Netherlands/Belgium Trip Log (Part 1 of 3)

[Evelyn C. Leeper]

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Netherlands/Belgium
A travelogue by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper

August 17, 1990: Sometimes when I write my trip logs they start
out in the present tense and fall into the past tense as I fall behind.
No fear of that here--I'm already almost a full day behind!

We left work later than planned and the intermittent rain and
slow-downs on the Belt Parkway added to my usual anxiety about being
late to the airport. But we got there almost three hours before flight
time, so as usual, my fears were unfounded.

After checking in, we went to the snack bar to have some dinner.
While we were sitting there we saw at least one professional science
fiction author (Geary Gravel) walk by, so there would be at least one at
the World Science Fiction Convention, our excuse for the trip. (A
report on that will be issued separately.)

We (Dale, Jo, Mark, and I) were sitting there, we saw Kate walk by,
so we flagged her down and killed time before our flight talking about
STAR TREK.

August 18, 1990: The flight was about an hour late taking off (I
think, but since I was asleep, I'm not sure). I ate hardly any of the
meal, but slept as much as possible, though not very well. We made up
the lost time and even landed at Schipol ten minutes early. After
collecting our bags and changing some money, we went through customs
(very easy in Europe). Kate's friend was supposed to meet her but
couldn't. The replacement she sent was holding up the NOT OF THIS EARTH
postcard that Kate had sent. Mark had noticed this but didn't realize
it was a signal for Kate. Finally they met up and went off and the four
of us headed for the train.

The train from Schipol to Amsterdam's Central Station took about
fifteen minutes and cost about 3.75 guilders (about $2.20)--much cheaper
and faster than getting into the city from an airport in the United
States. As we walked around the station, looking for the Tourist
Information Center (VVV), someone said to me, "Don't I know you? Aren't
you Evelyn Leeper?" It was Carol Springs, whom I had met at an @-sign
party and who had provided much information about the Netherlands. She
was also looking for the VVV so we walked part of the way together until
she realized she had lost sight of her boyfriend and decided to try to
find him first.

It took us quite a while to find the VVV. First of all, the signs
directed us outside (into the drizzle) and then disappeared. After
about five minutes of walking around, we decided that three of us would
wait by the luggage while Mark went unencumbered in search of the VVV.
He did find it, in about ten minutes, across the tram tracks and a

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street in a poorly marked building. He had hoped to get a Jewish
Walking Tour pamphlet and a Museumkaart, but the lines of people
(students, mostly) waiting for hotel reservations made us change our
minds. Instead, we went over to the taxi stand and took a taxi to our
hotel--about 18 guilders.

The Hotel Engeland is a typically narrow Dutch house, so the stairs
are also narrow and steep. Luckily our suitcases were small--I remember
trying to manage a large suitcase up similar stairs in a B&B in
Brighton. Our room was small but clean with a private bathroom, but no
phone or television.

We unpacked, washed up, and immediately headed for the Rijksmuseum,
This was only a short walk (fifteen minutes) from our hotel and we
arrived there about 2 PM. (Oh, I forgot--we tried to stop at the VVV at
Leidseplein right near our hotel, but it also had a long line and the
woman at the currency exchange window said we could get Museumkaarts at
the museum.)

The first entrance we saw at the Rijksmuseum seemed far too small
for a major museum: no crowds, one door, etc. Sure enough, it turned
out to be the back entrance, which had no Museumkaarts, so we kept
walking around to the read of the museum and through to the front. The
museum is in two buildings on either side of a street and a connecting
building over the street. The street is not actually used for traffic
any more, but vendors line both sides and bicycles do pass through. At
the main entrances there *were* crowds, and it took a while for us to
get in.

Finally we got in, bought our Museumkaarts (40 guilders) gone for
almost all museums in the Netherlands, and started in on the ultimate
goal of the trip to the museum--the art.

Built about a hundred years ago in the neo-Gothic style, the
Rijksmuseum houses 7 million works of art, including 5000 paintings. We
did not see them all.

We did, however, see the Dutch paintings of the 15th to 17th
Centuries, or at least those on display, a goodly number. (In fact,
they seem to have extended them into the area previously taken up by
French, Spanish, and Italian painters.)

