Dear Everyone,
August 29--Cindy and I are flying to the Netherlands in the
early evening, weather permitting. We
decided to take this trip because I was presented with a discounted tour on a
canal boat (see below). As I mentioned
in my previous letter, we are leaving a couple days early to go to the Floriade.
I have been in Amsterdam a few times before. Twice in my gap year in France - - it was a
quick train trip from Paris for a couple of wasted weekends in 1978-79. I also visited there overnight in 1984, at
the end of my solo trip to France and India (where I visited and travelled with
my college roommate Tim Crump, now in Portland OR). I stopped overnight in Amsterdam to lessen my
jet lag, and to get a rijsttafle. Andy and I also took a trip to London,
Belgium and Normandy in 1985-86 - - there is a trip diary of this somewhere (my
writing and Andy’s photos). Andy was
visiting banker friends from the ill-fated Continental bank, who had offices in
Brussels. We had some great meals (lots
of business expensed restaurants in the administrative capital of the EU…), beer,
moules-frites in
Belgium, and had a sobering day at the site of the Normandy invasion, although
we did like the audio song played at the Bayeux Tapestry
museum.
Cindy has done most of the prep work for this trip - -
paperwork, researching and buying a hot spot, arranging plant care, packing (we
are trying for two carry-ons, fearful of lost luggage). I just coughed up the
cash. The cost of this trip was relatively low - - I had gotten a flier about
it months ago from Yale, but dismissed it. In June I received an email from one
of the principals of the tour company, Arrangements Abroad - - the owner is a PEA 1978 classmate of
mine, and he was offering heavily discounted ( ½ off!) fares on this and
another trip (the other is in Sicily, but it’s on an ocean going sail boat) in
honor of the upcoming reunion in 2023 (and also, I think they needed to try to
fill the boats post Covid). The flier came at the right time, and we jumped
in. It’s our first planned group travel.
I think we will be among the younger people on this trip, which is an
assortment of national museum types, from the list of attendees we were
given. I gave myself a crash course in
Dutch history over the last two weeks. I
did not realize that the Dutch had a functioning semi-democratic republic for 200 years
(~1590-1790), of which the ‘founding fathers’ of the American republic were
surely aware. The Dutch were a great
power over that time period, and fought against the Spanish Hapsburgs, the
Austrian Hapsburgs, the Prussians, French, and English. They actually carried out a successful
invasion of England (the Glorious Revolution);
and by turning England firmly Protestant, was a factor in the ongoing troubles
in Northern Ireland. Of course, with
great trading wealth, there was a lot of money to spread around, hence Dutch
art (Rembrandt!) and philosophy (Descartes! Spinoza! John Locke!) of the 17th
century. The Dutch empire seems a lot
like the American one - - a relatively pluralistic urban society with small
military outposts scattered throughout the world (no true colonies, even in Indonesia
the Dutch comprised less
than 0.5% of the native population) devoted to economic exploitation and
slave labor. The cost of the empire
became too much to bear eventually, and France and Great Britain became the
dominant colonial powers.
Day 1
It’s been thunderstorming all morning, but there is a small
break in the weather as we get to O’Hare Monday afternoon. Our 6 pm flight makes the window of clear
weather and we have a pretty uneventful flight with an arrival in Amsterdam
Tuesday morning. We had absolutely glorious weather throughout the trip, with
sunny or mixed cloudy days the whole time, and temperatures in the upper
70s-mid 80s. It only rained twice, both
times at night, although we did walk in the rain on the second storm. It’s been exceptionally hot and dry in Europe
this summer, with many rivers (Thames, Rhine) at unprecedented lows. We are going to be on a converted canal
barge, but luckily mostly on canals, or waterways of the delta, so low water
will not be an issue.
O’Hare was very crowded with lots of cancelled flights, and
we couldn’t get into the United Club lounge on Cindy’s one day passes. However, the flight was probably only about
75% full (the same was true on the return).
