Sincerity

 I spent my last full morning in Amsterdam wandering around trying to find a “coffee shop” that actually sells coffee. It’s quite a task in Amsterdam, as you can imagine.

It didn’t help that nothing much seems to happen in central Amsterdam before 9am, which is possibly due to the fact that between 6am and 9am an army of African and Middle-Eastern street cleaners and garbage men are required to remove all of the accumulated broken glass, fast food wrappers, drug paraphernalia and vomit of the previous evening. That way, the good, sophisticated, diverse, open-minded people of Amsterdam can step out onto the streets, onto their bicycles or into their electric cars, and pretend that it wasn’t a trash-filled cesspit half an hour earlier.

In case you hadn’t noticed the subtle hints, yes, I still hate Amsterdam. On bad days I despise it. It’s a testament to how much I like my friend that I even set foot in this rotten city. After much consideration, fuming and walking about swearing audibly, I’ve distilled it down to Amsterdam’s simultaneous characteristics of being crass and vulgar, and insufferably smug and self-righteous. It’s the atheistic equivalent of a sanctimonious church lady who is proud of the fact that she’s never even spoken to a Muslim and is adamant that Jesus was white. They’re so convinced that they are the benchmark for enlightened urban living that if you point out that most of the service workers for their dirty jobs are refugees, or that their default of using long-life milk in coffee is an abomination, or that basic 1 bedroom apartments that cost a million dollars isn’t a good thing, or that tolerating empty eyed drug users shuffling around the squares isn’t virtuous, they’ll just sniff and regard you as ignorant and/or jealous. The ambient feeling in many Italian cities is joy; in Amsterdam it’s smugness.

This is despite vignettes like this: broken glass, used drug vial, and a dead mouse. Stay classy, Amsterdam.

After I convinced a chunky young woman to sell me a croissant and a properly sourced but terrible-tasting flat white, I walked up to the Hermitage to have a look at an exhibition of paintings from Rembrandt and his contemporaries. Most of them could be retitled “Rhapsody in Muddy Brown”, but I’m nothing if not creative, so I put some extra effort in.

Candlewax on your nipples just isn’t the same when you have to do it yourself, Godefridus Schlacken, 1700

 

Esther, relieved that the king’s request for her to stroke the tip of his rod doesn’t mean what she thought it meant, Jan Adriaensz van Staveren, 1645

 

All it takes to keep the town drunk under control is a quick lute jab to the ‘nads, Jan Steen, 1677

As you can see, the cheap smuttiness of this stupid city is rubbing off on me. Tee hee hee… rubbing off.

In the evening we got drunk on cheap cocktails on the roof terrace of a friend of my friend, a 30-something Chilean woman with that dialed-up-to-11 extrovert energy that thrills and terrifies introverts like me and my friend. As he said to me later, “You never know what she’s going to do,” in a tone that was simultaneously envious and haunted. Once we were nicely sozzled, we took a tram over to a nearby concert hall for a show by... and I kid you not... the Netherlands Customs Service Orchestra.

I knew we were in for a great night when we saw the Orchestra’s percussion section playing in the foyer. Behold, the majesty of middle-aged doughy white Dutchmen playing a steel drum version of Bob Marley’s ‘I Shot the Sheriff’.

When the excitable Chilean woman asked me halfway through if I was enjoying the show, I had to say, “Yes I am. I’m just not sure if I’m enjoying it on an ironic level or just actually enjoying it”. The wind, brass and percussion orchestra was flawless in their performance, and so were the two singers, especially the little girl with an astonishing voice who is a minor local TV singing show celebrity. When the concert finally finished, it was with two encores and a sincere standing ovation.