The Windows of Amsterdam
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Amsterdam's typical architecture by the canal, where boathouses cost just as much or more (Photo by Criselda Yabes)
This time around in cool, rainy September, the women in thick makeup, doing their Playboy poses, remain very much a part of the city, but with a big difference: no one is allowed to take pictures unless one is willing to be fined by the government.
During our morning stroll in the red-light district, the empty streets gave me the feeling of walking through a period movie. One communicates with the women through their eyes. I know their drill is best served for the men, who come packing the Quartier Putain on the weekends.
The outside decor of a nail salon (Photo by Criselda Yabes)
But Amsterdam offers other things through its windows. Displays in boutiques, cafés, food shops, and restaurants are artfully formed prepared. Even a convenience store selling packets of instant noodles shelves products as if they were museum pieces.
Nearly every window, including of private homes, is a sight to behold. Kitchens bare movements of grace and familiarity in a space you are free to look in but not be a part of. I don’t know if being open to a wider world is deliberate on the part the Dutch people who live in a small country.
The Netherlands seems socially progressive. It largely tolerates paid sex and drugs. Environmentally, the bicycle is the mode of transport, the king of its cobbled streets that cross canals in landscapes layered like onion slices.
As a tourist, I had everything I needed for a short two-and-a-half day sojourn. As a vegetarian, I had a list of restaurants and cuisines in hand, from Jamaican dishes to Japanese sushi. As a window shopper, I was taken in by their fashion sense, which looked better than the usual clothing chain offerings.
“Amsterdam is small but has a magnified presence in a changing world. Through its people’s windows I could see how they do things differently.”
Amsterdam has just about anything you need for comfort and a simple time off in a European city. Though it, too, is a popular tourist destination, it offers a silent break compared with either Paris or Barcelona. Perhaps it was because we came on weekdays.
English is a common language for the Dutch, but the loudest English we heard were from American tourists. One of whom was seated at the café table next to ours, was talking about the high life in New York and Miami. That was enough to give a fellow tourist a “bad trip” (he had just come from another café where he smoked marijuana--yup, they have that too--for five euros, the same price for a cup of coffee in Paris).
Weed, just like the prostitutes, are not no-no’s in Amsterdam. You can still be arrested for buying the stuff from street dealers, but you can buy it just about anywhere else as easily available as tulip bulbs in the open markets. This is the government’s way of slowing down the spread of drug addiction.
If there’s any kind of addiction taking place, it shows in the burgeoning cafes on every street. Any café that you want, they have it. Anything to go with it – pastries, cakes, their traditional waffles – they’ve got it.
I’m not a coffee drinker, but they have what’s perfect for a rainy day, a cup of fresh ginger tea, literally sliced chunks of ginger dipped in hot water. When it came to getting high, I settled for a small bottle of CBD at Sensi Seeds. It’s beside the Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum, which wasn’t as packed as the house of Anne Frank, for which you have to book a ticket six weeks in advance.
What the city is also famous for (Photo by Criselda Yabes)
You can’t miss the Van Gogh museum, and never should you. I got the only memorable souvenir of my first visit from there years ago. I skipped it this time in favor of the Rijks museum to see Rembrandt’s “Night Watch,” which was being restored by women using computer technology behind glass walls.
Though not as breathtaking as the Louvre, Rijks has enough to offer when you’re waiting for the rain to stop. When the clouds slightly cleared up, we headed across the street for the start of a boat tour on the canal, which, again, is not as exciting as cruising the Seine; but the boat’s captain was someone in the mood for a good day.
He said the water in the canal was now safe for swimming (and yes, we saw kids diving in). He passed around waffle biscuits that he said were from his great grandmother’s recipe that forced his great grandfather, a ship’s captain, to return from his voyages in the Far East.
The city that lives on water (Photo by Criselda Yabes)
The waffles may well be the supermarket variety, but it’s how he wrapped his story (which may not be true) around the traditional Dutch biscuit that endeared him to tourists.
Living in France has made me aware of the French’s frugality when it comes to smiling, so that a Dutch offering a friendly one out of the blue was a bit jolting, as heartwarming as they come. I can forget the names of their unpronounceable streets heavy consonants, but I cannot forget their casual demeanor and common politeness.
I walked aimlessly as I would in the streets of Paris, circling the old part of the city, the red-light district, their Chinatown, the bourgeois neighborhood, not worried about getting lost because Amsterdam is small, a postcard picture of tall narrow houses standing on canal banks and painted and decorated bicycles parked on the bridges. Amsterdam is small but has a magnified presence in a changing world. Through its people’s windows I could see how they do things differently.
I could have gone biking the way they do in daily life. But I just watched and watched in the silence of their normal pace. Even in the cafes, I had the tendency to daydream. The women were mostly tall, slim, and blond. I observed how they biked, the clothes they wore, their preferred hairstyles; there are probably as many hair salons as there are cafes, each with its own interior decor, again to entice outsiders.
Bicycles are the name of the game in the Netherland's small capital (Photo by Criselda Yabes)
There she was, the quintessential Dutch girl, pedaling with her long legs in simple black trousers. She had no helmet on. The wind blew her long hair. With one hand combing the length of her tresses, she flew away on her bicycle. She had a kind of freedom that anyone living in a city, big or small, would envy.
Next time I visit Amsterdam, I will ride my bicycle from the city out to the sea, by the dike leading to the flat countryside, where the windows to the country are wider.
Criselda Yabes is a writer and journalist based in Manila. Her most recent books include Crying Mountain (Penguin SEA) on the 1970s rebellion in Mindanao and Broken Islands (Ateneo de Manila University Press) set in the Visayas in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
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