I'm reaching the critical halfway point in my travels where I'm not entirely sure I'm processing new information and experiences anymore, so I'm glad I'm writing to reflect on everything and be grateful for the time I've been lucky enough to have here!!
I'm writing this from my own personal cabin in the Stena Line ferry from Hoek van Holland to Harwich port in the UK! This is essentially a cruise ship (featuring a casino, several bars, and a cinema where they're showing Barbie) but for an eight hour overnight journey, and it's also the only place I've stayed with my own room/shower in five days, which makes it feel so luxurious. To get to the port I took a train from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, and then a metro from Rotterdam to the check-in office, which I nervously arrived at about 40 minutes too early. I passed through customs (which side note, has been a little awkward as a young American solo traveler in the Netherlands with a recognizably Dutch surname) and exalted in dropping my luggage off at my private suite. The first thing I did was shower without bringing a change of clothes into the bathroom with me and (TMI?) lay naked on the bed for about an hour. It's the simple pleasures. Then I rearranged some of my luggage/packing, wandered the upper deck, pulled some GBP from at ATM and used up the last of my Euro cash on a sparkling wine, which I sipped while watching the Holland horizon slip into the distance.
I slept very well on this ferry because the seas were smooth and I had limited internet access which prevented me from endless scrolling. I'll note that it cost about the same to book as it would've been to stay in Amsterdam another night and fly direct to London. The train connections at either end have added up to about €50, so that's something to consider, but being the transportation nerd I am, I greatly enjoyed collecting ticket stubs and feeling the dilution of tourists in the train car with every kilometer I put between myself and Amsterdam.
To backtrack, I left Bruges at 6 am two days ago and caught a FlixBus to Amsterdam. The American equivalent of this is a Greyhound essentially-- cheap, long-haul, inter-city buses. I met a couple other American students at the bus stop and got some preliminary recommendations from them about their experience in Amsterdam (they were alighting in Ghent). We lamented about the bus being 50 minutes late, then climbed on board and fell asleep quickly due to our Big Coffee deprivation.
It was about 4 hours to Amsterdam, so I made it right on time to my Van Gogh museum reservation at noon! I stored my luggage away in a public locker (another thing I desperately need US cities to get on board with) and strutted past the out-in-the-cold tourists with my fancy pre-booked tickets.
I was really really looking forward to the Van Gogh museum because I've always loved his artwork and story. I grew up with a Starry Night poster in my bedroom that had once belonged to my mom, and whenever I need a good cry I'll watch the Doctor Who episode where the eleventh doctor transports the artist into the future so he can appreciate the impact his work has had on future artists and societies. I think my huge admiration really primed me for this experience, because within twenty minutes of viewing his work and reading descriptions of how his personal life at the time had informed it made me cry. I think a big part of this emotion can also be attributed to the museum itself; it was designed by Vincent's nephew, who was also named Vincent because the love between Vincent and his brother Theo was so strong and sustaining
I'd been familiar with Vincent and Theo and many of Vincent's paintings before this experience, but the organization of the museum really drove home the way Vincent's whole career was driven by the expression of compassion and love. The brothers wrote so many letters to one another that reveal a lot about art history at the time, in addition to Vincent's feelings and motivations for painting. The famous Almond Blossom painting, for example, was painted as a gift to Theo's son, and he noted in a letter that it was the most patient and calm art-making he'd experienced. Some of Vincent's latest work had a sort of haunting quality to it because after a final stint in a mental asylum, he'd been producing at least one painting a day for the last two months of his life. Almost like he knew his end was near, and needed to express all the truth and beauty and emotion he could before then. But what really moved me is that Vincent didn't die immediately after shooting himself in the chest-- he remaining living for two days until his brother Theo was at his bedside. Even typing it out again makes me tear up.
If you didn't get this from the two paragraphs waxing poetic, I was incredibly grateful I got to visit this museum. It made me thoughtful and it made me miss my two younger sisters, who I love so much. I picked up a copy of Vincent and Theo's letters to each other from the book shop and hope to read it on the plane ride home!
After the museum, I had an apple pie and ice cream from a corner cafe, which was €10 but totally worth it because it was ridiculously hot again and I would be carrying a 10 kg backpack around. I chatted with an American couple celebrating their 50th anniversary, which was cool because they’d also spent part of their honeymoon in Amsterdam on ‘$10 a day’. It felt very full-circle. I couldn't check into the hostel immediately, so I also grabbed some cheese and crackers from a supermarket and had a mini-picnic in the park near the Rijkmuseum, which I could not get a ticket to.
When I checked into my hostel (Durty Nelly’s) on the fourth floor of a red light district row house with classically steep stairs, nobody was socializing. So I charged my phone a bit and booked the last ticket on a cheap sunset canal boat tour. Things are very easy to book when you're alone! You do have to put up with some perceived judgement when you're the only one alone in the whole boat, but when a tour is going on, it's a little easier to turn off that social awkwardness radar. I learned on the tour that the three XXX on the Amsterdam flag stood for the flooding, fires, and plague the city had survived. Later on someone corrected me that they stood for valiant, decisive, and merciful, which I like a lot better and choose to accept as truth. When a city is this old, I think I can do that.
