did It Again' film clip), staggering slowly up the side walk. He was wheeling beside him a red bicycle, and was wearing devils horns and carrying a trident. The trident was real, and it was painted red. He had a grey goatee and wasn't wearing anything beneath his bodysuit.
It appeared to me as though this wasn't anything unusual for him (as he paused briefly to ensure his bodysuit was 'sitting right'); as though a typical morning for him was to stretch and yawn, have his morning consistutional (maybe a little walk around the block?), take in his victuals (which I would assume would consist of some coffee, and maybe some cheese and bread), and then stretch on the old bodysuit for the daily grind. I would like to think he has a loyal Jack Russell called 'Helmut' which he gives a pat on the head and some kibbles on the way out for the day. But I digress...
After I recovered from the coughing fit occasioned by a piece of omelette becoming lodged in my trachea, I collected my thoughts long enough to consider that this single moment captured everything about Amsterdam you would want to experience.
We arrived home tired, if not a little confused, and went straight to bed...
