June, 2009
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Persistent prologue: I write these travelogues for myself, so that twenty years from now, I will be able to remember as much about these trips as possible. I include as much detail as I can cram in, so as to get it all fixed in writing before the memories fade. I share these with friends, family, and any complete strangers who find them, because people express interest. I know that these writings do ramble on a bit, but I do not require an editor; these writings are here as aids to my own memory, not as attempts at serious travel writing -- although anecdotes from these journals have formed the core of my more formalized and proper travel writings, which have appeared in print and on the web elsewhere.
Sometimes two awesome things should not be combined.
Checked out of the hotel and hopped a train for Bruges.
Moving a little slowly due to last night’s prodigious beerage, we took
the 11:05 a.m. train instead of our targeted 10:05 a.m.
Bruges is a must-see when traveling in Belgium, but it is
definitely a 24-hour trip.
We were there for close to 48 hours, and that was way too much time.
Yes,
have seen the film “In Bruges”, yes, I was entertained by it, and yes I
did catch myself, at one point, saying “fawkin’ Broooge” in an London
gangster accent while wandering around the town. The movie looks more
or less like the town, and there isn’t a whole lot to do there, as you
may have learned from the movie.
The train from Brussels got us to the charming and carefully
preserved town in under an hour.
We hopped a city bus at the train
station (€1.20 each), headed for our bed and breakfast, which was
located on the other side of the small city.
We missed our stop, and
had to backtrack a fair distance on foot.
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Checking in, we discovered
a clean little building on a sleepy cobblestone street. The name of the
home was ”An Officer’s House” (Carmersstraat 122), and it was
apparently the home of some important military impresario in the past.
Now there are three quiet and secure bedrooms, each with a private
bathroom, available to rent. The two nights in the tiny room were not
especially cheap (€135.00 - cash only - or about $96 per night),
especially since we were a bit of a walk from the heart of town, and on
the other side of town from the train station. But I’d done the
research, and there were few better options. Anyway, it was still
within my target zone of under $100 per night when in Europe.
By 1:30 p.m. we were walking towards the outer edge of town
-
just a few blocks away - to see a trio of windmills lined up on a
grassy
embankment. Our lesson for today: if you’ve seen one windmill, you’ve
seen them all. Once again, we had come prepared with a mapped
out walking tour, acquired before leaving Chicago. We followed it
towards the center of town. Although
Bruges is heavy on small town charm, it is also a major tourist
destination. People looking for a preserved 14th century village will
find that, but they will also find it supremely overrun with shopping,
shopping, and more shopping, all to a very crass degree. |
We got the laafje room,
which
was decorated
in hopelessly mawkish statues of little gnomes. Our hostess, an
efficient and almost-friendly middle aged woman, explained that laafjes
are mischievous workers in Belgian fairy tales - not unlike menehunes
in Hawaiian tales, I thought. She wrote out our receipt by hand as we
paid her.
There are other tourist traps around too, such as ChocoStory, the
Chocolate Museum (Wijnzakstraat 2, Sint-Jansplein, €6 adults, €5 for
the “student”, 10:00 to 5:00 daily).
Rebecca has indulged me in
enough
comics shops, now it is payback time. Fully prepared for it to be a
disappointing ripoff, we anted up our euros and entered at 2:30 p.m.
We observed a demonstration of chocolate being made, a series of
exhibits about the history of chocolate and the path from cocoa bean in
the Amazon jungle to truffle in Belgium, and beheld a series of
sculptures made in chocolate, including a life-sized full-length
rendering of Barack Obama.
It didn’t look a thing like him (see for yourself to the right).
The
chocolate sculptures continued with Puss in Boots and a few others by
the sculptor Russian Vladimir Konne (all in white chocolate with a
caramel glaze for details; left). They look like porcelain. I have to
admit I
am not an expert in chocolate sculptures, but these are about the best
I have seen.
Konne is the man.
The history of chocolate somehow ties
into the Belgian creation of Bakelite (this was unclear, but it was
interesting to learn that Bakelite comes from Belgium), and of course
there are plenty of monkeys in the displays about the harvesting of
cocoa pods in the rain forest. The
refreshingly unapologetic views of history became illuminated in subtle
ways again: the Belgians “needed slaves to transport the cocoa
beans...”, without further commentary on slavery.
The whole experience was just as cheesy as it was chocolatey, but we expected nothing different. Someone said that part of the Willy Wonka movie was filmed here, but they didn’t say if it was the 1971 or the 2005 version. Also, we didn’t really get to see the factory here, if there even was one, just the museum and displays.
By 4:20 p.m. we
were back on our mapped walking tour, seeing the rest of the town. We
decided
that after blowing €11 on the marginally entertaining chocolate museum,
that we’d skip the frites museum (really) and the lamp museum (I mean
it). Speaking of tourist ripoffs, at the base of the clock tower in the
very heart of Bruges, is the Gallery Expo Salvador Dali. Readers of my
work know that I am an art nerd with a special love for the over
exposed and crassly autocommercialized and yet thoroughly genius Dali.
