Amsterdammerung/Hamsterdam

I thought of two titles I liked for this post and couldn't decide which I liked more.  Choose your favorite.

First of all, we did Air BnB in Amsterdam and really liked where we stayed - if you're looking for a great, very reasonably priced place to stay, let us know.

After settling in, perhaps oddly, the first thing we did was go out for Indonesian food.  Apparently, this is a thing in Amsterdam, as the Dutch colonized these islands that came to have a culinary presence in the city.  For Amsterdammers, the Indonesians put together a thing called the "Rijsttafel" - basically a sampling of tons of Indonesian dishes.  Tim and I had never had Indonesian food, and we'd recommend going if you ever find yourself in Amsterdam.  The place we went to was Kartika.

Leaving the restaurant, we figured it was about 7:30pm and were quite surprised to find that it was actually 10:30pm.  Incredulous, we took this photo (under the mantra "pics or it didn't happen") from our room:

I made this picture big so you could see a detail of the buildings.  Look near the tops of each of the buildings.  Can you see that each one has a beam coming out of it?  Each one of those beams has a hook on it.  We found that every single building in Amsterdam has one of these beams and hooks.  What do you think that might be for?  ... We'll get back to that later.

The day after we arrived, we had the luck to be able to meet up with my sister and brother-in-law, Gretchen and John, who are also currently enjoying an adventure of their own. We rented paddle-boats with them, which was a blast.

While we're (sort of) on the subject, Amsterdam has a pretty interesting layout: it's a semicircle, with concentric circular canals.  This makes for difficult navigating sometimes, especially for those of us used to the Chicago grid, but (since we're writing from Paris) c'est la vie.  Anyway, we were musing on how these canals came to be, and we ended up getting an answer to how the city was named.  In the area, there's a river called the Amstel river - also now the name of a beer from the city.  How do you get water to stay in the area?

Right, you put a dam in it.  And so Amsterdam was born, with the dams allowing these historically seafaring people to bring their boats & goods right into the city through the canals.  We learned all of this through a walking tour that we took with Gretchen and John :).

Nowadays, Amsterdam is known not for its seafaring but for its vice.  We visited the Red Light District during the day with Gretchen and John and found that indeed, prostitution is legal in Amsterdam.  There were floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the alleys of the Red Light district with prostitutes peering out from their stalls.  Each stall had a curtain installed for when privacy became necessary.  Each stall also had a prominent sign telling you that photos were forbidden, a rule which I've heard is very much enforced by the prostitutes themselves.  I didn't try my luck. 

Another kind of vice Amsterdam is known for is the use of marijuana/pot/weed etc.  It's true, especially right around the same Red Light District: the streets are littered alternately with "coffee shops" and with shops selling smoking paraphernalia. By the way, "coffee shops" don't sell coffee - cafes sell coffee.  Our walking tour guide who informed us of all of this had a bit too much of a theatrical personality for us, I think, but he did go on to say something that I found interesting about Amsterdam laws.  He pointed out that contrary to popular belief, marijuana is in fact not legal in the Netherlands.  However - and he applied this to any broken law in the country - as long as it's making money, as long as the law isn't flouted too obviously (hence why "coffee shops" are thus named, never publicly stating that they sell marijuana), and as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, laws can easily be broken and aren't really enforced.

Fortunately, tourist offerings in Amsterdam do go past the vice.  Amsterdam has a ton of art museums, including the giant Rijksmuseum as well as the smaller Rembrandt house and the Van Gogh museum.  Tim and I went to the Van Gogh museum, which was a very well-done museum and was also enough to completely satisfy our appetite for art, which perhaps unfortunately means we didn't end up going to the others.  Side note, the Van Gogh museum was also super expensive and crowded, and I wouldn't recommend it for someone who is not completely convinced that they love Van Gogh.

Anyway, my favorite thing about the museum was to see Van Gogh paintings that imitated other styles.  To the right is Van Gogh's copy of Hiroshige's painting.  I thought it was fascinating to see Van Gogh's characteristic brushstrokes etc. applied to a totally different subject than he usually does.  He apparently copied the characters on the border as well, I forget from where.

Two more cool things we did in Amsterdam, and then I'll wrap up.  The first of these is the flea market, which seem to be a lot more common in Europe than in the US.  We took advantage of the market to buy some aged Gouda, duck salami and olives for a nice dinner with Gretchen and John.

We also took advantage of the market to buy these thin waffle-y thingies with caramel between the layers, and then take a campy picture of us eating it.  Below.

Finally, another highlight from Amsterdam was the microbrewery "Brouwerij t'Ij", which we would certainly recommend to any Amsterdam visitor.  We took the tour of the brewery and then enjoyed some of their beers, which they acknowledge were (at least originally) modeled off of Belgian beers, because people were sad that all they had to drink in Amsterdam was Heineken.

Anyway, the brewery was also housed in a very legit windmill, shown below:

Okay, okay, I know you want to know the answer.  What are those little beam-and-hook things that are attached to every building for?  Our chipper tour guide told us that in fact, they are for moving in.  He informed us that people set up systems of ropes to bring things up into the new apartment, because the staircases are extremely narrow and steep in Amsterdam apartments.  It was certainly an explanation that made sense, but much better was actually seeing it in action just before we left Amsterdam.  These girls were hauling this box up, and later a microwave, with someone at the bottom clearly using all of her weight to pull on the rope.  Then there was someone on the second floor, where the window is open, ready to bring the box into the apartment.  Pretty cool!