Even listing the highlights is difficult, in part because my tastes
aren't always in sync with what the guidebooks list as the "best" works.
Frans Hals's "Merry Drinker" is okay, though I found Velazquez's "Wine
Bibbers" in the Prado more evocative. "The Night Watch" is considered
by all to be Rembrandt's greatest work, but I can't help but feel much
of that is due to its size. I personally prefer the portrait of his
mother reading the Bible or perhaps the "Staalmeesters," though that is
perhaps overly familiar, being the picture used for Dutch Masters
cigars. And I would recommend Pieter Aersten's "Terrified Swan," a work

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rarely if ever mentioned, over many of the ones so often praised.

Other artists represented included Jan Vermeer (four paintings--
"The Little Street," "The Kitchen Maid," "The Young Woman Reading a
Letter," and "The Letter") and Willem van de Velde the Younger, who did
amazingly detailed black and white naval paintings. (At least I think
that's who it was--my notes didn't say but the guidebooks' descriptions
make me think it was him.)

The other area the Rijksmuseum is known for is its Asian art. To
get to this area of the museum is sort of like getting from the
Netherlands to Asia--long and difficult. Up and down stairs, through
other exhibits, eventually we found our way there. They had several
pieces from Indonesia (not too surprisingly) as well as some from Burma,
Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and India. We were looking at a bronze of Siva,
Lord of the Dance, and I asked about the arms--there were four but I
thought Siva had six. A woman standing there--not a museum employee-
said that earlier works showed Siva with many arms, but eventually they
settled on a more manageable number and put a circle with flames
emanating from it around Siva, the flames each representing an arm.

After the trek back to the main part of the museum we visited the
gift shop for the obligatory post cards and then out.

(Oops, I forgot one section. Before the Asian art we went to the
Dutch history section, partly because they had a few rooms on naval
history, one of Mark's pet topics. It is clear that the Dutch don't
think other people will find their history interesting--the descriptions
were only in Dutch. In other sections, the descriptions were in Dutch
and English. We went through anyway, picking out a word here and there;
Dutch has few cognates with English. It also has more 'j's than any
other language I've seen. The best painting in this section, in my
opinion, was of Louis Bonaparte. There were also more van de Veldes and
a painting of Queen Juliana which had been slashed in Jakarta in 1960.
Unlike "The Night Watch," which had been restored after being slashed in
1975, this has been left as is, sort of a silent commentary on history.)

After the museum we walked back to the Leidseplein to look for a
place for dinner. The problem became to some extent a surfeit of
riches--there are dozens and dozens of restaurants in every cuisine
imaginable. We even saw a Nepalese and Tibetan restaurant! First we
saw a Dutch restaurant that sounded good. After Dale and Jo changed
more money at the VVV, we saw an Indonesian restaurant Mark favored, but
Jo wanted to go to the Dutch place. When we got there, however, we
discovered it was playing raucous music, so we started walking down the
street looking for a place to eat. Every place was a restaurant--the
only decision was which one. Having decided that Nepalese-Tibetan was a
bit too exotic for some members of our party--mentioning no names, of
course--we settled on the Sedap. It was--surprise!--an Indonesian
restaurant. We had individual dishes rather than the rijstaffel that
most people think of when they think of Indonesian food (if indeed they

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think of anything). Mark had cumi-cumi (cuttlefish in a spicy sauce)
and I had a Javanese dish of vegetables in a spicy peanut sauce. Dale
had lamb sate (lamb marinated, then cooked on skewers and served in a
sauce) and Jo had something (beef, I think) in a coconut sauce. It was
all good and different from other Asian cuisines; why doesn't someone
open an Indonesian restaurant in New Jersey?

After dinner we returned to the hotel, but Mark and I were just
dropping stuff off before going out for a walk, since it was still only
7:30 PM. But Dale's knee had been bothering him so they were not eager
to do a lot of extra walking.