We also had fairly comfortable premier class seats (just below business
class). I watched Top Gun Maverick
(jingoistic and stupid, but good action sequences), and Licorice Pizza (stupid). Passport control in Amsterdam was a bit crazy
- - the room is not big enough for an entire plane, so they have people making
you wait in the terminal before you can go downstairs to go through. We had
only carry-on baggage, and customs was a walk through (as it was in the US - -
so I am not sure I see the point). I went to the bathroom while Cindy found our
driver. The drive into the city was fine
on the highway, but pretty rough once we got into the city. Trucks are only allowed in central Amsterdam
up to 11 am everyday (I ‘m not sure when they can begin to come in). Next year Amsterdam (and other Dutch cities)
will have a zero emission policy for delivery trucks. There are certainly a lot of EVs driving
around - - not just Teslas, but also Mitsubishis, VWs, Volvos, etc. Anyway, our driver had to keep turning off
his normal route, or kept getting stuck behind other vehicles. He also raised the ire of a number of
aggressive (are there any other kind in the Netherlands?) bicyclists.
When leaving the airport, Cindy realized she had left her
raincoat on the plane—a lost item report was made with no luck so far. After checking into our room at the quirky Hotel Estherea, we asked the concierge
where we could find a replacement. First we went into the ‘nine streets’ area (our hotel was
just on the edge of this). There was a
mix of expensive and goofy shops. Some
sold rain gear, but nothing was exactly as Cindy wanted. We stopped for a lunch of frying pan sized pancakes
– consistency between western pancakes and crepes. I had salmon-spinach-crème fraiche,
while Cindy had bacon-apple.
Then we walked over to the Kalverstraat, the main shopping street in the old city, and Cindy found a rain jacket at a Uniqlo. We got back to the hotel just in time (2 pm) to meet Sabine, our guide for the next two days, as well as Lucy (Currie) and Henry Bush, from Atlanta GA, who were also participating in the ‘prelude’ to the boat tour. They had already been in Amsterdam for a couple of days, and had visited part of the Rijksmuseum (we would visit later with the entire tour group), and the maritime museum. We all piled into a minivan, and were driven to the Van Gogh museum. I would have taken photos of some of the paintings, but Sabine thought it was not allowed. However, we did see a lot of other people using their cameras (as I did at pretty much every other museum or church we went to). The museum is not large, and there are plenty of Van Goghs to be seen elsewhere, but it does take you chronologically through his artistic life. I never realized how strongly he was influenced by Japanese art. One part of the display aspects I liked about the museum is they would often juxtapose the work by another artist next to a work by Van Gogh when they had similar themes, so you could see how each interpreted the world. In fact, one part of the museum is devoted to special exhibitions, where they explicitly put up Van Gogh’s next to a travelling exhibition (in our case it was works by the modern painter Etel Adnan.)
Many of the museums in Amsterdam are all on the same campus (Van Gogh, Rijksmuseum, the concert hall), with a large outdoor mall filled with Dutch people enjoying the sun and the last week of summer holiday before school. Lucy and Henry stayed in the area (we would meet them later for dinner at a nearby restaurant), while Sabine took us back to the hotel for a bit of a rest.
Day 2
We had breakfast at the hotel (I had smoked salmon almost
every day of this trip!) and then took a van to the Floriade. It was last held in the Netherlands in 2012,
in Venlo, where it
lost around 5 million Euro (maybe not that bad for a multi-million dollar
project). It had about 10% fewer
visitors than projected. In contrast,
probably because of Covid, the current Floriade will
probably have fewer than 65% of the projected visitors, and there may not be
much interest in having another in the Netherlands in 2032. The site is in Almere, a planned city in Flevoland, which is the
Netherland’s youngest province - - it’s only been around since the 1960s. It’s
within easy commuting distance of Amsterdam.
Flevoland is basically a giant polder (reclaimed below sea
level land) that was created by damming and diking of the Zuiderzee (an engineering
project that more than rivals reversing the flow of the Chicago River), turning
it from a salt water attachment of the North Sea, to the freshwater IJselmeer. There were plans to dike off the remaining
parts of the IJselmeer for more land at the end of the last century, but this
met with vigorous environmental protest - - at least for the present.