I’ve
visited his important museums in Spain and Florida several times, and
even did a road trip in 2005 across northeastern Spain to a bunch of
sites key in Dali’s life. But this gallery, in a town that had no
importance in Dali’s career, was just a shop selling prints. That would
be fine if they weren’t charging €10 to get in, and billing it as a
museum.
Fail.
Fortunately we recognized this before going in and said “fuck no”.
The
center of Bruges.
Market Square, Burg Square, City Hall, Renaissance
Hall.
More amazing old buildings and charming cobblestoned squares.
The
Basilica of Holy Blood. Old as hell. Dark, atmospheric, ancient, woody,
with just a few slivers of light leaking in to form dramatic shadows.
Built in 1149, the Basilica houses a fragment of cloth stained with
what is said to be the coagulated blood of Christ. I am sure they’ve
been taking reasonably good care of this rag for the past 860 years,
but I wonder how it survived for the 1100+ years before landing in
Bruges. And how did this bit of textile make it from the holy land to
the low lands? And if this is the blood of Jesus, why not do a DNA
check against the other artifacts claiming to be his, and find out for
sure. Oh no, can’t do that, it would break a lot of hearts when it was
proven that this guy probably never even existed.
Something much more tangible next: frites with curry mayonnaise for €1.50 (I think) at Casa Patata on the Rozenhoed Kaal, right across the street from the spot that our walking tour called “postcard view of canals”. I think this is the first time I have had mayo in years. In this context, it was pretty darned tasty. Ate the frites while sitting on a low stone wall next to the canal. Rebecca approved, adding: “crispy and salty” to my voice notes.
Next door is the Absolute Art Gallery: absolutely the worst! No, not so bad, but not noteworthy. Well, I just noted it. Note to self: do not note the ones not worth noting. But: as we walked along a wooded area along the canal, we dropped €1.50 for a waffle from a street vendor, continuing the theme of €1.50 snacks this fine afternoon. Rebecca: “pretty good, but not as good as the first one in Brussels”.
Sign on a chocolate shop window: “no free entry, come in only if you want to be served”. In other words, don’t even come in here if you aren’t going to spend money. Fucking tourists. Who needs ‘em?
Comprehensive comics shop called De Striep (Katelijnestraat 42): huge, two storefronts wide, and extending really deep into the back. Rebecca was bored silly.
Daya Chocolates (uh, great pun!), had the best bargain we’ve seen: 1 kilogram, about 60 pieces, for €12. We had to question the quality, but there was only one way to find out. A taster of four truffles for €1, filled with citrus, orange, creme, mint, respectively. All of these snacks served one great purpose: I had a ton of Euro change in my pocket, which was now becoming lighter. I was now down to a mere 7 Euro cents in change (and €150 left in bills).
An
old silversmith in a woody little shop with ancient iron tools was
entertaining himself with a little Mozart on the radio.
Rebecca liked
his necklaces, priced reasonably at €20 to €40.
The dusky
Minnewater park was lush and green. We rested. We’d pretty much
exhausted walking around the tourist area, so we headed back towards
our room, looking for food along the way. We paused and spent €2.75 in
a cafe for a liter and a half of water and a half hour on the internet.
North America still exists. I waded through about five hundred spams to
get to about ten real messages.
Back towards the edge of town, just past our home for the night, and over by the windmills we’d explored earlier today, we dropped €29 for a satisfying meal at De Verloren Hoek (“The Lost Corner”, Cermerstraat 178). Appropriately named, it is at the very edge of town on the corner of the last block before the canals and the ring road that defines the limits of Bruges. There isn’t much else in that part of town, it is mostly residential. Not even a market. So after leaving the tourist traps of central Bruges behind, De Verloren Hoek sort of became our only dining option. It was a homey and cozy sort of place. We each got a half chicken. Rebecca’s came with salad and a truly gigantic bowl of frites, and mine was slathered in a tasty mushroom sauce. We shared the frites and salad, each had a beer, and walked out stuffed. After all the snacks and to-go picnics the last few days, it was good to sit down and have a real meal.
We’d
sort of been on a pattern of indulging heavily and staying out late
every other night, and resting up on the alternate nights. We followed
the pattern again tonight, and hit the sack at a quite reasonable hour,
in our room full of hopelessly precious little laafje statues.
Friday, June 19th
This is what we did not do today:
We did not go to the Paul Delvaux museum.
|
This is what we did do today:
Good breakfast in our B+B: yogurt, granola, orange juice, plus toast with some sort of raw beef and cheese. And the best: fruit fondue for dessert. Yeah, we’re definitely on some sort of ridiculously hedonistic vacation when we’re eating dessert with breakfast, but you just don’t pass up a fondue fountain full of Belgian chocolate with fresh strawberries, melon, pineapple, and pound cake. Belgians like to whistle. Wandering
back into the center of town, we pondered one of the more important
aspects of life in Belgium: which frites had been the best to date? We strode by an organ grinder playing In
The Mood at double-speed. So, here’s the thing with Bruges: you really must visit. It is quite lovely. But two full days there is a bit too much. You can see it all in one action-packed day, or else plan a day-and-a-half there, and then hop a train back to Brussels just before dinner on the second day.