We walked past Leidseplein up Leidsestraat. This is a very lively
albeit touristy area. The newsstand has magazines in several languages
(though the books are pretty much all in Dutch). The line at the VVV
was somewhat shorter, but seems permanent. We had managed to get what
we needed before dinner so we proceeded past it and the usual tourist
shops up Leidsestraat to Herengracht. (By the way, "straat" is street,
"gracht" is canal, and "plein" is square.) A right turn on Herengracht
took us past the flower market (closed, of course, at this hour, but we
could see into the shops and barges through the plastic sheets). We
followed Herengracht to Rembrandtsplein, another square full of people
in sidewalk cafes. A street mime was performing and we watched him for
a while, but we were so far back in the crowd it was hard to see him.

By now (8:30 PM) it was starting to get dark and we decided to
return to our hotel while we could still read the street signs. We got
back by 9 PM, wrote in our logs for a while, listened to the news from
the BBC on our shortwave radio (no improvement in the Middle East) and
then to bed about 10 PM.

I suppose that I should compare the Rijksmuseum to the other great
art museums I have seen. It's been too long since I saw the
Metropolitan as a single museum--now I tend to go to see some particular
exhibit or section. Jo claims the Met far outshines all the others, and
perhaps it does. My vote, however, would go to the Prado, even given
its exclusion of non-Spanish works. It does include French, Italian,
and Flemish artists of the period during which Spain controlled those
areas, and this softens the limitations. The Hermitage may have a
better or more comprehensive collection than either the Met or the
Prado, but much of it is not displayed (or wasn't for a long time,
anyway) or is poorly displayed. The Rijksmuseum is ahead of the
Hermitage, but behind the Prado--in part because the Rijksmuseum's
paintings are also limited for the most part to Dutch artists and areas
of interest.

August 19, 1990: Breakfast at the hotel consisted of orange juice,
egg, ham, cheese, bread, and coffee. After breakfast Mark, Jo, and I
walked over to the Anne Frank House while Dale rested his knee. This
took us along the Prinsengracht Canal, where we could see the many
styles of canal houses. Some were even tilted as they used to be built,

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with the top leaning over the street. This is so items being hauled up
to upper stories via the hook extending from the top wouldn't bang
against the building. Because of their narrowness, all the buildings,
tilted or not, have such hooks. The style of the gables--triangular,
step, or bell--gives you some idea when the house was built. With so
many buildings declared national monuments, I suspect the canal streets
don't change their appearance much these days. The latest change was
the low railings added by the insurance companies to keep people from
accidentally driving their cars into the canals!

On the way to the Anne Frank House, we passed the Westerkerk, which
is the tallest church in Amsterdam and also where Rembrandt is buried.
Since it was Sunday morning, the church was not open for tourists.

The Anne Frank House is located at 263 Prinsengracht. I read
somewhere that this is the most visited site in Amsterdam. Certainly
the long line at 10 AM on a Sunday morning made one wonder what it was
like at a more popular hour.

The line moved reasonably quickly and we got in at about 10:30 AM.
The descriptive brochures were available in many languages, including
Japanese and Hebrew.

One look at the extremely steep stairs convinced us that Dale had
made the right decision not to come--with his knee he would have had
difficulty. At the top of the stairs a video program gave a brief
history of the house (in English, with several other languages available
via headphones at the back of the room).

Though it is called the Anne Frank House, the building was not,
strictly speaking, a house at the time. Otto Frank had his wholesale
business there; until 1942 the Franks lived in Merwede Square after
having left Germany in 1933. On July 6, 1942, they moved into the
Annex, hidden behind a bookcase that concealed the connecting door.
This consisted of four rooms: one the room of Mr. and Mrs. Frank and
their older daughter Margot, one Anne's room (which she later shared
with Mr. Dussel when he joined them in hiding), one the room of Mr. and
Mrs. Van Daan (which also served as kitchen and living room for all) and
one for Peter Van Daan (which led to the attic storeroom). There was
also a washroom, which could be used only outside office hours, since it
could be heard by the people below (the entire ground floor of the
building was still in use as a warehouse). Here the eight hideaways
lived for over two years, with help from a few trusted friends who
supplied them with food and other supplies. (In her diary, Anne
describes going into hiding wearing as many layers of clothes as
possible, since they couldn't be seen carrying luggage.)

On August 4, 1944, the Nazis raided the Annex--no one knows who
betrayed the hideaways. They emptied Otto Frank's attache case onto the
floor to use it to carry away jewelry and valuables, and in doing so
left Anne's notebooks behind. Of the eight, only Otto Frank survived;

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both Margot and Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen one month before
the end of the war.

