the Laughing Boomer

 

 Two Cities, Two Countries:  Ireland, Amsterdam, Belgium and Berlin

Last Man Standing – by Ken

From our earlier Jordan tour we met some wonderful people, and five of us planned to get together for a weekend in Dublin and Amsterdam.  The night before our scheduled departure Mahara’s purse was stolen so she had to cancel and go to Rome for a new passport. So off I went to meet our dear friend Ronan, the lovely Keira and her wonderful partner John, with the Irish brogue which I can’t understand because he speaks so quickly.  But Keira was suddenly sick and spent two weeks in the hospital convalescing, which meant that she and John were unable to meet us in Dublin.   I arrived in Dublin, sans spouse. Ronan, God bless him, unfortunately missed his Friday evening flight.  There I was, our planned get together of the five of us in Dublin, the last man standing.

Ronan’s dad Dudley stepped into the breach. He bought me a wonderful lunch and invited me to stay at the family home until Ronan arrived. I was treated to homey evening and delicious dinner with Ronan’s parents and Ronan’s bed to sleep in.  The next morning, Dudley gave me an extensive walking tour of Dublin, including Dublin University. After seeing James Joyce statue in Trieste, it was great to visit the poet’s pub walk. The next stop was the cemetery, where Dudley showed his extensive knowledge of many of the permanent cemetery residents. He pointed along the way to this one that was hanged, and three more over there that were hanged and to the graves of some of the famous early Irish leaders. Dudley then drove us around Dublin Bay, showed me more neighbourhoods and explained the history of Dublin.  If Dudley ever wanted a change of career from law, he could be an excellent Dublin historian.  After this wonderfully enlightening journey through Dublin, Ronan finally arrived and shortly after we embarked on our driving tour of Ireland.

We made new arrangement to meet Keira and John at their home in Kilkenny. On our drive there we toured and saw many castles, gardens, cemeteries and ruins, all of great historic significance. The endless beautiful shades of green as we drove through the countryside were exceptional.  Each village that we traveled through was picture-postcard beautiful, with nary a rough area to be seen. We travelled through four counties and saw many villages along the way.

At last we reached Kilkenny – I’m not keen on the name - and met up with Keira and John. We enjoyed a fabulous meal and, of course, in the best Irish tradition, a night at the pub. It seems that the pub is the centre of social life in Ireland and consequently we enjoyed it until late in the morning when we stumbled off to bed. After a wonderful time in Kilkenny, Ronan and I headed back to Dublin where we picked up a flight to Amsterdam, where we met us with Mahara. In the end it worked out well, as four of the five of us met.

Amsterdam

I took a train from Rome to Paris to Amsterdam after I procured my new white-covered temporary passport. I saw much of the flat countryside on the ride up from Paris, including some windmills and lots of dykes.  Ronan and Ken greeted me and so our Dutch adventure began. We stayed for several days in Ronan’s years-old but newly renovated apartment.

Amsterdam is built in a horseshoe pattern with Central Station in the centre. Because of the 100 kilometers of canals throughout the city there are 200 kilometers of waterfront property, hundreds of small bridges and who knows how many small boats, including houseboats.  Instead of the two-day hop-on, hop-off bus we used in Rome and Berlin, we used the hop-on, hop-off canal boats. We plied various canals several times, and so did our sightseeing by boat as well as on foot. We walked through their lovely park and even spent an hour in the red light district.  Women stand in picture windows with red fluorescent lights when they are available and turn off the light and pull the blinds when they have a customer.

Because we stayed with Ronan we saw Amsterdam differently as we lived as he did, shopped at local markets, and explored the city from a residential neighbourhood base. The restaurants are excellent and I’m sure that if we were residents it would be possible to live here reasonably well. 

Ronan hosted by any account a very wild party that went on all night; filled with the tallest people I’ve ever met en-masse.   Many, many women are six feet or six-feet two and the men are often six-foot six. The Dutch speak English very well so our only problem was that we had to look up all the time.  Many of his friends were from other countries; Norway, South Africa, and America and along with the Dutch it was interesting to hear what they were doing and what brought them to Amsterdam. We also spent a lovely evening with Maarten and his American partner Amy in their small but very elegant home. We gained a sense of what it would be like to live with less space on a permanent basis.

What we loved about Amsterdam is the quiet sound of thousands of bicycles moving through the city; sure there are cars but there is much less noise pollution than in a comparably-sized city of one million people. It feels like a city of small neighbourhoods rather than a noisy metropolis. The canals and streets are lined with centuries- old tall Dutch buildings with different gables and huge hooks or hoists at the tops of buildings for lowering and raising furniture in and out. I’ve never seen such steep stairs.

We loved the Van Gogh Museum which has the world’s largest collection 200 or so of Vincent’s works, and the exhibition went through the various stages of his artistic life. Fabulous.  We’ve experienced lots of synchronicity now – we were in Arles where Van Gogh painted the countryside and two weeks later saw the paintings in the Amsterdam exhibit.

The Rijksmuseum is housed in a huge mansion; a lovely interior space with high ceilings and lots of natural light. This museum had lots of Rembrandts and a few paintings by Vermeer. It focused not only on art but the history of this seafaring and shipping nation during its Golden Age in the 17^th century.   A picture of the city of Olinda, Brazil which we visited last year clearly demonstrated how wide an area was controlled by the Dutch in past centuries.

