We did not drive. We took the train. Nor did we stay at the Hilton. We stayed at a much better hotel as far as we are concerned. The Hilton is in a horrible location within walking distance of nothing but the park. Even the Concertgebouw or Cuypmarkt would take about 30 minutes at Pi Chi speed. The closest tram line goes to a few places but one would need to change trams regularly.
Our hotel was on the Nieuwezijde, around the corner from the Jordaan and very close to Centraal Station, from which you can get a tram, train or bus to practically anywhere. John Lennon never had peace at this hotel but we could easily walk to Haarlemmerbuurt for me and Negen Straatjes for her. It was all but on the good side of Nieuwendijk so we were surrounded by food.
Comparing the food of Amsterdam and Paris is not entirely fair. French cuisine is famous all over the world and beloved by snobs and fat people who sniff their own corks before they drink their wine. The French literally invented Michelin stars. Although why people take dining advice from a tire company is beyond me. Maybe this is why people eat escargot.
Nederlands cuisine is about old salted fish and ground up mammal chunks in plastic casings made of dried intestine and skin. I would rather eat in Holland than France any day.
French cheese is soft, runny and smells as bad as French cheese. Nederlands has Leiden, Gouda and the superlative Edam cheese from such places as Leiden, Gouda and Edam. Edam from other countries cannot compare to a true Noord Holland Edammer.
Then there are French fries, which no one outside of the United States calls French fries. Except in some parts of the English speaking world where French fries refer to the American version; shoestring McDonald’s fries. The best frites I have ever had were in Belgium, which seems reasonable since they invented it. French frites are nothing special, but there is a shop in Amsterdam on Nieuwendijk near Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal that has some excellent frieten. And of course real frites are served with mayonnaise. As an American once eloquently told me in Amsterdam, “Only a fag puts ketchup on fries.”
Something the French got right was the bread. Good bread at home is difficult to get, while you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting good bread in Paris. I believe this is how dining choices were made during la Revolución. Holland is not known for its bread but there is plenty of greatness out there if you know where to look. Melted chocolate chips on toast may seem odd the first time around but once you have had it you wonder why you never thought of it yourself. And by you I mean me.
There will always be people who argue about wine versus beer. France might have the best wine in the world and Holland might have the best beer, but I have not had a drop of alcohol since 1987 so I would not know. But from what I remember Irish beer is not too bad while American beer tastes just like old cat urine. I always preferred wine to beer but my drink of choice was vodka any day. Whoever invented Long Island Iced Tea is a genius.
which used to be a church but is now the conference center for the hotel where we stayed
In between all this gluttony Pi Chi and I managed to see a bit of the town. She claims to have been in Amsterdam before but this was on one of her whirlwind Chinese tours where they visit 100 cities in five minutes. You can see more of Amsterdam on a postcard. Because of her Chinese traveling ways she had never been to the Rijksmuseum. This is like going to Paris without visiting the Louvre or going to 南投 and not visiting the bamboo museum. Lamentably, the Rijksmuseum is in the middle of a 10-year restoration program and only about .04% of their collection is available. But admission is still full price. What really bothered me was how little Rembrandt there is now. I happen to think Rembrandt was the best artist anyone has ever heard of. His etchings are particularly impressive. There used to be hundreds on display at the Rijksmuseum. When we went there were none.
The first time I went to the Rijksmuseum I was wandering around and turned a corner to see Het korporaalschap van kapitein Frans Banninck Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburch looming prominently over a large wooden room. It was displayed in a manner befitting a masterpiece. They had a cushioned bench in front of it and you could just sit there all day. In the abridged Rijksmuseum it is against a plastic wall in a small plastic room that looks more like a modern art museum than a national museum dedicated to one of the great periods of art. There is nowhere to sit in front of it and there are security guards preventing anyone from lingering too long. I understand the need for security on a painting that has been vandalized several times but I see no harm in letting people sit in front of something they are too far away to touch. Pi Chi’s first experience with Rembrandt was like hearing about the Mona Lisa all your life and then finally seeing a tiny painting behind thick bulletproof glass from a distance.
