Sex Drugs and Tulips

The train from Copenhagen was a lot of fun. The train left at around midday headed due south from the city. After two hours of flat Danish country side, land ended and our whole train of about 5 cars was loaded on a ferry. On board, I felt like I was in Germany already; I had a greasy schnitzel, with some unknown sauce and French fires. Prices were in euros. I felt like I could gauge how expensive my meal was.

Back on the train, I was sitting across from an American studying in Wales who was on spring break. He was traveling all the way from Copenhagen south to Austria and then Slovakia in two weeks. I thought my trip was rushed, but with two more months to play with, I guess I am not rushed at all.

The German countryside was full of small houses with high pitched roofs. I actually saw one or two with thatched roofs. The American remarked about how they were all spread out in contrast to Wales where all the country houses are squeezed together in a small village.







I spent the rest of the day on the train and arrived in Amsterdam at 11 pm. I had booked a hostel in advance called the Flying Pig. I may as well have booked a bed in the fraternity from Animal house. The check in counter doubled as a bar. There were pillows and low tables by the front window, a pool table in the back and smoke in the air. Everybody was drunk, high or both, which was typical of the three days I stayed there.

I was still wired and awake, so I headed out to the Red light district to see why Amsterdam is sometimes know as Sin City. Sure, there were red-lit windows and ladies. And, of course, there were plenty of sex shops, sex shows, and porn theatres. What surprised me however, was how clean and normal the street was. The crowd was filled with tourists and the architecture was like you would see on any other canal in Amsterdam. I wondered if it would be rude to take pictures and found out the answer the next night when I tried. I thought I would discretely take a picture from the other side of the canal, just to get the red lights and the outline of the building (I though it would be rude to take a close-up). When I pulled my camera out, a lady in a window behind me angrily banged on the glass. I found out about the no photo policy the hard way.

Back at the hostel on night one, I returned to find a random guy sleeping in my bed. I went to the reception and said I would move to a new bed (I hadn’t unpacked), but they have a strict policy on bed occupancy and the girl came into the dark dorm room with a flashlight and woke up the poor confused guy. I got new sheets and slept like a log.

The next day was devoted to walking and visiting the Van Gogh museum (and going to the red light district again where I got in trouble for taking a picture). It is great to just wander around the streets of Amsterdam with no general direction. All the houses are built tall and skinny and are attached to their neighbours. Most canals run in concentric circles from the central station, making it easy to get unlost by looking at your map.





The Van Gogh museum was very well set up. I splurged and got the audio guide, which directed me to details in the paintings I might not have noticed. The narration was excellent. All of the quotations from Van Gogh’s letters were done in a male voice and the whole thing was set to violin and piano music now and then.

Out of his earlier work, I liked one of a country lane bordered by poplars. All of his early works used dark muddy colours that you might find in the countryside at the time. He was determined to depict real and unidealised country life.

When he moved to Paris, he became more obsessed with coloured Japanese block prints. They used bright bold colours to depict nature, which inspired him to experiment with colour in the same way. In his paintings after this point he was less concerned with shadow and realism and more interested in using large brushstrokes of unmixed colours to make his works. It is his more colourful works that he is famous for.

My favorites in this section included a country scene with blue sky fences between fields and barns in the distance. I also like his still-lifes of flowers. He was interested in depicting transient beauty, which made flowers perfect, because they only lasted a day in the same condition. He would energetically plaint these in one sitting. Apparently a lot of his work was composed quickly and with a lot of energy.

Van Gogh developed a mental illness, committed himself to a mental institution and ultimately shot himself in the chest and died. He still painted while he was institutionalized and the works remained colourful and upbeat. One of the paintings just before he died, however, is a yellow field of hay with three roads leading to nowhere in particular. The only visible life is flock of crows.

The next day, I headed out into country side, specifically the town of Haarlem. I had heard as soon as I got to Europe about an unusually cold winter they had. Figuring that the tulips would be late, which they were, I wanted to go cycling in the bulb-fields regardless.

After renting a bike, I went to the ticket office and got a day pass so that I could take the bike on the train (6.50 euros). A test drive to the windmills an villages east of town revealed how cold it was. I was warm enough, but my hands were freezing. I sent home my winter gloves from Copenhagen, and ended up buying cheap gardening gloves to keep my hands warm.

After the gloves, things were much better. Cycling through the narrow cobblestone streets of Harlem made me feel like a local. The cold temperature meant few tourists, so that I was riding alongside middle-aged locals and school kids. I stopped for a second by the town’s landmark windmill and asked two guys on lunch to take my picture in front of it. They were social workers specifically helping out released convicts on parole. The guy I gave my camera to was extremely enthusiastic about getting the bike, me, the windmill and everything in the shot. He proceeded to tell me how Harleem and his hometown Leiden are the places to go because all of the buildings are original. Apparently, Rotterdam and other towns around Amsterdam towns were bombed during WWII and rebuilt. He made me feel like I was in the best place in Holland, and I was hard to stop him so I could continue sightseeing.



After a short train ride, I was on the edge of bulb country. There were lots of bulb fields and a few windmills. I could see the potential for colour as far as the eyes could see. I was lucky that some of the earlier blooming daffodils and crocus were in bloom. If I passed 500 fields of bulbs in the 10 or 15 kilometers I cycled, no more then 20 of them were in full bloom. I go this one action packed shot with the blue sky and some white clouds, a windmill and trees, and field of daffodils, a canal, two ducks, and a hay stack in the foreground.



I as I passed this spot, a car pulled in to the yard out of which three men popped out to take a picture. I asked if they wanted one together (they took one of me too), and was surprised to find they were from Korea. One was from Seoul, one from Daegu, and the other a Dutch national of Korean decent. I showed off my rudimentary Korean and the one guy asked about my travels. Clearly a businessman, he was impressed with all the free time I have and remarked “Wow, you are a free man.” I agreed and told him that was my name. This surprised him even more.

I cycled a total of 6 hours through the country side, and think I may have hurt my knee pedaling the gearless bike. I really enjoyed the afternoon, and am considering coming back in two weeks to see all the colour. Then, there will be hundreds of colours with the odd green fields where the daffodils and crocuses are now.