In Amsterdam; Van Gogh, Anne Frank, and Sex and the City

"I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process."

Vincent Van Gogh



It takes approximately two hours and forty-five minutes by train to travel from Brussels to Amsterdam. Passing through kilometers upon kilometers of tranquil pastoral scenes, it is easy to observe the very characteristics that so captivated the great Vincent Van Gogh, one of the greatest of the Dutch painters. Van Gogh, perhaps best known for Starry Night, was a masterful Impressionist painter, adopting and perfecting the style of pointillism, among other techniques.

My visit to Amsterdam with my housemate-colleagues, Josh and Perry (referred to also by their honorary titles Eagle One and The Duke of Landesberg, respectively), was not my first, but as Amsterdam is one of my favorite cities in Europe it did not take much convincing by them for me to go along with it. We left on Friday morning and arrived in the central train station in Amsterdam in the early afternoon. Our hostel was twenty-five minutes by tram west of the city center, so we opted to look around before checking in. One of our peers had a high school friend in Delft, who was more than happy to show us around. After having lunch with him, he took us by the Anne Frank house, where a long line compelled us to postpone our visit to Sunday, as the museum was closed the following day due to Yom Kippur.

After a full afternoon of touring the city, in the evening we wandered through the infamous Red Light District. The Red Light District is the stuff of a legendary underworld for the morally loose, a cursed icon of sin and damnation for the righteous, the perfect material for an ethnography for an IR scholar, and of course a very nice place to bring your children. I was admittedly a bit confused why, in the middle of the SEX CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, large groups of Japanese tourists seemed more interested in the swans in the canal than the other surroundings, but I know enough about the Japanese to understand that I will, most likely, never understand the Japanese, so nothing lost I suppose. Perhaps there is a new swan-resembling pokemon that I don't know about. If there is someone please let me know, because I definitely want it.

The next day we set off, having met up with three more of our colleagues back at the hostel the previous night. We went to the Van Gogh museum, which was utterly fantastic. Vincent Van Gogh always longed to paint the common people, and delighted in the pastoral scenes such as the ones we passed on the train to Amsterdam. Much of the subject matter that he painted reflected his love of ordinary individuals, and he spent an important period of his life in the town of Arles, France, doing exactly what he intended. Though Starry Night is a part of the collection in New York, the museum did have his work, The Bedroom, which is among his most famous masterpieces.

The Bedroom illustrates the complexity of properly maintaining a painting. The painting as I saw it had just been restored, however, as the exhibit pointed out, restoration in its current context implies only that the museum community has succeeded in maintaining the painting in its current state, rather than in its full original glory. Van Gogh's original work had used a solvent that had yellowed considerably over the years, and the museum restoration team had had to recreate his original colors and then artificially age them to correctly represent the painting. The door on the right of the painting, described by Van Gogh as a "lilac" color, today appears pale blue.

The rest of the day we divided, with some individuals visiting the Heineken brewery and others walking around the city. I chose the latter, both for a personal distaste in tourist traps and also due to a preference for touring local, independent breweries. We later stopped by for a drink at the Hans Brinker Hotel, known for being the worst hotel in Amsterdam, and possibly, the world. Distinct from the hostel, Hans Brinker was a character in an American novel that led to the introduction of speed skating in the United States. The novel is also famous for the tale of a young boy who used his finger to plug a hole in a dyke, thereby saving his country. According to the legend, the boy remained there all night until he was found the following morning and the village was able to make the necessary repairs.

The rest of the day and the next after that were spent visiting more parts of the city and enjoying Amsterdam in general. The Duke of Landesberg and I visited the Anne Frank House in the morning, at last validating weeks of eighth grade literature courses through our pilgrimage. Though I had done so before, walking through the confines of their hideout was a surreal experience. To this day it amazes me that at such a young age, Ms Frank could endure such tremendous fear and demonstrate such bravery in the face of adversity. That her faith in the best aspects of humanity endured is a powerful reminder to recognize the humanity in all individuals, even when they themselves may not.