The land of bicycles, clogs and tulips

My stroll around Netherlands started in Volendam. By Dutch standards, this is a small fishermen’s town about a half hour drive from the capital. Volendam is mostly known for its chees producers and clog makers, which in addition to their primary business also receive tourists. All visitors, who wish to see real Netherlands, see how clogs are made and try real Dutch cheese, are welcome. You’ll learn how milk for the cheese is got, and you’ll get to taste them. Naturally, you can also buy the cheese. With pride they will also show you, how clogs are made the traditional way. Before my visit I thought that Dutch are craftsmen who hand produce wooden clogs, so I was really surprised when I learned that the clogs are produced by a machine that dates back a few hundred years and does everything by itself. At first clogs were the cheap but sturdy footwear used by tulip farmers in the fields. They still use it for this purpose, but have long since became the national symbol of the land, which encourages the production to over 3.000.000 pairs annually.

 

You cannot leave the town without seeing its centre, walk the streets paved with mosaics between two story buildings on both sides, right down to the sea at the Markermeer coast. The town is a sight for sore eyes. On a sunny day there’s no greater pleasure than to sit on a terrace of one of the bars and enjoy the view of the sea.

 

The city which developed from a small 12th century fishing village is currently among the largerst metropolitan areas of Europe. The name itself means the dam on the river Amstel and dates back to the day of the original settlement that stood where the modern Dam square is. The financial and cultural centre is, due to the canals that flow through it, known also as northern Venice. To enjoy the best views of the city I’ve hopped on one of the boats navigating the canals. I spent an enjoyable hour in a 10€ boat trip where I was amazed by the size of the city. At the same time, I was disgusted by how dirty the water in the canal was. In it you can find from bicycles to beheaded pigeons. I was also surprised by people living in boats tied in various canals. When the land was covered by buildings people simply started living in boats. It used to be an indicator for a lower social standard, but today the situation has changed. People want to live in the boat houses, for it is a different and more relaxed way of living. The houses are nicely furbished, roomy and most of them have nice terraces.

 

If you plan a trip to Amsterdam, I suggest you book a cheap hostel ahead and prepare an itinerary of what you wish to see and visit. It would help to call ahead to a museum you’d want to visit – even if you’ll have to play for the call. It’s worth it. Amsterdam is a very touristic city that hosts many tourists all the year around. Long queues in front of museums are usual and getting an empty bed under 100€/night is an illusion.

 

To reach the goals in the city as fast and cheap as possible, you should rent a bicycle. A daily rental costs 11€, but when you’re in Amsterdam you cycle. There is no other as attractive mode of transportation as the bicycle. They might be the most important, and certainly are the most numerous, traffic participant in the city – and never mind the weather. Neither wind nor rain don’t discourage the people to take the bicycle to work, shops… anywhere. As a tourist you need some time to get used to the way things run, but afterwards you’ll just love the experience of riding through Amsterdam streets and wish to have longer days to see even more.

In this city of museums and cultural sights, you’ll never run out of things to visit. You see a lot of it by the boat ride already, for everything else I suggest you cycle. Damrak is the main promenade that leads up to the famous Amsterdam square Dam. It is surrounded by the royal castle and the New Church. The prolongation of the Damrak is the Rokin, a street of shops and restaurants leading towards one of the biggest concentration of the tourist in the city – to the Rembrandt square. To the west of Damrak there is the shopping street Kalverstraat and towards south you can reach the museum city quarter. The art lovers will get to see the national museum Rijksmuseum, the van Gogh museum and the museum of contemporary arts Stedelijk. And opposite to the national museum stands the world renowned concert hall Concertgebouw. During my visit both museums – the van Gogh museum, with over 200 paintings and 550 drawings of the postimpressionistic painter and the national museum with the famous Night guard by Rembrandt, were closed – so I’ve a good reason to return to the city.

 

 

I was hoping for better luck at the house of Ana Frank, the house where she spent the last two years of her life and is now turned into a museum dedicated to this fascinating little Jewish girl. Again, no luck, for there were several hundreds of people waiting in front of me, to see the very same thing. So one more thing for my next visit.

 

I decided to cheer me up by visiting the Heineken museum (Heineken Experience), where the 16€ for entrance were well spent and the 3 hours went by too fast. It’s a nice and interesting museum and I was most impressed by the special effects room, where visitors are – for 10 or so minutes – turned into beer! From the seeds right down to the bottles on the conveyer belt. But you should not forget the few glasses of beer you get, as is compulsory for the beer museum.

 

Also worth visiting is the Het Scheepvaart (the Dutch museum of Seamenship), with one of the largest collection of vehicles in the world. Apart from the traditional museum such as the Rembrandt house, you can visit more exotic museum, like the museum of sex with a collection of erotic pictures, photos and items and recordings from various periods and cultures. The city also features the museum of torture devices, the museum of grass and hashish and in the midst of the red quarter there’s a five stories tall museum of erotic. And last but not least there’s the museum of Madame Tussauds, but it’s not so interesting to foreigners, for it features mostly national celebrities.

I dare to say that the red quarter and coffee shops help the tourist popularity of the city. The liberal city of Amsterdam has many red streets, with the most famous dating back to the 14th century – the De Wallen. The enterprising girls still remain there, while the horny sailors were replaced by numerous tourists. A morning stroll through the red street is nothing special. There are many shop windows on ground floors, where not so young and usually not too sexy, mostly Asian girls, are sitting in their underwear offering sexual treatments for a price. But in the evening the younger (almost all foreign) girls start their shift. While the tourists burst into this part of the city it remains fairly uninteresting for the locals. The second popular reason to visit Amsterdam are the coffee shops. It’s the – at first – regular bar, which differs only because here you can buy marihuana. True, the quantity is limited, but it’s legal to buy and consume it here. You do have to be old enough and you cannot buy more than 5g. The prices are between 5 and 10 euros per gram. Also, you can get the famous cookies.

 

From the capital I headed south towards the second largest city – Utrecht – and reached the village of Kindergijk in less than two hours. They’re famous for their windmills, which are also a Dutch symbol. Since 1997, when the village was placed on the UNESCO world heritage list, there’ve been numerous tourist visiting to see the still functioning mills (about 1000 in the area) powered by wind.