| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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It is 2 AM in the morning as far as the trip is concerned but the people around me here at JFK airport think that it is only a little after 8 PM. We were due to be picked up at work at 4:30 PM, but due to some mixup over a telephone we were sitting around waiting for the limo driver and he was sitting around waiting for us. 'Us' in this case refers to the lively and talented Evelyn Leeper, her dashing husband Mark (who will here hide under the aliases 'I' and 'me'), Ms. Josephine Paltin, and her husband Dale Skran. For completeness I will also introduce at this point an as yet absent friend, Kate Pott, not from our home of New Jersey but from Massachusetts. She will join us at the airport, We finally got together with the limo driver and got our luggage into the back of his car. Airport limos have not changed very much since I first rode in them twelve or thirteen years ago. The only difference is they now have a big telephone sticking into your legroom with an electronic display that constantly says 'Please phone' as if you had just been paged. We talked about the financial state of AT&T, and the weather was ugly too. We drove in a heavy rainstorm. However, by the time we got to JFK the storm was over. We checked in at the KLM counter with a man who was extremely Dutch. At least he had all the characteristics I have come to associate with the Dutch. That is, they are friendly, helpful, courteous, and always seem to enjoy their job, no matter how awful it is. I hate to generalize, but I have found no people in the world I would rather be around. I came to this unexpected conclusion after a five-hour plane layover in Amsterdam. I never was asked so many questions in an airport security check or felt less like I was in a security check. The guy chatted with us about all the places in our passport that he had also visited. It occurred to me after the fact he might actually have been checking out our answers to see if they sounded true. If so, he was good at his job. All I sensed was friendly curiosity. After going through the X-ray check an attendant gruffly asked us to open a package we had bought in the airport there. It was a gift stuffed animal in a shopping bag that you could seal shut. We opened it and he thanked us, explaining he knew we'd just bought it. He just wanted to see what kind of animal we'd gotten. Another attendant came into the waiting area and wrapped her arms around herself as if to say to us, 'I'm cold. Are you cold too?'
And of course Holland has a history of defending its minorities and valuing its diversity. Many Dutch Christians died during the Holocaust defending Jews. Holland, as I see it, acts like most other countries would if they would just grow up.
At work, when I mentioned my positive feelings toward the Dutch, two different people have disagreed, saying that in South Africa the Dutch have been somewhat less than fair-minded. I distinguish between the people who are Dutch and the people of Dutch origin who are no longer Dutch.
At any rate we checked in and had dinner from a local Pizza Hut concession. There was a time when the food you got at an airport concession would be both unpalatable and unhealthy. In fact, its main virtue was that it was too unpalatable to eat much of. Unfortunately, unpalatability began to eat into sales so they learned to make the stuff of as unhealthy food but now at least it tasted good.
While we were eating we saw Kate Pott walking by, having just arrived at the airport by bus (from Massachusetts). After talking to Kate for a while I got myself some TCBY frozen yogurt. As with the pizza, they undercharged me, I pointed it out, and they still went with the lower price rather than go through the effort of reversing a sale. Ah, what has happened to loyalty to the employer?
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At a little after 3 AM (9 PM) we boarded the plane after a long stand in line to board. It was a very tight fit sitting down. At this point I'd gone 39 hours with only about thirty minutes of sleep. In spite of rather uncomfortable seating I fell asleep right away, was awake a few minutes for the take-off, and then nodded off again. Again I awoke for the snack and dinner. The latter was quite decent, including a salad of lox and crab meat. It also had chicken and something like spaetzel. KLM's service is quite good though the seating is darn uncomfortable. With ten seats across and four of us in a space intended for three things are darn uncomfortable. Also, I was sitting next to Dale and we are both wide enough to need the armrest. I woke up about 6 AM with a squalling baby in the row ahead of me and a man who kept clearing his sinuses in the row behind. The in-flight movie was NUNS ON THE RUN. They did not charge for headsets. It didn't matter. My walkman earphones were more comfortable and fit into their jack. More and more you see on planes earphone jacks (of the walkman style) next to the two air-driver ports. If you have your own earphones you don't need theirs. Well, it is 9:13 and we land in about another eighty minutes.
Boy, I hate these flights in seats packed together like compartments in an egg carton. I think when we fly to Asia I am going to have the vet give me a shot to knock me out.
We landed in Amsterdam a bit ahead of schedule which was good because it was hard to untangle ourselves from our seats. Kate was met by her local friends and we will see her again later in the week.