The
main mission for today was the Groening Museum. After dropping €12 (€8
for me, and €4 for the erstwhile grad student) for the two of us to
get in, we discovered that the permanent exhibition was off display. |
|
Well, none of that was on
display.None.
Of.
It.
So instead of seeing “one of the best collections of medieval art in Europe“ (this quote from a web site called Exploring Monkey, by the way), we looked at a rather detailed but only marginally interesting exhibit on Karel De Stoute (Charles the Bold; born in Dijon, November 10, 1433 - died in Nancy, January 5, 1477). “Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Limburg and Luxembourg, Count of Flanders, Artois, Burgundy, Hainault, Holland, Zeeland and Names, Lord of Mechelen. In 1472 he was also Duke of Gelre and Count of Zutphen. He was the son of Philip the Good and Isabella of Portugal. His nickname means ‘the bold’ and therefore does not refer naughty behavior”.
We also got in (for free) to a
nearby church, in which we could see the crypts of Karel and his
daughter, Mary of Burgundy. Plexiglass covers protected the open tombs
from tampering. Frescoes decorate the walls of the burial chamber. In
1979, a series of excavations resulted in moving the remains back to
their original positions, where they rest today. They had previously
been moved off-site in 1806. When the graves were exhumed, nothing was
found nothing inside, so I guess we were looking at an empty box. An
informational sign in the museum said that when they found Karel’s body
dead on a battlefield, he had been mostly eaten by wolves, and they
could only identify him via previous scars visible on the remaining
bits of his body.
Nice.
By shortly after 2:00 p.m., we were
wandering aimlessly, having more or less seen everything Bruges has to
offer.
The weather was good at least. Bright blue skies with just a few
big fluffy clouds, although cooler than I am used to in June, and a tad
windy.
Having deemed the Galler brand as being the best chocolate to
date (this one was sampled via a humble grocery store purchase, not a
storefront chocolatier), we stopped into a market and grabbed a fairly
substantial handful of the chocolate bars (at €1.05 each), one packet
of Joris (kinda like gummi bears), and some water. The chocolate made
it home to Chicago with us, and I have to admit, I milked my share of
the loot for several weeks.
This grocery also had Amer
Picon, a
difficult to find liqueur that isn’t imported into America. Interesting
that this random grocery store is the first place that I have ever seen
the stuff. I didn’t want to carry it around all day, but knowing that
it was available here, I vowed to grab some before we left Belgium. I
won’t leave you in suspense; although I looked in some other shops
later, I never saw any more, so I regretted not snagging the one and
only bottle that I glimpsed, when I
had the chance.
Finally, out of sheer desperation for an
activity, we climbed all 366 steps of the iconic bell tower, which
plays such a crucial role in both Belgian tourism and in the film In
Bruges.
The admission price was €9 for those over 25, and €3 for those under.
International Rebecca has some mighty good genes, and was easily able
to pass for someone a bit younger than her actual age.
She was such a
goody-goody when I met her, but it is nice to know that I have been
able to corrupt her, at least to the degree that she’ll fib to a
ticket-taker in a Belgian tourist trap.
I’ll make a shady character out
of her yet.
The ticket man, by the
way, was every bit the surly prick in person that he was on film. I
wonder if the actor in the movie based his character on the real ticket
booth man?
He was getting bent because we didn’t have exact change.
The
hike up the tower was a bit tiring, but after making it to the top, we
had a swell view of the town. I was a bit fascinated by the way the
carrilon worked. We got to see and hear the big deafening bells in
action, and watch the mechanism that makes them work. You do not want
to be up here at noon. This thing is loud. Amazing to think that this
tower has been here for 770 years.
That is one of the things that never
ceases to amaze me about Europe.
Nothing in North America is that old.
Nothing man-made, anyway.
That was all wrapped up by a bit
after
4:00 p.m., and we realized that at this point, our best option was to
spend our last day in Belgium taking (further) full advantage of our
final opportunity to drink a lot of amazing Belgian beer for relatively
little cash. And frankly, the idea of stumbling around this town on a
pleasant summer night while slightly in my cups was rather appealing to
me.
A shop called Smatch sold us a Straffe Hendrick, a Boon
Kriek, a liter and a half of water, a tube of toothpaste (don’t ask),
and a bag of Winny paprika chips for €7.11. The chips, by the way were
13 Euro cents. I paid for this feast with a €100 note, breaking my last
big bill.
The guy in line in front of us was wearing a Euro Disney
t-shirt and had some seriously bad teeth. He was also buying
toothpaste, and a lot of it. Maybe he just noticed how rotten his
choppers are.
Too late.
He didn’t work at the shop, but he still bagged
up our purchase for us while I was paying the cashier.
Thoroughly
through with Bruges, we wandered.
An interesting octagonal building
turned out to be a prison.
By 5:00 p.m. we were enjoying our beverages
in our room.
Rebecca perused the local entertainment guide, looking for
a good restaurant. One place boasted of their “saddle of hare”. I
didn’t know you could put a saddle on a hare, and if you did, why would
you want to eat it afterwards?
We relaxed a bit, but we couldn’t stay
put.
€1.33 for a Kastille Tripel from a random little market down
the street from “home”. A declaration was made: this latest beer
tasted like canal water. Even Belgian brewers have their off
days.
