Amsterdam One: Conversations

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves—that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.—The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton.

…

Peter looked up at the backward-running clock. “Do you ever wonder why we’re here?”

I sat silently for a few moments chewing on another bite of uitsmijter. I swallowed and said, “I’m here because I’m hungry.”

Harrumph. “No, I mean why we’re alive. Do you ever wonder why we exist?”

“I have wondered at times.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“And?”

“I don’t know, really. I’ve never come up with an answer.”

“I see.”

“What about you? Have you come up with an answer?”

“Sometimes I have. Sometimes I haven’t.”

“Well, what were some of your answers? How about one of your answers? The best answer I guess.”

I put down the fork, took a sip of coffee, and I sat up straight on the barstool. “Let me think about that for a minute.” I looked around the brown café. There were only a few patrons at this hour in the morning. A bald fellow who looked familiar sat at the other end of the bar talking with the manager and bartender, Kasper. They were speaking Dutch in the way that they do here. Pleasant to my ears, the sound was like a familiar lilting English but indecipherable to me. The guy with the long white beard was playing that odd game of pool, I forget the name, but he was trying to pocket one of the two red balls after banking the white off of three rails. It was the only game I had ever seen anyone play at Eik en Linde.

I looked back at Peter. His de Koninck was all but finished. It’s never too early in the day for a beer, I suppose. “None of my answers were very good, you know? The best answer was just ‘Hey, we’re here.’ Makes no difference what the answer is because even if you guess wrong you’re still here. Life’s pretty forgiving in that sense.”

Peter nodded his head slowly. His forearms rested on the bar as he held the glass by the tips of his fingers with both hands. He arched his back a bit and tilted his head down at an angle as he peered over the top of his glasses at me. He smiled wryly. “Are you sure you’re American? You’re beginning to sound like a Dutchman.”

We both laughed. Peter took another drink. “Okay, so we don’t know why we’re here, but we are anyway. Who are we, though? What makes us us?”

“Do you think I know something you don’t?”

Peter rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue. “Ah, you’re in a strange mood today. You’re usually the one telling me this or that about everything. I figure if you know everything then you must know these things.”

It was my turn to laugh. “What can I say? I have my days when I’m filled with the romance of the city and it feels like everything is simple, right there within my grasp. And everyone else’s, for that matter. Then there are other days …”

I took another sip of coffee. I had finished my uitsmijter. The backward running clock read 1:15. Almost eleven o’clock in the morning. I had actually asked myself the question Peter had asked me only a few weeks ago. In fact, I had been asking it continuously for as long as I could remember. Answers that last come slowly, building up over decades, but when they finally come they feel like electricity, the lightning bolt that can only come if all of the conditions that create it form in the right way over distance and time.

“We are what we make of ourselves,” I finally shot back. “We become what we are when we make decisions and then will our bodies to act on them. Or not make decisions and not act on our indecision. Either way, that’s what makes us us.” I took another sip of coffee. “Maybe.”

Kasper walked toward us from the other end of the bar. “Michael, how was the uitsmijter?”

“Delicious. Thank you, Kasper. Could I have an espresso?”

Kasper smiled. “No.” He paused and blinked. “Of course.”

Peter spoke up. “Another beer, too.”

“Ja, okay.” Kasper walked back to the center of the bar.

Peter sighed before turning to me. “I’m not satisfied with your answer.”

“Neither am I, but what can I do?”

“You could start drinking beer, for one.”

“True, I could, but I have to get some work done today. I brought my laptop even though I never get anything done here … nor anywhere else in the city, to be honest. I was stubborn about it at first, but I’ve finally just accepted that Amsterdam is for the enjoyment of life rather than for getting things done.”

“Thank goodness for that!”

I heard Kasper laugh as I clinked my coffee cup against Peter’s empty beer glass.

Peter shouted, “Hey, never do that! It’s bad luck to toast an empty glass. Kasper, you’re laughing too much and pouring too slow.”

Kasper shot back, “I swore I just heard that Amsterdam is for living well instead of working hard.”

Peter shot back, “That’s only true if everyone’s glass is full!”

