30/5 Getting to know Amsterdam

Wednesday 30  A walking tour through the Dutch psyche

We had done a couple of the free walking tours in South America so we turned out for this one. The weather was good for walking and the sun shone brightly in the afternoon.

The guide told about 28 of us about the Dutch tendency to be tolerant and neutral. They sat out the first war and traded with all the combatants but were overrun and occupied during WW2. He told us about the very high percentage of Jews who were removed and sent to camps, where most of them died. What we hadn’t realised was that they were all collected and packed off by the Dutch police rather than the German army. He ended with the story of Anne Frank, who hid with her parents in the top floor of their house for 2 years until somebody reported them and they were taken away. Only 2 of the 8 survived the war. There was a queue waiting outside the house and people who had been in said it was depressing. So we skipped that.

The Palace in the main square

The oldest house in Amsterdam - made of timber

Houses were made with the facade leaning forward.  Each neighbor trying to outdo the next.  It got so silly that they began falling and the councils have now outlawed the leaning frontages.  Why did they want the lean?  So they could safely lift goods into the attic spaces for storage without smashing windows in the lower floors apparently.

See the red brick house with the roses??  It is the smallest house in Amsterdam, only 1.8 metres wide.  Not sure how anything fits.  Amsterdam is full of narrow houses as they were taxed by the width of the building, so they went narrow and tall.  This house is right next to the widest bridge in the city.

It was a very good walk of 3 or 4 hours. We saw the VOC building which was the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company, which was the biggest organisation in the world and monopolised trade with what is now Indonesia. They also invented risk insurance for traders and ran the first stock exchange.  We heard about the Dutch Renaissance and all the artists and how the citizens tried to look as dour and respectable as possible, despite being incredibly rich. We had heard that before on the boat in a talk about Rembrandt.

We heard a lot about marijuana and prostitution. Apparently they are gradually rolling back the laws about marijuana, starting with the country areas. Amsterdam will follow next year. It will be interesting to see what happens then because they have an extremely low level of dependency on hard drugs.

Artwork in the red light district that appeared overnight.  Council took it away, then the locals complained and it was returned.

These walking tours are a fantastic way of learning about the history of a city and discovering the hidden gems, those places that you would never know about without someone telling you that they are there.