Then we hit the oldest bar in Bruges, walked
in, sat down chilled for a few minutes, and then decided to leave
without ordering anything.
Rebecca
mused on how multicultural Belgium really is. Besides being a melting
pot for several northern European cultures, the density of the growing
Muslim population is striking. My tape recorder contains a fair bit of
ranting from the two of us on how to save the world by just wiping out
all of the Christians and the Muslims.
We deemed the Jews
harmless.
We wondered why all the Muslims are coming to northern
Europe, and our best guess is because it is just too fucking hot where
they used to live.
Also, there are frites here.
We traveled here for
the frites, so why not the pilgrims of Mohammed? Then we got to
discussing the mormon-sponsored Polynesian Cultural Center that we
visited in Hawai’i. Those fuckers are nuts too. We remembered that
there was nothing caffeinated in the restaurant at the Cultural Center.
Caffeine, Rebecca mused (on behalf of Mormons everywhere), makes you
doubt god. Personally, I have no doubts whatsoever. I have absolute
surety of my convictions. I know reality from fairy tales.
We
violated one of my cardinal rules of travel by eating in the same
restaurant twice. De Verloren Hoek got €39 from us for four beers, a
huge plate of lasagna, and a great bowl of scampis with tomatoes and
zuchinni. Kind of like a ratatouille. We split a salad that was
stupidly overpriced; everything else was fairly reasonable.
We ate
al fresco,
and were accosted by some stupid American teenagers walking down the
street past the restaurant. They asked us for directions when we were
in mid-meal, which was not so bad, but then they didn’t get the hint to
move on and go away. They wanted some new friends, fer suuure.
We
wanted to eat.
Tonight, my friends, we were in it to win it: €9
for for four more beers (St Bernadus 12, Chimay Bleue, Hapkin, and
Kasteel) from who can remember where, some shop, and YES, another
picturesque bench by another scenic canal as the night wore on to 9:00
p.m., to 10:00 p.m., with no signs of darkness yet.
Rebecca finally
committed that act of true vandalism that I have been driving her
towards for the past six years: as we wera talking and drinking, she
absently started scraping away at
the paint on our bench with a Chimay Blue bottle cap. This is a
girl
who despises disrespect in all its forms, and who would never normally
have considered, in her most reckless moment, harming the integrity of
this lovely European city.
I have finally corrupted her.
She only got
as far as making a “P” before I busted here, but yes, it was most
definitely going to be an “R”.
She is so shady.
I gave her a quick
history lesson about how the Vandals invaded and trashed France (then
called Gaul) in 406 a.d., and then sacked Rome by 455 a.d., and about
how she
was becoming a neo-Vandal, invading and defacing Bruges.
Rebecca, on the other hand,
preferred to align herself with the heroic Charles the Bold, and
declared herself Rebecca the Bold.
My best defense against this
declaration was that today’s museum was the only monkey-free museum we
had seen on this whole trip, and therefore Charles the Bold was an
ape-free hack.
Because clearly, any monarch who is monkeyless is
without quality. Therefore, aligning one's self with a simian-deficient
ex-ruler is in effect a confession of being aligned with a hack, which
is even worse than being a vandal.
I then delivered the coup de
grace
by declaring that Charles the Bold had no Elvis in him. There is no
defense against having aligned one's self with someone who was a
chimpless chump who had no Elvis in him.
In the endless daylight,
we wandered back past the archery club, where we observed a gang of
elderly men, all in blue blazers and grey pants, firing crossbows at
targets.
Meanwhile, some Flemish teenybopper was blasting pop music out
of the window of their home: “Freeze-Frame” by J. Geils Band isn’t what
one expects to hear disrupting the otherwise quiet evening streets of
Bruges. This got Rebecca dancing down the largely deserted cobblestone
thoroughfare, and I have video to prove it. No, you can’t see it, so
don’t even ask.
And then this: she saw a flower growing near the road
that she recognized as being edible, and proved it to me by making it
her dessert.
In turn, I climbed a wall to see what was on the other
side.
It was this:
Finally, the sky turned purple and pink as we
stumbled past a big monastery and back towards bed.
The last thing on
my tape recorder from that night is International Rebecca and I trying
to whistle Blue Skies in harmony with each other.
It wasn’t
happening.
But with the whistling, we were at least trying to fit in
with the locals.
Saturday, June 20th
Another nice meal in the
breakfast room. Caught the #14 bus (€1.60 each) from the street corner
to the train station, and then the 9:58 a.m. train out of Bruges to
Amsterdam (via Brussels).
I was
in no mood for the twelve guys on our train car having a mobile
bachelor party, still rockin’ from last night.
Nor did the the two
hyper-chatty Dutch girls in the seat in front of us please me much.
I
was a bit relieved when they all got off the train.
Rebecca decided to
buy herself a brownie that was “as big as my lasagna pan last
night”.
I can't say how she was feeling, but based on my own mood, I can guess.
When arriving at the train station, the alert sign on the train
says
“wekominaanin”. That means “approaching the station” or ”arriving” or
something.
But it works in English too, when spoken aloud (like so much
Dutch!): “We comin’ on in”!