Belgium

 We rented a car for our drive to Belgium and so began our three day trip through the Dutch and Belgium countryside.  The road system is excellent and the flat countryside pretty, with many people biking the famous dykes. Our first stop was Bruges and it is indeed a fabulous medieval city, with a wonderful Markt, or town centre, picturesque views around every turn and horse-drawn carriages everywhere. We wandered the winding streets by the canals, looked at the famous Belgium lace and tested the chocolates.  We had a lovely evening there.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to see our pictures as we downloaded them that morning to our computer and we were carjacked as we drove into Brussels from Bruges.  They are gone forever.

What happened is as we drove into the city, a guy on a motorbike motioned that we had a flat. This didn’t make sense as it was a new car and I hadn’t noticed a rough ride.  However, we pulled over and sure enough, our tire was going down.  What we didn’t suspect is that he had punctured it. Someone quickly came over and after a few seconds, left and came back with a spray can of foam which temporarily fills the tire. We opened the trunk for him to check about the spare tire, or so we thought, and unbeknownst to us while we were crouching and focusing on getting the nozzle into the tiny tire valve he and his motorbike partner lifted three of our knapsacks.

We realized it almost immediately but by then they were gone. The police took almost an hour to come. People laughed and pointed at the sight of four police officers changing our tire. The police checked the nearby buildings where we thought the crooks had gone. They said these were immigrant gangs who targeted tourists and gave us some insights into how these gangs operated. Instead of touring Brussels, we spent seven hours at the police station, giving our deposition, looking at mug shorts and on-screen footage of just-that-afternoon stolen bags, and using the dispatch-room phones (credit card auto insurance doesn’t cover belongings). Unlike our Italian Police experience, we were extremely well treated by the Belgium police, mainly Tonny and his gorgeous young partner, who showed us pictures of his Canadian honeymoon and grizzly bears. They led us to the car rental agency and negotiated a new vehicle for us. They also booked a hotel room and had us follow them there in our new vehicle. Although the police were most kind and helpful, it was an extremely stressful experience.  

Unfortunately, we lost a lot, including our computer, binoculars, camera and long lens, MP3 and earphones plus many other things. The one thing that saved us was that I had a back-up hard drive of all our pictures and music in another bag they didn’t get.  Otherwise we would have lost a year’s worth of pictures.

We were somewhat sobered for our next day’s visit of Brussels main area, where we replaced some essentials and toured their amazing Markt a bit.  Brussels is an art-deco hot-spot and I would have liked to have seen more of the town but by then we basically wanted to get out of there.  We also missed visiting Luxemburg as we lost a day. We high-tailed it back to Amsterdam and made it in about three hours, dropped off our car and bunked in again with Ronan, whose hospitality was much appreciated.

Berlin

We left the next day for Berlin by train. Rest assured that the Dutch-German train system is quick efficient and on time. We arrived at the exact time and checked into a sleek modern hotel. Berlin is fantastic.   It is situated on the well-used River Spree and is large geographically – an 800 square kilometer area.  The massive Tiergarten Park is within the city, and was originally a hunting ground for boar and deer in the 16^th century, and then redesigned in the 19^th century as a city park.

We had a fascinating five days there. I remember the euphoria I experienced when the wall came down twenty years ago. Because of its important role in the last century, Berlin is a part of many people’s consciousness. For example there are lots of organized walks available, such as 3rd Reich Berlin, or Cold War Berlin, showing the Stasi and KGB versus CIA and M16, which a spy-novel reader would find fascinating. We bought the two-day hop-on, hop-off open bus and initially just rode the two hour route through East and West Berlin.

Berlin is built on a grand scale, with wide boulevards, large streets and massive buildings.  Because it has been the capital city since 1991, there are many national government buildings as well.   While much of the city was bombed, there are still plenty of gracious old buildings in the western part and the old eastern part has experienced a building boom of modern world-class architectural gems. Alexanderplatz is the heart of East Berlin. We went past a small section that remains of the 160K long Berlin wall, where 125 people were killed trying to escape and the site of the now destroyed Nazi headquarters. We stopped at Checkpoint Charlie, the point of many tragic escape attempts and saw the Brandenburg Gates, where we saw photos of those who attempted escape.

We went to a modern exhibit, The Story of Berlin which traced its 800 year history, book burnings, and the construction of the Berlin Wall. It included a visit to an original 1970’s nuclear bomb shelter from the cold war; it’s situated beneath the Kurfurstendam, a main shopping area. Thirty-six hundred people could live there for two weeks, warehoused in rows, each with four narrow cots that reached to the ceiling. There was blue ultraviolet light and barely enough air circulation.

Berlin is definitely a tourist city in summer, with all the important sites crowded and outdoor cafés everywhere. One of our stops was at a weekend flea market in the park, but it felt more like an antique fair, with high quality china, silver, crystal, paintings and other goods for sale. Where a small 500 to 600 square foot apartment costs around 250,000 Euros in Amsterdam it costs less than 100,000 Euros in Berlin. We went also to an Erotica Museum, shopped and generally enjoyed the city. With the distinctive German palate, the food was truly phenomenal, starting with delicious breakfasts, right through to some wonderful dinners; they know how to cook. We found that most things we experienced were excellent; simple things such as having a meal; everything was done “properly” including good quality cutlery and tablecloths. We appreciated window shopping and the high-quality German goods.

We left Berlin on a sunny day and flew to Madrid, with a five hour stopover in Stuttgart. We will return to Europe and explore these countries further. Europe has so much to offer; history, beauty, amazing art, unique food and a great way of life.

 

Mahara