The Floriade has a world’s expo feel, with many half-acre –
acre plots of land sponsored by different countries, usually exhibiting some
kind of green or sustainable technology.
Some of the building are permanent (one is a business school, another
will be turned into a home for people with neurodegenerative diseases), but
most of the exhibit areas will be razed, and then the land will be turned into homes
and apartments. There is a housing
shortage in the Netherlands, so this will be a good thing, if you can afford it. Sabine tells us about housing in Amsterdam -
- only about 5% of the dwellings are single family homes. Most buildings hold 3-5 apartments, one for
each floor. Many people get governmental
assistance for rent; maybe only 20% of apartment dwellers pay rent on their
own. Sabine lives in a beautiful
converted houseboat that has an extra room used as a B&B. There is less rent to pay for a houseboat,
but you have a lot more ownership costs, including mandated dry docking at
least every seven years.
Anyway, we walked through most of the park to the end, where
there are some more natural areas, and a Gondola ride that takes you on a round
trip (you can’t get out on the other side) over the park. Cindy and I sample some baobab juice (fruity)
at the Sudan exhibit, and have curry sandwiches (one vegetable, the other
chicken) with a ginger drink at the Suriname exhibit. Besides being delicious, the Suriname exhibit
also showed off some of the touristic parts of their country – now we want to
go. We also toured the Thailand area where
they were having dried tropical fruit tasting (with surveys). Unfortunately they had just run out of
durian. We did try sweet tamarind (good, but large
seeds, easy to find in Chicago) and salak (pretty good, sweet and
sour, never heard of it before) and Jack fruit. We also toured the United Arab
Emirates pavilion, who had an interesting exhibit about drought resistant plants
(they would know, I guess).
We left around 1 pm, and then drove through the countryside
atop dikes and around polders to get to Nieuwer-Ter-Aa, a town
just north of Breukelen
(origin of New York City’s Brooklyn). We
had to make a big turn around before we got into the village because the street
we wanted to use was closed off to vehicular traffic - - the day was too nice,
and there were too many cyclists and pedestrians about, apparently. We had to make a giant 10 mile oxbow to make
up for the 1 mile stretch of road we could not use - - our driver was pissed
off!
We got on a small, narrow, roofed canal boat that could have
held about ten people, and motored along the Vecht river, passing by all of the mansions built
hundreds of years previously by rich Amsterdam merchants for summer homes. Many of the homes had docks and elaborate tea
houses on the river banks. We had a ‘high
tea’ with sandwiches and drinks, We cruised for about 45 minutes until we got
to an ancient castle that now houses the Nyenrode
Business University, then turned around to get to our dock, and a drive
back into Amsterdam.
During our drive Sabine discussed some aspects of Dutch
culture; the most interesting were the education
system and the social welfare system.
The kids get stratified at around age 12 by a week-long test before high
school. There are three main tracks, and
you are only allowed to go to University if you test well enough for the
highest track. Although you can be moved
down from your track, it’s pretty hard to move up. Sabine has two kids - - the eldest is great
at school, and just finished high school and is taking a gap year, but she is
not very interested in a university education. Her second child did not test
well, and is desperate to somehow move up.
You do have to pay for university, but it is pretty cheap (although
foreign students pay the full price).
The average
salary in the Netherlands is somewhere around 35K Euro, and 70K puts you in
the top 5%. A lot of your salary is
consumed by taxes, but a lot of costs (including housing) are also subsidized
or partially subsidized. Insurance is
about 1000-1500 per year. Still, it doesn’t appear to me that you have a lot of
disposable income after food, housing, child care and other costs.
Dinner was on our own, but we were still stuffed from tea,
so went looking for a snack. Cindy and I
walked along the Damstraat
in the old city. This is a relatively
seedy tourist street. We stopped at a Chipsy
King, and got a doner
box with fries - - we got the traditional yogurt/garlic sauce, but we engaged the
nice Pakistani vendor, and he put some peanut satay sauce on the side for us to
try. There were over a dozen possible
sauces to try! Peanut sauce on fries is
surprisingly good. We strolled around
the old city for a bit before heading to bed.
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