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We had a quick stopover in Brussles. We went outside to
station to
see if the Marche du Midi was open. This was something we wanted to see
when we were here earlier in the week, but we missed it. Well, we
didn’t see this market. Fighting a drizzle of rain, we bought a bottle of water for €1 in a quaint yet seedy Spanish market, and went back into the station. Goodbye Brussels. We were back in Amsterdam by 3:06 p.m. |
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Melkweg
and OT 301, incidentally, are two arts centers that I had read about
and was interested in checking out. Perusing their web sites before
leaving Chicago, I noted that the particular events happening in these
venues during my
days in Amsterdam were not things I was especially interested in. But I
was interested in having a peek at the spaces anyway, because both of
them seemed like really good organizations, hosting a multitude of
performances and exhibitions across all of the arts.
To wit:
OT31
(Vereniging Eerst Hulp Bij Kunst, Overtoom 301) is a “multi-media
alternative cultural centre. The building is an old film academy, used
in a range of ways, including as a venue for music and films, a
non-profit print shop, artists workspace and an 'organic cultural
kitchen' (a vegan restaurant) called De Peper”.
And:
Melkweg
(Lijnbaansgracht 234a) is a “well-known cultural centre, unique because
of a program that unites five artistic disciplines under one roof:
music, dance/theater, film, photography and media art. The ground floor
houses The Max and the Oude Zaa, which are used primarily for concerts
and events. The Photo Gallery and the Café-Restaurant are
located on
the Marnixstraat side, while the upper floor is occupied by the Cinema,
the Theaterzaal, the Mediaroom, and the Tearoom”.
The plan for our time with Anna and Jamie was
actually to hang out with our hosts the following night. Anna and Jamie
had also been traveling, separately, and Jamie was actually not back
yet. He was due home tonight. Anna had just returned from seeing her
family in Canada. It worked out well, because I wanted to also meet up
with another friend, Forest Collins. She is an American gal living in
Paris, who was in Amsterdam this weekend celebrating another friend’s
birthday. So tonight we’d go see Forest, joining in on her pal’s
birthday celebration, while giving Anna and Jamie some time to
decompress and be
together after their trips. The following night, Rebecca, Anna, Jamie,
and I would have some fun.
Seeing all of these friends was a great
finale to this trip.
But first, Anna took Rebecca and I for a
walk.
We explored the Vondelpark - lots of trees, bridges, gazeos, and
of course bikes.
No monkeys.
We poked our heads in to Melkweg and
OT31 just for a minute, and then headed over to Kinkerstraat.
For all of the
Flemish delicacies we’d shamelessly stuffed ourselves with in Belgium,
we still had a few Dutch treats on our list to explore. The
Kinkerstraat was packed with vendors set up on the sidewalk, and even
in the
street, selling everything from socks to fish. Some may have even had
socks
for fish, but I don’t think those are much in demand. The road was
closed to
motor traffic, and thousands of people were crammed into the street
going about their business. We got a syrup waffel for €1, which was
basically a pancake made in a hydraulic press with the syrup embedded
inside. At another stall, Anna got herring-on-a-plate, and I got a
herring sandwich, both for €5.50 total. Mine was a fish, onions,
pickle, on a generic enriched flour hamburger bun.
Anna’s was the same,
sans bun.
Neither had socks.
Later, because we haven't eaten
enough on this trip, we went for Indian food
at
Dosa. The restaurant is a small and slightly grubby place on a
moderately busy street corner, but the food was very good. We started
with vegetarian kurma, plus a mango lassi for Anna. Rebecca got a
masala dosa, while I went for chicken and spinach (you have to love
the palak paneer), and Anna got tofu and spinach. We had some delicious
garlic nan with it.
The bill was €51 for the three of us, which seems a
little high for Indian food - that comes to like $80.
We split it
evenly.
Then it was off to meet Forest.
Our first destination was
a cocktail bar called Door 74 (at Reguliersdwarsstraat 74). This is
Amsterdam’s entry in the emerging craft cocktail movement. Since I am
doing some substantial writing on the topic, I was also going to be
thinking in research terms while we were visiting. In fact, I’d emailed
the owner, Phillip Duff, ahead of time, so that he and I could meet. As
it turns out, there was some sort of massive multi-car pile up on the
Autobahn, so Phillip was delayed returning from a trip to Germany. We
were very well taken care of, however, by his hostess, Imke. In
addition to being friendly and efficient, she is so fantastically
beautiful as to defy description (update: she no longer works
there. Sorry fellas).
Prepared for some A+
cocktails, Rebecca and I greeted Forest, and met her friends. It tutned
out that there were a whole bunch of them. Klary is a food blogger from
Amsterdam, Nicola was the birthday girl, and we also met her boyfriend
from the U.K., plus two other girls, Mylene and Lisa. The cozy bar
instantly became festive as friends from something like five countries
all met and toasted the birthday. There was some mix up with our table
and a prior reservation, so Imke had to move our party one table over
(why not just seat the new arriving party at the table we moved to, and
leave us be? No one could answer that).
No big deal however.
Forest and
I are both massive cocktail nerds, and it must be noted that Rebecca
and Klary are women of discerning tastes as well. I am sure the others
were not entirely unparticular about their choices. Having said
all of
this, we were all reasonably satisfied if not impressed with the
libations.