Since the current Rijksmuseum is so small we had plenty of time to walk down the plein to the Van Gogh Museum. Van Gogh never really did anything for me but he is Pi Chi’s favorite and if you want to see his work the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is possibly the best place. I do not especially like how his work is displayed in chronological order, and the building itself seems inappropriate, but it has a pretty good collection for a single artist.
It was raining on museum day. This was a little disappointing since we had just come from Paris, which had been unseasonably warm and almost always sunny. I had wanted to take Pi Chi to Vondelpark while we were at Museumplein but it is better seen in the sun. By the next day the clouds cleared and the weather got warmer. There had been a big storm before we arrived and the local weather people said that winter would hit about a week after we left. It turned out that 10/10 was lucky after all.
On a sunnier day we went to both Rembrandthuis and Anne Frank’s Achterhuis. I have been to both several times but after the mini-Rijksmueusm I was on a mission to show Pi Chi more Rembrandt. The great thing about Rembrandthuis is that it is rarely crowded. I have never seen more than a dozen people there at any given time. The bad news is that it usually houses very little of Rembrandt’s art. Unless of course the Rijksmuseum is under renovation. Many of his etchings that were previously displayed prominently in the Rijksmuseum were now in his old house. Pi Chi was impressed by his use of light in simple pencil sketches and agreed that he was probably more skilled than Van Gogh. But Van Gogh is still her favorite. I think if I can tolerate her ingestion of duck face and fish eyeballs I can probably live with her preference for post-Impressionism over the Golden Age. This will probably cause tension between us in the future, but nothing a lifetime of subtle manipulation and brainwashing cannot fix. If nothing else, getting divorced is very easy around here. If she ever goes to Jackson Pollock it may come to that.
Anne Frank’s former house is always more crowded than Rembrandt’s. I suppose that is a good thing in many ways. Unfortunately, the rooms where she and her family hid are empty and look nothing like they did at the time. Pi Chi said she went there during her big European tour, but she still knows almost nothing about Anne Frank’s life or why she was in hiding in the first place. Man’s inhumanity to man is something Chinese schoolchildren learn nothing about. And Chinese adults curiously lack much curiosity about the world around them. I was going to use this visit as an educational tool and hope that all the available information would help Pi Chi understand that something unimaginable actually happened. But the line to enter the house went around the corner and circled the Westerkerk so we never went inside. What Anne Frank went through is indescribably worse than waiting in line for over an hour, but I doubt being rushed through what is now basically a few empty rooms would tell Pi Chi much of anything. And there is all that shopping just down the street.
Pi Chi loves to shop. I may have mentioned this before. Taking her on safari would be pointless. There is no Crabtree & Evelyn on the Serengeti. But a city like Paris has shopping toujours. While we were in Paris I convinced her that the more she bought in Paris the more she had to drag around when we went to Amsterdam. This only made her want to shop in Amsterdam more. When the weather improved I wanted to take her to Vondelpark. She wanted to shop. So I took her to PC Hoofstraat, often called the Rodeo Drive of Amsterdam by people with little imagination. I sold it to Pi Chi as the Champs-Élysées of Amsterdam because she has no idea what Rodeo Drive is and I was not imaginative enough at the time to come up with anything better. Unbeknown to her it is also very close to the park. She was happy to see a famous and overpriced clothes store whose name I cannot recall but not quite as happy to see that it was closed for some reason. My opinion was that we should move on to the park. Hers was to continue shopping.
So we compromised and went to the Cuypmarkt, which is the kind of shopping that does not make me want to decapitate small birds and is still relatively close to the park, though not as close as we were earlier. At the Cuypmarkt she looked at and touched everything while I stumbled across a bakery with the best scones I have ever eaten. I cannot emphasize this enough. These scones were the best food I had on this entire trip, and my opinion of the superiority of Hollands food is legendary, having been noted in such places as several paragraphs above.
Having temporarily satiated her shopping addiction, Pi Chi finally agreed to go to the park. She wanted to take a tram, which is completely unnecessary from Boerenwetering. It also turned out to be a bad idea since there was a bit of a marathon going on that day and the tram lines near the park were diverted. We knew nothing about this. All we knew was that there was going to be a marathon at some point in time while we were in town. We did not know it was on this day and that it went through the park. As we sat on the tram and I saw the Munttoren it occurred to me that we were not exactly going where we wanted to go. But it fit in nicely with Pi Chi’s plan to ignore the park and do more shopping at the Dam.