Everyone in Eike en Linde laughed. There were a few more people now. A young, fashionably dressed British couple—a man and a woman, though one should never assume here (nor anywhere else, but especially in Amsterdam)—had wandered inside and found a table near the front window on the far side of the cafe. A distinguished looking blond gentleman with an ochre-colored sport coat came in not long after they had. He was emphatically Dutch with a collapsed umbrella in one hand and a folded newspaper tucked under his other arm. He sat a few stools away from Peter and I near the dark-brown wooden support that separated the barstools into an uneven split. Peter and I were seated at the fat end with its curly-Q tip that allowed people to sit as we were on the rounded end or on either side facing one another.

Kasper glided through the walkway in the middle with our respective drinks. “There.” Kasper stood for a second looking at Peter. His lips were made into a devilish smirk and his dimples winked. “Are you happy now?” he asked in Dutch.

Peter answered in a mix of Dutch and English “No. I’m not happy at all. That has nothing to do with you, though. What is there to be happy about?” It was impossible to tell if he was being serious. It always seemed to be that way. The Dutch sense of humor? It’s diverse, actually, but there is a strain of it that took me awhile to catch, a dry, sardonic wit that, beneath the surface, has the spirit of a child at play, a purposeful dourness poking fun at itself. Just another one of the endless ways the Dutch create gezellig atmospheres, the inhalation of the seriousness and tension in the world and the exhalation of easy and engaging laughter that defines the culture’s breathing. No one ever seems to be left out in Holland. It is an extraordinarily welcoming and inclusive society.

Few countries welcome friends and strangers in quite the way the Dutch do. Of course, I haven’t traveled everywhere in the world. Not by a long shot. It doesn’t hurt that so many of them speak English here, many fluently, some better than most Americans will ever dream of speaking their native tongue. It’s remarkable—to me, anyway. I’m in love with the place. If it was possible to get hitched to a city, I would have proposed to Amsterdam long ago.

As it stands, I’ve written her long love letters sealed with kisses. I’ve walked hand-in-hand with her along her curvy canals, side by side with her gabled houses, and step by step up and down the paths of her parks. I’ve danced alone with her under the moonlight pedaling a bike over bridges early on Monday mornings. I’ve smiled lovestruck buying dozens of flowers along the Singel with the intention of simply leaving them one by one everywhere the city touched my heart. But as many flowers as there are in the city every day, there simply may not be enough to cover every centimeter. Every cobblestone deserves a tulip of its own, every brick a rose, and a wreath hovering above the head of every man, woman, and child.

“So, are you going to give me a real answer or not?” asked Peter impatiently. He had emptied half his glass. I sipped the espresso, shaking my head as I broke into a smile while placing the cup on the saucer.

“There’s no answer I could give that would satisfy you. I know this much about you at least. But no answer at all would be even less fulfilling.”

“Ah, the American in you comes out. Great taste, less filling. Sorry, there’s no Miller Lite on tap here.” Laughter from Kasper and the other two men at the bar.

“You know Miller Lite?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “What? You’re the only one who travels in this world? Is it such a surprise that I’ve visited the United States? It couldn’t possibly be that we know anything about you, is that it? How could we not know about you?! You’re everywhere! You see a country without a Coca-Cola for sale and you send in the troops to make sure the suffering herds will have a vending machine on every corner!”

Uh oh. Is he getting drunk? Peter has a pointed wit when he gets sauced. How long had he been drinking before I arrived? Nah, he’s just trying to get in a few digs. More fun if I throw it back at him. “As you know, Peter, most of us in America came from Europe if you go back just a little ways. We may have left Europe, but we haven’t quite gotten the imperialism out of our system just yet. Hey, we’re young and we still think we’re going to live forever. That’s why we all get hair transplants and boob jobs. Hell, I didn’t even realize we were actually in Iraq until I came here. For years I thought it was just a really bad television show. Well, not bad by American standards, but bad nonetheless. Besides, you’re in Iraq right along with us and your sitcoms are even worse than ours!”

I took another sip of my espresso and as I did I noticed the well-dressed Dutch fellow sitting nearby raise his eyebrows and just slightly curl the corners of his mouth into a smile. When I looked back at Peter the glass sitting in front of him was almost empty. He had squared his shoulders toward me with his right hand on his hip and his head cocked back with a look of on his face that said “Nice uppercut, kiddo.” He turned back to the bar, pulled a pack of Galoushes from his coat pocket, and fished out a cigarette. He was about to put it in his mouth and light it before he realized he couldn’t. Amsterdam had gone American and had passed a no-smoking ordinance in cafés. That shocked me, actually, because on my first visit to Amsterdam in the late 1990s people were wandering around the Schiphol airport puffing away. The Dutch are tolerant, but also health conscious. Still, it’s weird because you can still smoke pot inside the coffeeshops. Contact high? Not a problem. Second-hand tobacco smoke? Problem.