I had the special of the day, a
Nuclear Daiquiri:
overproof rum, lime, Chartreuse, and a bit too much sugar. I’d use a
touch less sugar, and maybe use a less strong but better tasting clear
rum, such as Orinoco. We were also impressed with a mixture of Campari,
champagne, rose jam, and thyme liqueur. A few other people at our
festive table had these same drinks, and after sampling each other’s
discoveries, most of us agreed that they were the two best on the menu.
These were by no means the only tipples we sampled: multiple instances
of the Zena con Humphrey, 74 Cobbles, Summer Sling, Playmate, and Amer
Picon Lemon Saf were enjoyed by all. We ran up a bill of €170. Almost
all of the cocktails were €10, except the Zena con Humphrey, which was
€12.50.
The next destination (also pre-determined before I even left Chicago) was Feijoa (39 Vijzelstraat), which turned out to be about three doors down the street from Door 74. It seemed promising: “The owner Sergej is a well known personality in Amsterdam and the bar is named after a New Zealand fruit brought by him on one of his trips. Try the new and old fashioned cocktails served by Sergej including classics like Manhattans and Tom Collins”.
Unfortunately, it was
cramped inside, the crowd was a bit too loud and trendy, and the drinks
were
average at best, in spite of the enticing menu descriptions. Continuing
the daiquiri theme from Door 74 (possibly a carryover from my trip to
Cuba six months earlier), I had a Papa Doble Daiquiri (€11.50; triple
shot of white rum, grapefruit, lime, Luxardo cherry, sugar), and
Rebecca got a Basil Bramble Sling (€8.50; gin, basil leaves, lemon,
sugar, and creme de mure - a blackberry liqueur). These daiquiris I
have been drinking by the way,
were not the frozen slushy kind; these were proper cocktails in a rocks
glass, the old-school pre-1970s way to do a daiquiri. Rebecca's seemed
intriguing, but it just wasn't made very well. Our mediocre
libations shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise - the first three
drinks listed on the menu are all vodka drinks, so that should have
tipped us off to what we were getting before we even started. Chocolate
Sazerac? Need I say more?
Ew.
As it turns out, Sergej is a partner in Door 74 also, so clearly he has the business sense to keep his high volume operation and his high quality operation separate. I was also amused at the differences in the lists of rules printed on the menus at both bars. It is sort of deemed necessary in some of the better cocktail bars out there to remind their customers to behave like ladies and gentlemen. At Door 74, we are reminded not to overtly hit on other customers, and that gentlemen are to remove their hats. This sort of refinement, be it artificial or not, cannot be expected at Feijoa, where the clientele can only be expected to refrain from “whistling at the bartender”. I am loving the help in both bars though; our server at Feijoa was an exotic Icelandic waif with long straight black hair and almond-shaped blue eyes, like Bjork’s much cuter little sister.
Klary, the only
local in our group, recommended a trip to Harry’s Bar (285 Spuistraat),
a short walk away (see photo to right). It is very close to the Spui
book market we’d
explored last week, and also near to the generically-named Grolsch and
Heineken bars. Harry’s was also crowded, but we all felt more
comfortable there than at Feijoa, especially after we scored a big
table for eight (the only one of such size in the place), on a small
sort of landing or balcony half way up the stair case between the
ground and upper floors.
Another party had just vacated, so we were
lucky to get the spot, even though something smelled like puke and
there were a mess of wet and sticky glasses on the table. One of these
issues was handled by the staff, the other had to be tolerated.
The drinks at Harry’s were certainly better than Feijoa, but not anywhere near as good as at Door 74. Rebecca and I had a Sidecar and a Negroni (€8.80 each). The Sidecar was a small pour, an tiny lil’ thing, but it tasted the way a Sidecar ought to. The Negroni was served on the rocks, but at least the cubes were big and very cold so they didn’t melt too fast and water the drink down.
Klary started talking about some
sort of delicious deep-fried gravy balls that were served as pub snacks
around these parts, and was also discussing the ritual of kirenwijn, a
local variation on gin or jenever. One specific brand of the spirit,
called Corenwyn, is
made exclusively by Bols, Holland's hometown distillery. Turns
out we could get both
gravy balls and Corenwyn
at
the
ancient
Cafe
Hotte just down the block.
Our party diminished
only slightly as we walked to our fourth and final stop for the night.
We were all feeling quite festive by that point. I liked the old tile
floor, and the sense of history in this place. It was also not very
crowded, which was a plus. We congregated around the ancient woody bar
under a gigantic old oil panting of a man on a horse toasting a
horseless woman in a frilly dress, as an Asta dog
jumps around, and another man looks on approvingly. We approved as
well.
We also admired the fact that this place has been a bar
continuously since 1670.
Shots of the harsh Corenwyn
began flowing freely, and several baskets of amazing and horrific fried
gravy balls made the rounds. Corenwyn must be consumed by leaning over
the bar and sipping it from a shot glass that is always filled to
overflow capacity by the person pouring it. It is fairly vile stuff.