This led to our best decision of the day. She would go shopping while I wandered around. We were on our honeymoon and there was no conference here to separate us but we have known each other long enough to know that sometimes she should do what she wants to do while I do what I want to do.
I have spent some time in Amsterdam, though not nearly enough. It is my favorite European city in the world and it comes a very close second to the undisputed greatest city in the known universe, Nieuwe Amsterdam, often called “New York” by the locals, or simply The City since all other cities are pale imitators. There is little of Original Amsterdam I have not seen inside of the Ringweg. But give me an OV chipkaart and an afternoon and I can come up with something.
Once upon a time you had to use something called cash to ride public transportation in Amsterdam. This was inconvenient since coins must be removed from pockets and inserted into metallic devices in a timely fashion and since some of us rarely have all that much cash to begin with. Then the Gemeentevervoerbedrijf came up with the strippenkaart, which made riding a tram or bus much easier and brought Amsterdam into the computer age with other large cities that already had similar card systems. When Pi Chi and I arrived in Amsterdam I was confident that my experience and mad skills would make traveling about the city as easy as it always is. But sometime this year they changed the system and replaced the strippenkaart with the new chipkaart. And no one bothered to tell me. There is very little difference between the two and it takes about half a second to figure it out, but after telling Pi Chi how awesome I am it just made me look like I had no idea what I was talking about. And this was one of those rare situations where I really did know what I was talking about.
One of the great things about Amsterdam is that it is incredibly easy to get anywhere you want to go. Every district is small enough to walk around and going from one area to another only requires a short ride on a tram, bus or the new metro system. Bicycles are an easy way to get around if you are one of those people whose head does not explode after pedaling for 20 minutes. People who like to give out warnings will warn you that the locals ride a little faster and with less enthusiasm for traffic rules than do tourists, but where I live absolutely no one follows any rules of the road or common sense. Cyclists in Amsterdam are little old ladies from Pasadena compared to everybody on the road here.
Spending the day wandering around the city on foot and hopping on a random tram whenever my feet tell me to is my idea of paradise. Amsterdam is a difficult city to get lost in and the trams go everywhere. If where you are does nothing for you, get on the nearest tram and see where that goes. I did this on my first visit many years ago and always had to stop at shops to get more change. The cards make life much easier.
But this is an activity that Pi Chi has absolutely no interest in. She wants to know where she is at all times and needs to know that she is on the right path to wherever she has planned on going. Whenever we travel together I have to set aside free time for myself if I want to stray from the itinerary. But this means more shopping for her, so everyone is happy.
Another great thing about Amsterdam is the relaxed attitude of its people. Amsterdammeren are the most polite people in the world and the nicest I have ever met outside of Africa. This led to a very permissive policy on mild recreational drugs and a large congregation of legal prostitution around the city’s oldest church. But unlike red light districts of most major cities, children can safely walk de Wallen, though they cannot buy anything. There is always talk of crime and the city has closed a number of windows and coffee shops in recent years, but most of the criminal activity is something visitors will never see. The area is very safe for pedestrians but probably not as safe for human traffickers and drug dealers. They tend to leave civilians out of their internal disputes.
This live and let live attitude places a good deal of emphasis on the live part. Amsterdam drivers will stop at red traffic lights, unlike Chinese drivers. They will also stop at green lights or in the middle of the road if someone is crossing in front of them. Pedestrians have the right of way and drivers willingly accept this. Chinese drivers have no concept of right of way and would rather run over their own mothers than stop.
If I walk around Paris with a giant suitcase I have to move out of every smoker’s way and can never use sidewalk ramps because the person standing there is too busy smoking to move aside two feet. If I walk around Amsterdam with a giant suitcase every single person will move out of my way. When I was on a narrow sidewalk they actually stepped into the street rather than force me to walk in the street. I could not believe it. People showed basic consideration. At one point I was walking on a narrow sidewalk with Pi Chi’s giant suitcase and a man carrying a large box was walking toward me. We both stepped out into the street and not a single car came close to hitting us or even honked its horn. This is unheard of where I live. If I walked amongst the Chinese with any size suitcase I would be killed swiftly and with great prejudice. There is a city north of Amsterdam that has no traffic lights or stop signs. Accidents all but disappeared after the signs were removed. I am inclined to think that if we did that here there would be mass carnage in the streets, but no one pays any attention to traffic lights or other cars anyway so I doubt it would make any difference.