After putting his pack back in his pocket, Peter said, “Touché. But now I know you’ve got some Dutch in you. You’ve been here too long.”

“I have?”

“Of course! No one can belittle their own culture like the Dutch. Americans, they beat their chests and say, ‘We’re right and you’re wrong!’ The Dutch answer back, ‘Well, you’re half right. We are wrong.’”

I laughed heartily. There’s nothing like wasting a day going back and forth about everything and nothing with the Dutch. They’ll talk with anyone and they’ll do so endlessly—until the beer runs out, anyway. Then they’ll switch to jenever. And when that runs out they just might smoke a little pot. But not everyone. Not all that many, really. It’s mostly the travelers and the tourists in the coffeeshops unless they’re way off the beaten path. Even so, hanging out in a coffeeshop getting high all day is not really what the Dutch do. Maybe it was different in the past, but most coffeeshops I have visited are populated by Americans and travelers from the rest of Europe. Hell, the rest of the world.

I mentioned these two things to Peter, about the artistry of Dutch conversation and my surprise that the Dutch don’t get high in the coffeeshops.

“Well, you could call it art, I guess. It’s the art of the cow. The cow shit.”

Kasper yelled from down the bar. “Bullshit. A bullshit artist.” He was rinsing glasses in the sink, smiling to himself while listening to us and, as far as I could tell, talking here and there with others in the bar. He was always in motion but always at ease within his motion. He was born into it, his parents owned the bar and he seemed to be managing it now, along with his mother who was sometimes working during the day, too. There were others working as well, but usually later in the afternoons and at night. I rarely stopped in at night. Too crowded and filled with a cacophony of Dutch voices. It was a neighborhood café in The Plantage on the edge of the city center. It was just right for me, but then again I loved being around the Dutch. If I wanted to hang out with American tourists I might as well just stay in the United States. Or I could just head over to the Dam and find them in spades.

“Yes, a bullshit artist. A cow is a woman and a bull is a man. Yes. Sorry, my English is not so well.”

“Maybe your vocabulary isn’t as extensive—although that’s the first difficulty I’ve heard from you—but your English is probably as good as mine.”

“Well, that’s not a surprise. You were stuck in American schools. I won’t hold it against you.”

More laughter from all corners. The British woman was at the bar smiling, but sheepishly. Gorgeous. Hardly noticeable, though, after being in Amsterdam this long. Dutch beauty? Dear Lord! There are so many beauties in this country that they don’t even seem to realize they’re beautiful. I found it rare to meet a Dutch woman who is full of herself for being hot enough to melt titanium.

The British woman tried to speak a little Dutch as she ordered a white wine. Not too hard, really, but she used French and German. A blanc wein, bitte? Ouch! Kasper, gracious as always, simply smiled with a hint of amusement and said “No problem.” It has to be great to work in Amsterdam and be confronted with such sincere but mangled efforts to speak their language. You’d think it would be tiresome, like it is for the French, but the Dutch are too kind-hearted to be anything more than amused. Okay, sometimes they’re patronizing. No one’s perfect. Well, Kasper might be. I’ve never seen him anything other than friendly and even-keeled.

Peter shook his head but didn’t comment. Instead he turned back to me and said, “It’s not true that the Dutch don’t smoke. They just don’t do it in coffeeshops so much. That’s more for a party or at home. Only the tourists and the young people stumble around stoned and happy all day and night. The respectable Dutch walk around drunk and happy instead.”

“It never ends with you, does it? You could just go on and on like this forever, couldn’t you?”

“No. That’s not true. I’ll die someday.”

“Well, there’s that.”

“Yes there is. But you still never answered my question, did you? You are not just an American Dutch, you are an American Dutch politician.”

“I gave you an answer but you didn’t like it!”

“I know. You have to give me an answer I like.”

“I do? Is it a Dutch tradition or a Dutch law?”

“It’s neither. It’s just what I want.”

“And you always get what you want?”