The gravy balls were totally a guilty pleasure, and somehow
complemented Corenwyn. We passed on sampling the hardboiled eggs that
were sitting out, uncovered, on a tray behind the bar all
night.
I anted up a rather reasonable €15 for
our share of the tab, and we said goodbye to everybody. And “goodbye”
it is; for it is likely that I will never meet any of these people
again. Probably Forest, maybe Klary.
But the rest?
It was fun, people,
so happy trails to you!
1:00 a.m.
Time to head back to Anna’s.
She’d given us a key and told us it was fine to come back “whenever”.
It was time.
But first: a falaflel on the Leidesplein. €3.50 or so.
Next door had the same thing for €4.40. Bargain shopping in Amsterdam:
go next door. Rebecca was excited that we got to assemble it ourselves.
She gleefully loaded it up with onions, cabbage, chili sauce, some sort
of spicy mayo, carrots, olives, and pickles.
Leidesplein on a
Saturday night was rockin’.
Lots of people, big crowds, a lot going on.
But I so vastly prefer a quiet lounge with good cocktails (i.e. Door
74) to a big raucous party. We strode straight through the hoardes of
kids on the
Leidesplein; let them have their fun all damned night. We’d had ours
already:
good food and good drink with good people.
Good times.
Sunday, June 21st
Anna
took Rebecca and I for a walk around the Jordaan district. She was
walking her bike (remember all of the bikes in this town!) so she could
scoot home afterwards; Rebecca and I were going to hit the Van Gough
Museum
later in the day.
We started at Winkel, Anna’s favorite cafe to get
appelgebak with whipped cream. Appelgebak is basically like apple pie,
but is more dense and less syrupy than most of the pies you see in
North America. The apples are sliced thinner, and there is less sugary
goo within. Ingesting three fat wedges of the apple pie relative, we
wanted more... but resisted. The ladies had coffee too. We ate on a big
and pleasant cobblestone plaza in front of Winkel. The owners let us
tour the kitchen after we ate.
Lots and lots of appelgebak was being
made!
before..... and .......after
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We passed a statue of Theo Thyssen, writer and schoolmaster. His face and feet were spray painted bright orange, a leftover from Queen’s Day, which had been on April 30. Queen's Day is known for its vrijmarkt (freemarket), where people are allowed to sell things in the streets. Anna suggests being in town for it, but not traveling to or from Amsterdam on that specific day. The daytime festivities are interesting, apparently, but the evening is all about drunken yahoos on the streets - so in other words, it is like a normal day in Amsterdam. The color orange is a common sight, referring to the House of Orange, the name of the Dutch royal family. After listening to Anna
provide us with us further insight about the winches adorning every
building along the canals, we walked along the Haarlemerdyke - a
commercial road - and discovered an old theater called At The Movies.
The massive reels of 35mm movie film, being projected onto a screen at
that very
moment, were viewable in a picture window along the street. We poked
our heads inside the lobby and were rewarded with views of an
interesting vintage
Art Deco lobby. At a liquor store called Gall and Gall, we bought some Jenever to bring back to Chicago. The clerk, all alone in the tiny store, was super helpful in helping me pick out the best bottle within my price range. He spoke excellent English, and was good about listening to my criteria and responding to my needs. I ended up with a Rutte & Zn 12-year-old for €22.99. Then we made for the Westerpark (uh, Western Park), a new park on the edge of the suburbs. No bikes or booze are allowed in the park. Anna stowed my bottle deep in her saddlebags, and with some hesitation (on my part) at leaving it there, we locked up the bike and walked into the park. She assured me that theft would not be an issue. It was a pleasant enough park, with some nice landscaping and a lot of people out enjoying their Sunday. This park is a lot less green and shady than Vondelpark or even Oostpark. It is more open and not quite as developed yet. A mediocre art show failed to interest any of the three of us (but they had free brownies!); it was a project with a stated goal of mass-producing canvases in China that had been designed by Dutch artists. It reeked of trying to doll up cheap kitsch art in a veneer of legitimacy. We listened to some musicians playing for
a bit, and perused some marginally interesting items in a craft market.
And of course, there were further exotic foodstuffs to sample! Croque
madame
(€4.50)
are delicious French bread with pesto, mozzerella, and tomatoes baked
on top of it. It is not at all like a pizza, nor must it be confused
with croque monsieur, the sloppy French ham and cheese sandwich
with a similar name. Croque is “crunch” in French. I tired to record the amazing smell of fresh appelgebak being made, but my tape recorder is not smell-equipped. Anna hit the pavement as Rebecca and I got lucky in finding a tram that made the trip all the way to the opposite end of the city, almost door-to-door from the Westerpark to the Van Gough museum, without us having to transfer. Cool beans. A proper lunch was in order before our museum visit. At the Albert Heijn supermarket on the Museumplein, we dropped €4.27 for a packet of ossenworst (a kind of sliced salami), some rookkaas (spicy cheese), two wheat baguettes, and a big water (carbonated, oops). We had our final European picnic lunch (forever, as it turned out -- this was destined to be the last trip Rebecca and I took together), on a bench overlooking the massive lawn around which several museums are arranged. |
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We entered the
Van Gough Museum by 3:15 p.m., just as the deluge began. The cost was
€12.50 for me, and free for Rebecca with a museum pass that Anna loaned
us. Given how disappointed I have been with all of the closed (or
partly closed) museums on this trip, I really just went to the Vincent
Van Gough because I could!
