The many faces of Amsterdam

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on July 8^th 2023.

We have spent the last week or so moored at Weesp, a delightful town about 16 kilometres outside Amsterdam. It’s ideally situated for day trips into the city, either by bike or by train, and we experimented with both during our stay.

Regular readers will know that I am not a city person but I was looking forward to Amsterdam. I had seen pictures of handsome city houses lining the inner canals and bridges bedecked with flowers. I had imagined us strolling through picturesque alleyways and stopping at a hidden-away pavement cafés for tea and cake. And there was an intriguing range of cultural delights, from unusual museums to quirky art collections.

In many ways cities are complex organisms, a combination of past and present, a reflection of the people who build them, who live and work there and, in a mainstream tourist destination like Amsterdam, their character is also defined by the people who come and visit. In our insatiable quest for travel we humans descend upon the beautiful places of the world and, because there are so many of us, there is always the danger that after a while the experience we are hoping for doesn’t quite match up to the one that we get. As we cycled along the canals and tree-lined streets I could understand why Amsterdam is so popular, but I also got the impression that it is beginning to crack under the strain.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer number of tourist boats ploughing up and down the canals. There were so many of them that in some sections they were nose to tail, queuing to get under bridges and round sharp corners, and it looked more like a slow crawl along a watery motorway than the romantic and peaceful idyll that the marketing posters promised.

There were boats of all shapes and sizes, larger ones with up to a hundred passengers, others with perhaps a family or a small group of friends, and then there were the party boats, single sex groups cruising the canals as part of a stag/hen/birthday celebration city break. You could often hear them before you saw them.

For many years Amsterdam has welcomed tourists one and all, but of late they have realised that you can have too much of a good thing. In March 2023 they launched a series of ‘stay away’ adverts aimed specifically at badly behaved Brits who were a little too focused on having a good time.

As we cycled on, the second thing that struck us, quite literally as Michael ran over a beer bottle which shattered but thankfully didn’t puncture his tyre, was the rubbish. On a Sunday morning the streets where people would have been drinking and eating in their hundreds last night were full of litter – beer bottles and cans, cardboard and plastic, black bin bags that had been ravaged by the gulls so that their contents were strewn all over the pavements.

In places cigarette butts filled the narrow gutters along the street kerbs, the nicotine equivalent of autumn leaves falling . We paused for a morning coffee and watched as a procession of street cleaners and rubbish disposal trucks began the mammoth task of clearing up. Apparently litter is a year-round problem, not just a product of the weekend or a busy summer season and, from what we could see, the street cleaners were fighting a losing battle. What made this all the more surprising was that it was in stark contrast to our experience of the Netherlands so far, which had been immaculate and well-cared for. It almost felt as if Amsterdam was part of a different country altogether.

Signs on certain bridges warned people not to buy drugs in that location as they could be poisoned or contaminated. Some of the other bridges had signs stating that bikes were not allowed to be left there and, given the number of them throughout the city, many of which looked as if they had been abandoned and tossed on the pavement months ago, you could understand that matters had got out of hand and the authorities were attempting to clean things up.

Bike theft is also rife in this ‘City of Bikes’ and so we kept our bikes with us at all times. We left them only the once, to visit the Maritime Museum, and we padlocked them firmly to the bike stand with a combination of different chains. Thankfully they were still there when we came back, but apparently it is a rare person who lives in Amsterdam who has not had their bike, or part of it, stolen at least once.

A city has many faces and I am in no position to judge this one after spending only four days there. I know other people have enjoyed their visit and that we all have different perceptions of what constitutes a beautiful place and a memorable experience. I am sure people who live and work here, perhaps were born here, will love their home and could show me a different side to it. I am simply recording what I saw and felt. I didn’t expect to feel disappointed and wish I could tell a different story.

On a more positive note, I will leave you with some pictures of artwork we happened to cycle past on one of our trips into Amsterdam. These stunning images had been painted on the concrete supports underneath a motorway, proof that you can find beauty in the most unexpected of places, and that it is all the more precious because of it.

See you all again next week.

MJ