“No, I never get what I want! For example, I wanted another beer a minute ago, but Kasper decided to help the pretty English woman instead. Not that I blame him. I would, too.” Peter turned to the British woman. She was still waiting for her wine as Kasper was grabbing an order of food from the little window near the floor at the other end of the bar connected to the lowered kitchen. About a half dozen people had entered Eike en Linde over the past ten minutes. It was well after eleven A.M. Well, maybe it was well before eleven A.M. Damn backward running clock.

“Your Dutch is impeccable, my dear. If it wasn’t for the English accent I heard when you walked in I would have pegged you as a Dutch girl from the south.” An invisible insult to the woman and a visible dig at Holland South. It has an unflattering reputation amongst Amsterdammers.

The woman smiled meekly and turned away.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I’m a dirigible?”

“Ha! Sorry. No, incorrigible. It’s similar to irredeemable.”

“So, now you are just making fun of me with your fancy English vocabulary. Maybe you went to school in Europe after all.”

“You can’t be reformed!”

“Ah, like a criminal.”

“Well … sort of. You’re impossible, though.”

“That one I know. Okay. You’re right. I’m proud of my impossibility.”

“Of course you are. You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Nor could I—unless you paid me! I don’t take traveler’s checks, though.”

“Well, I’m not really traveling so that’s okay.”

“You’re not traveling? You’re an American in Amsterdam. What do you call it?”

“I don’t know, really. I don’t really live here but I’m also not staying at a hotel or just for a couple weeks, either. I’m trying not to call it anything.”

“Do you call it nothing then?”

“I don’t actually think about it unless I’m with someone like you.”

“Like me? There are others like me?” Peter whipped his head around and put his hand over his eyes as if peering for someone he might recognize as himself. “I think I’d like to meet myself. Can you introduce me some time?”

“I don’t think you could handle it,” I said with as much dead-pan humor as I could muster.

“I’ve looked into the mirror and asked myself a question or two. I think I can handle it.”

“Yeah, but did the mirror talk back?”

“Yes, it said the same thing I said at the same time I said it.”

“I would hope so.”

“I’m not sure you would.”

“I—” I laughed. Hard. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to keep going, but I broke.

Peter didn’t, though. “Ah, see? I thought so. Now, I asked you what makes us what we are and you have to answer now because you laughed.”

“Okay. I’ll try again.” Kasper came back with the woman’s drink and Peter grabbed Kasper’s attention. “I’ll have a beer. Michael said he wanted one, too. You did, didn’t you?”

I just shook my head and shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll have a beer, Kasper. La Chouffe.” It still wasn’t noon, but what the hell? I wasn’t going to get any work done, anyway. In fact, as I thought about it a little, I figured I’d have a couple beers and then wander aimlessly through the city to enjoy the spirit. It was drizzly, but not too cold.

“All right, Peter. What makes us what we are? I have your answer. We are our bodies. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s it.”

Peter opened his mouth as if he was going to say something and then he closed it. He seemed to be considering what I’d said a little bit more seriously. He started to open it again, but again he stopped himself. He smiled a bit and nodded his head.

“Okay. I’m okay with that.”

“What?! Wow, I’m stunned. I didn’t think it was possible to satisfy you.”

“I didn’t either. I’m surprised I am. I’m glad you cut yourself off there, though, and didn’t try to make us into anything more. I’m impressed.”

“So am I. Not with my answer, mind you, but with the fact that I shut you up!”

Kasper was chuckling as he brought our beers. “I can’t believe it either. Michael, this one’s on the house. Anyone who can stop Peter in his tracks deserves a free beer. And Peter, yours is free, too. It might be another decade before anyone silences you again.” Laughter up and down the bar. The place was filling up with regulars now.

Truth be told, the answer seemed the same to me. Reduced to an essential, but otherwise the same statement with fewer bells and whistles attached. I had been examining what makes me “me” during this trip to Amsterdam. Divorced nearly a year earlier and separated almost two years. I had lost my sense of self when that relationship ended. During my first month-long stay in Amsterdam in November of 2007, just a few months earlier, I’d started to regain it. Not that I possessed an identity—nor that an identity can be possessed; it can only be created—but I started creating one in earnest during November.

Peter was holding his drink in his right hand and staring at me impatiently. “Are we going to toast or what?” he asked.

I lifted my glass, gently clinked mine against his, and I said, “To being here.”

Peter responded, “Yes, to beer!”