Note the lack of scooters and blue trucks hitting people
On our last day in Amsterdam I finally got Pi Chi to Vondelpark. It is one of the world’s great city parks, slightly smaller than London’s Hyde Park and about nowhere near the size of New York’s Central Park. Ask the typical Amsterdammer where their favorite part of the city is and most will likely pick Vondelpark. It has everything you need in a park and is completely safe for women, children, dogs and nude sunbathers. Vondelpark is one of my favorite spots in Amsterdam and I try to walk the length of it every time I visit the city.
Pi Chi was not impressed. The park is not in any of her travel books and it is not a place that she can brag about visiting.
I cannot sleep on planes. It has nothing to do with any fear of plummeting from thirty thousand feet in a four hundred ton fireball. It is certainly not the excitement of the adventure that awaits. If you thought that you clearly do not know me well. I can never get any sleep on planes because they cram us in like we won a free boat trip to the New World from 18th century Africa. Serial killers on death row have more personal space than anyone who flies “economy class”. It is impossible to get out of your seat without getting intimately close to the people next to you. Unless they move. But I generally fly on planes full of Chinese people. They will not move until the plane lands and the captain reminds everyone to stay in their seats. I was on a flight to somewhere and as soon as the plane stopped all the Chinese people got up and started taking their crap out of the bulging overhead bins. The seatbelt sign was still on and a voice from above told everyone to stay seated but Chinese is as Chinese does. The plane then moved again and people tumbled like mahjong tiles. Pi Chi was alarmed. I thought it was funny. Pi Chi is a nicer person. But sometimes people need to fall on their ass to remember that actions sometimes have consequences. And Chinese people need constant reminders that they cannot all be first all the time.
You could always pay six times as much for a first class ticket but I cannot. One would think that struggling airlines would make some kind of effort to make long flights more comfortable for those of us in the cheap seats, but as long as we put up with the class system they will keep giving better service to the people who pay a small fortune and charge more and more from those of us who cannot afford it. The Airbus A380 is the largest passenger plane ever built with something like 50% more cabin space than the 747. Does that mean there is more leg room in last class? No. They simply put in more seats.
Some airlines brag that their first class menus were designed by celebrity chefs. These are not the same menus we get in low class. In fact, there are no menus in low class. Your options in low class are stale microwaved crap or stale microwaved shit. Condiments include salt, pepper and toothpick. Except on Asian flights where salt is unlucky. Your beverage selections are a tiny plastic cup of Coke, juice or water. Nobody has Pepsi because Coke plays hardball. They did not get as large as they are by being nice. Some Asian flights only serve water or tea. Except in first class.
When I booked the flights months ago I ordered vegetarian meals for both of us. This pissed off Pi Chi no end. Vegetarian meals on Asian flights are stale rice and soggy vegetables. European flights usually serve stale pasta and soggy vegetables. On one or two flights in Africa I had some kind of omelette pancake object. Breakfast is usually those plastic eggs you get at hotel breakfast buffets.
I pointed out to Pi Chi that the only difference between the vegetarian meal and the carnivore meal is a big chunk of animal in a gravy of blood and urine. The stale rice and soggy vegetables are still there. She was still very unhappy about it. She does not feel she has eaten until she can feel Thumper’s sinew blocking her colon. On our flight to Europe I got one of the flight attendants to give her an extra abdominal fat and hormone meal but she still bitched and moaned about it for entirely too long. So I let her eat the rice and vegetables on the way home. She always brings a large bag of food on any flight longer than a few hours anyway. She will never starve.