We got tickets for the train to near our hotel and caught the train. There are apparently two classes of train service and you take a car with a '2' if you get a second-class ticket. The car was already pretty full by the time we got on. We found two seats together and two more seats separate. Dale and I got the two together and each of the women got a separate seat. But Jo came back to where Dale and I were sitting and talked to us. She said her seat was wet. Besides, she'd been sitting for eight hours and preferred to stand. We each offered her a seat but she still refused. Two women sitting opposite us did not understand English and only knew that two American men were sitting and letting a woman stand. They gave us a dirty look. I guess Americans really are rude barbarians!
The train stopped at Central Station and disgorged us barbarians. We all started walking toward the exit. A woman came up to Evelyn and asked, 'Are you American?' Evelyn said yes. 'Aren't you Evelyn Leeper?' Somewhat surprised, Evelyn said she was. It turned out to be someone we had met at a science fiction convention. How many people can be in a European capital for the first time and within ten minutes they have been recognized by someone?
From there we tried to find the tourist agency, here called the VVV. A sign on a store said it was outside and to the left. Out we went but the VVV was not where they claimed it would be. I left the group together and went off in search of the VVV. I finally found it across the street. The line was too long so we went for a taxi to take us to our hotel, the Engeland. It is an oldish Amsterdam hotel with steep, narrow steps. It had been recommended as being inexpensive and near the museums. It turned out to be that and not much more. It is a little spartan, but not too bad. The manager took a tour street map and traced on it regions where it is good to visit and other regions that are not safe. The rooms are small but uncomfortable. The bathroom has the single sunken floor that the bathroom of the Nanjing Guest House had. (I assume the reader has been to the Nanjing Guest House!) The whole floor is the floor of the shower with one drain and it is tipped so that the whole floor does not get wet when you take a shower. It makes it very easy to clean the floor. In Nanjing, however, they did not keep the drain clear. The whole bathroom rested in an inch or so of water. It was quite a mess. The Dutch seem to be a little more careful ... so far.
Our first destination after setting into our rooms was the Rijksmuseum. We set off for it on foot. For the first time I realized that Dale, who had borrowed an Ace bandage earlier for a knee injury, was going to have some mobility problems. He injured his knee kicking somebody in the head at Tae Kwon Do and did not let it heal but went a second time, making it a lot worse. He did not slow things down when walking with us. While we were walking Ev, Jo, and I made a side trip to the VVV and Dale sat and rested his knee and we came back for him. I will describe the area in more detail later. I did see a sign that I found somewhat interesting advertising a guide and escort service. The picture was a silhouette of a nude woman. There were tastefully implying that other services might be available. Perhaps at an additional fee, of course.
The Rijksmuseum is the local National Art Museum and features the art of Rembrandt. It may be just me, but I did not find this to be an outstanding art museum. I saw a number of famous and familiar paintings but there is much less imaginative art than you see at places like the Prado. The Dutch artists we saw were much more literalists. The museum was founded in 1808 by Louis Bonaparte. The current building seems to be very big with an odd and not entirely logical layout. At one point we wanted to see an exhibit at some distance from where we were and the way not only had a great deal of walking but it also required both climbing up and climbing down stairs. And the route seemed quite twisty. We followed a sign to see 'The Night Watch' and it took us a good 45 minutes to get to it by their path. The path took you through a whole history of Dutch art culminating in this one painting. We all kind of liked Asselyn's 'Threatened Swan' along the way. It is an angry and frightened swan honking at a small dog. By looking at it you learn more about the anatomy and musculature of a swan than you are ever likely to need (though some might be useful to know on Thanksgiving). Finally at the end of this long educational walk you come to a room that tells you the history of this painting and of the efforts to restore it. Finally you go one more room and there it is! And three feelings strike you at once:
This is familiar. Yes, I have seen pictures of this painting before.
This is big. The painting is big enough to be a mural.
Have I missed something?
Other than its being big and being popular I know of nothing that sets this painting apart from hundreds like it. There are, I guess, just certain works of art that strike a chord in some and to others seem unexceptional. Another painting in the same area is perhaps Rembrandt's most famous and most often reproduced painting. This is the one that Dutch Masters cigars copped as their trademark. They did have one piece that was like a triptych, but had seven paintings. I guess you would call that a septych. While we were walking I made polite conversation with Dale, who is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I asked him how he had hurt his knee. He explained he strained it trying to kick somebody in the head. The culturedlooking woman next to him looked around at him and then quickly moved on to the next painting.
The museum also had a section devoted to art from the history of Holland. They had ornate model boats, paintings of sea battles, metal body armor, etc. Finally we saw the collection of oriental art. This was the display that took so long to get to.
We left the museum about 5 PM. I was not sure what the next order of business should be but Jo said she was so hungry she felt dizzy. So dinner was decided upon. |
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