It was fully open!
This museum is run like a
prison.
So many signs outside!
No dogs.
No cameras.
No bags.
No backpacks.
No umbrellas.
No smoking.
No.
No.
No.
Metal detector... this is worse than the fucking airport.
The truth is that as much of an art nerd as I am, I have never been much of a Van Gough fan. Keeping with my usual attitude about things like this, I went in there with the intention of discovering something new about the artist, and finding something in his work that I might have never truly understood before. I have seen dozens of his paintings up close in many museums in many countries on several continents, but perhaps seeing so many of them all together will give me a wider perspective and a new appreciation.
After looking the place over, what I really walked away with is a bit of admiration (not tons, but some) for the way he used paint as a texture. Half a century before Abstract Expressionism, Van Gough was slapping paint to canvas in huge, think, chunky brush strokes that must have taken ages to dry. Clearly, anyone with a passing interest in art history has noted this before, but seeing so many of his works all together really underlines how crucial this technique was to his art, and how innovative it was when viewed in comparison with his contemporaries. The work of the Abstract Expressionists, fifty years later, owed a debt to Van Gough for his willingness to use his medium as a nearly sculptural element for the first time.
The text throughout the museum stresses biography over discussing much about the art or his place in art, or how he influenced art or why he is important, why the paintings are important, why the images we are seeing are worth looking at. It is mostly about his life. Van Gough's siter-in-law (brother Theo’s widow) curated the collection after his death. My detailed notes are here.Rebecca says: Waaaaph.
For €14.95, or €2.55 more than entrance to the museum, you can get a book titled 100 Masterpieces in the Van Gough Museum with more or less all the works in the museum in it. Available in a variety of languages.
Dinner with Anna and Jamie at Los Pilones. This is a favorite place to visit for our hosts, who were slightly embarrassed at how miserable the service was. It took a really, really long time for use to get served. No matter, we weren’t in a hurry. This was a relaxing Sunday night out with friends, a time to unwind at the very end of our trip. We had no agenda. But still, we were pretty antsy by the time our food finally arrived. It was very good though. Upscale Mexican food, and lots of it.
Wandering back to Anna's, I dropped €6.30 for gelato for the four
of us at Cons Ijs Fabriek
(Tweede Anjeliers Dwarsstraat 17). I got blood orange and Campari
sherbet. How much does that combo kick ass in a drink?
Well, it works
pretty damned well in gelato too.
Chocolate mint for International
Rebecca.
We walked around the Jordaan area on a pleasant evening, as Anna and Jamie attempted to make sense of the street naming conventions for me: most of the streets around here are named after flowers (in their Dutch iterations), but some of the streets have similarly named sub-streets that become numbered. So Carnation St. is a main street, and nearby may be smaller roads that cross the main street, and are called 2nd Carnation St., 3rd Carnation St., et cetera. So then you have Garden St., which is crossed by 2nd Garden St., and so on. It seems kind of counterintuitive, but it sure beats the heck out of the Japanese system, that’s for sure.
After our old buddy Albert Heijn hooked us up with some water, juice, and bananas for the morning (€2.40), we hit the sack nice and early.
Monday, June 22nd
Up at 7:40 a.m.
Airport.
Duty-Free.
€12 for a bottle of Bols Corenwyn (Rebecca got one too), and €25.95 for
a 1.5 liter Cointreau. After adjusting for the exchange rate, that’s
still about half the price of this stuff in the U.S. of A.
Our 10:30 a.m. flight left Amsterdam forty minutes late due to the longest security line in history. An airline rep pulled us (and some other people) out of the line and zoomed us to the front. The security at Schiphol is pretty dumb; there is a separate security line for each individual gate. It would seem that this system would be more efficient, but this is not the case. The flights leaving Schiphol were all delayed, I think. Rebecca noticed a woman with a list double-checking passports. There may have been some sort of alert happening. It seems that the the local equivalent of the TSA were trying to snag someone.
A super-friendly, not unattractive, and
very helpful flight attendant had my back on the crowded flight, and
shuffled me to an exit row seat, seconds before departure. Rebecca and
I were not seated together before or after this switch. Incredibly, the
person sitting next to me was a friend-of-a-friend from Chicago, who
didn’t say one word to me the entire flight. I am not sure she
recognized me. But she should have. She invited me to a party
once! I decided to stick it out and
wait to see how long it would take her to recognize me. She never
did...
In spite of the delays, by 1:15 p.m., we were well along the Blue Line in Chicago, making our way home. I like all the time that one makes up coming back from Europe: the seven to nine hour flights are only and hour or two long, on the clock.
It
was 87 degrees and humid in Chicago, in sharp contrast to the low 70s
and cool breezes we experienced in the European Lowlands. The quiet and
clean-running trams of Amsterdam have been replaced by noisy and stinky
busses full of overweight people, more of them, and bigger on the
average than one ever sees in Europe. The contrast is always startling
whenever I get home.
“gebouw”
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