I had planned on doing a huge pub crawl in Amsterdam because duh it's the red light district and that's what you do. But because I hadn't met anyone at the hostel yet and was weary of thirty minutes of free shots with 200 strangers, I opted not to join the group. Luckily, or actually really terribly and unluckily, as I was sitting in the lobby trying to affirm myself in this decision, a drunk cyclist ran into a drunk pedestrian right outside the front window, and myself and a few others who were traveling alone witnessed it and had to debrief about the incident as ambulance and police vehicles arrived. They didn't seem to have severe injuries, by the way, and the hostel receptionist who witnessed it also said this happens quite frequently. I suppose when your city is both a party destination and a cyclist infrastructure haven, that might cause some issues.
The group of us five solo travelers got to know each other pretty quickly then by watching the window as more drunk tourists crawled past and a couple bike thieves prowled the curb. The receptionist said if one of us ran outside, we could probably buy the stolen bike for €10. I can't imagine why a city with seemingly more bikes than people would have significant bike theft, but it did make me laugh when a city officer approached one of the thieves as he unlocked a stolen bike, then held the man's beer upon request as he rode off with it. Apparently according to the receptionist, many of the things Amsterdam is known for are not actually legal there. They're just unenforced.
(Before you ask, I didn't go to a "coffee shop". There are new rules about smoking in public, and I just didn't want to be a tourist menace. Also I'm pretty square so there was a low chance of this happening anyway.)
My breakfast club of five solo travelers (which included a Swiss student, a Hong Konger-turned-Scot, a Chilean-turned-Brit, a Filipino-Italian, and myself) did take a stroll around the red light district together. This felt very surreal. It was beyond crowded with tourists, to the point that the city has set up barricades to better organize the flow of foot traffic. There was a strange sensual mixture of church bells chiming loudly, doner kebab and weed and public open-air toilet smells wafting through the canals, and neon lights advertising sex shows. I also got a fried cheese stick from a vending machine restaurant next door to an erotic toy shop. Amsterdam actually cannot be a real place.
One of the things I enjoy most about meeting people in hostels is learning how cultural attitudes and tabboos are slightly different in different places. Myself and the two UK students were least precious about seeing the girls working the windows, whilst the Swiss and Filipino were in a state of total bewilderment. There is a hefty fine if you take pictures of the girls, but some of them appeared to also be live-streaming from TikTok or other social media anyway, which we all got a laugh from. Apparently there's been a recent push from the mayor's office to relocate the prostitution to a new district, where interested parties could make reservations online instead of browsing the windows. If that proposition is safer or more profitable for the workers, then all the power to them! But I will say there's something very unique about the vibe of the red light district as it exists today that rings true to the general Dutch quirkiness, even if it looks entirely different during the day.
On day 2 I slept in a bit, had a cappuccino by the canal with the Swiss, and was excited to be able to meet with some distant relatives for lunch! The last time I'd been in Amsterdam was 2012 with my family, and I met my second (or maybe third?) cousins Hannah and Mara, both a few years younger than me, so I wanted to make sure I could say hi if I got the chance on this trip! Hannah is studying law now and couldn't make it back for a lunch, but I did get to see Mara and was shocked by how grown-up and teenagery she was! She's going through her last year of high school now, and I got to ask a little about what that's like and her future plans. Her mom Henriet chose a wonderful restaurant in a quieter neighborhood near the Amsterdam Zoo, and I also enjoyed catching up with her and what life's been like since the pandemic. We took a picture by the Flamingos, and I included a photo of us in 2012 also for reference. Mara was the shortest of all of us babies!
Luckily, the restaurant was right down the street from the Museum of Dutch Resistance, so after I said goodbye to them, I could spend a few hours learning about the Netherlands during WW2 before having to catch my train to Rotterdam. I'd seen the Anne Frank House in 2012 and knew it would be pretty crowded, so I opted not to see it again on this trip, and really think the Museum of Dutch Resistance is a great alternative. There were many stories and artifacts about how Dutchies resisted Nazi occupation through general strikes, student organizations, underground newspapers, hiding Jews, bypassing censorship to listen to the resistance's "Orange Radio" with updates from the Dutch government in London, making jokes and songs at the expense of Germans, and even taking up arms against occupying soldiers. I really admire the way the Dutch sought justice when they saw their neighbors persecuted. I don't think of revolution as a big part of their cultural identity, but this museum had me in awe of the way they banded together. They're community-oriented and welcoming people in a very rational, just, straightforward manner. This museum made me cry a little too, just at the sheer courage from ordinary people. If you don't cry alone in museums, you're fundamentally on a different level than me.
I'll be honest, central Amsterdam might be a bit too busy for me to enjoy living there, but a quiet neighborhood with other expats would probably be delightful. Getting around is so easy, the food choices are phenomenal, and I do feel connected to my heritage there in very small ways. I enjoyed listening to people speak Dutch around me. I enjoyed how kind everyone was, even though they were clearly overwhelmed with crowds this summer. One of the most popular breakfasts there is Appletaart. That's beautiful.
I got a bubble tea on my way to the train station, took comfort in how some things taste the same everywhere, and had a pleasant time connecting across the country and up north to my boat. I'm still beyond happy to be on a boat. It's so clean and quiet.
I'll be headed to Bath via train early in the morning, and really looking forward to convening with the spirit of Jane Austen!