One area where airlines have improved their service over the years is in entertainment. You used to watch a single movie on a single screen at the front of the cabin. This was worse than trying to watch a movie at a drive-in. Especially when the fat salesman next to you tries to get to second base. Now even the people in the cheap seats have individual screens and a wide variety of choices. If you are on a 15 hour flight you can watch enough generic Hollywood movies and American television to make you long for the days when everyone watched the same movie on the same screen at the front of the cabin.
I have not kept track of American television since I left the country to pursue my dream of playing professional ping pong at traveling puppet shows. I do not know who most of the current celebrities are and have no idea who is in rehab right now, and when I saw a list of nominees for the latest Emmy awards I had never heard of most of the people and had never seen any of the shows. On the plane I watched episodes of “The Simpsons”, “The Sopranos”, “The Office”, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “30 Rock”. Of these, “The Simpsons” was the only show I had watched previously. And it might be time for them to retire. “The Sopranos” episode meant nothing to me since I had no idea who everyone was and what the conflict was about. But I was surprised to find that the plane version retained the original language. “The Office” was incredibly banal and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “30 Rock” seemed like every other formulaic sitcom. But in all fairness I watched the entire episode of each show. I started to watch episodes of “The New Adventures Of Old Christine”, “Everybody Loves Raymond”, “Samantha Who” and one of those “Law And Order” shows but I simply could not. The best television I saw on that plane was something about Jamie Oliver cooking pasta in his backyard.
The movie selection was a horse of the same color. The “family” movies were all cartoons and stories about talking animals. The comedies were movies that fans of “Everybody Loves Raymond” probably watch. The dramas were the same superhero and Michal Bay movies that litter the Blackboster at home. In the “classics” category were such iconic films of yesteryear as “Meet The Fockers” and “The Da Vinci Code”. There was nothing made before 2000.
I spent most of the flight listening to compilation CDs of piano sonatas while Pi Chi watched a vampire movie with people I did not recognize and some predictable romantic comedies where they figure out each other’s secret plan and break up only to realize that they really are meant for each other despite all their differences.
Our flight from Hong Kong was delayed for about an hour because of a medical situation. A Chinese voice asked if there was anyone with medical experience on the plane. Pi Chi was about to get up but changed her mind when she saw a few people walk toward the flight attendant who seemed to be in charge. I asked her why she was not going and she said that there were other people. I suggested the possibility that those other people might not have her 18 years of experience. She then got up and walked a few rows ahead of us and sat down next to an old woman. While everyone else went to the flight attendants, Pi Chi went directly to the patient. I have no idea how she knew that this was the person who needed medical assistance. Perhaps it is that 18 years of experience.
Chinese culture dictates that the older person in any given profession is in charge, regardless of ability. Most of the people who went to the flight attendants were nurses with very little or very specialized experience. They were all obviously younger than Pi Chi. There was an older woman who apparently spent more time in management than actual nursing, but the patient preferred Pi Chi. Another odd thing about Chinese medical culture is that the patient is in charge. Doctors ask patients what they want to do.
Once the chain of command was worked out, Pi Chi went back to examining her patient. She quickly determined that there was some kind of diabetic situation going on. I only heard bits and pieces of the entire process.
Eventually an old white dude meandered from one of the better classes. He was a doctor but spoke no Chinese. Pi Chi tried to explain the situation in English as best she could but her medical English is much funnier when there is not a medical situation. I heard her say “I agree” to the doctor and he walked away, never to be seen in lowest class again.
The reason the flight was delayed for an hour was because the old woman refused to leave the plane. Pi Chi, the doctor and the flight attendant in charge all agreed that she should get off the plane and go to a Hong Kong hospital. But Chinese patients are in charge and she wanted to go to her local doctor at home. The pilot refused to take off until someone assured him that the old lady was not going to die on the plane. I assume either the doctor did this or perhaps one of the emissaries that were sent back and forth from the mystical land of the front of the plane to the back end where all the action was taking place.
When Pi Chi returned to her seat the head flight attendant thanked her profusely and gave her a complimentary tiny plastic cup of water for her troubles. She also got a free plastic piece of crap along with her shopping. Yes, Pi Chi also shops on planes. Anyone who knows her should not be surprised. When the flight attendant asked if we needed anything else I suggested an upgrade to business class, but this was met with laughter.
I was not joking.