While the Annex is a very moving experience, I found myself
wondering about all the other hiding places whose occupants did not
leave behind diaries. There were many, in the Netherlands and in other
countries, yet all attention seems focused on this one. Perhaps it's
necessary for a focus to exist, but I suppose I would like to see an
acknowledgement of all that other people did to help hide people from
the Nazis and all the struggles other hideaways and fugitives went
through. (A 1987 documentary, WEAPONS OF THE SPIRIT, was made about Le
Chambon-sur-Lignon, a town in France that during the war managed to hide
and smuggle out a number of Jews equal to the population of the town.)

We finished about 12 noon; a large section of informational panels
took a long time since many of the people in front of us in line had to
read them in a language other than their native language--the choices
were Dutch or English. We then returned to the hotel to pick up Dale
and went to the Reijnders Cafe on Leidseplein for lunch. Mark had a
cheese sandwich; I had a toasted cheese sandwich (and a beer--it seemed
like the thing to have, but I still don't like beer). We sat outside
but the somewhat threatening weather meant smaller crowds than usual to
watch.

After lunch we walked to the Van Gogh Museum on the far side of the
Rijksmuseum. Since they had a special exhibit of Van Gogh's letters,
there was an additional 3.50-guilder charge in spite of the Museumkaart.
(The card cost 40 guilders. The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh were 6.50
each, not counting the surcharge. The Museumkaart isn't taken at the
Anne Frank House.)

There was a long line to get into the Van Gogh Museum. There seems
to be a line to get into most things here. We started at the top when
we finally did get in, the recommended procedure since that's lets you
work your way up (so to speak) to his paintings as the grand finale.
The top floor is paintings by contemporaries that Theo Van Gogh had
purchased--interesting in that they provide context for Van Gogh's work
but by no means what most people came for.

The next floor down was an exhibit of Van Gogh's letters, complete
with drawings and sketches. These letters were written mostly to his
brother Theo, who helped support and sustain him. During his lifetime
(1853-1890) Vincent Van Gogh sold only one paintings, but after his
suicide and his brother Theo's death six months later, his sister-in-law
continued to work to get his talent recognized. While his drawings are
excellent and deserve wider recognition, it is for his paintings that
Van Gogh is known, and this museum has them--200 of them, having
practically cornered the market. I will not attempt to describe them
all, or even list them all, but will comment on a few of my favorites.
There were three "Japonaiserie" done in the style (sort of) of Japanese
prints but looking somehow very un-Japanese, especially "The Actor."

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"The Raising of Lazarus" is (I believe) his only Biblical work and
certainly different in style than most Biblical works I've seen. The
"View of Arles with Irises," "Wheatfield with Lark," and the "Harvest at
La Crau" are all wonderful landscapes. For bleaker landscapes, the
"Garden of St. Paul's Hospital in Autumn" and "The Harrow and the
Plough" stand out. "Woman at a Table in the Cafe de Tambourin" is done
in a more subdued style (reminiscent of Renoir). "The Langlois Bridge"
looks just like so many of the canal bridges still in use in Amsterdam
today, with counterweights to help raise them sans motors. There are,
of course, several famous self-portraits and the paintings of his
bedroom and his house in Arles. The bedroom painting showed up in a
short in the latest INTERNATIONAL TOURNEE OF ANIMATION; I suspect the
piece ("The Bedroom" by Maarten Koopman) was made in connection with the
Van Gogh centenary this year.

After buying some postcards--I passed up the overly used
"Sunflowers," which was even painted on the side of one of the canal
houses we passed earlier--we left the museum. Or rather we went outside
onto the covered porch.

Though it had been bright and sunny in the morning, it was now
raining. So about a hundred people stood around, having been evicted
from the museum when it closed, but not wanting to go out and get wet.
Eventually the rain eased up a little and, having put all our purchases
in a plastic bag in a knapsack to protect them, we headed back to the
hotel. Though the trip to the museum had been fairly long because of
the "detour" to Leidseplein for lunch, the return was only about eight
blocks, which pleasantly surprised those who expected as long a walk
back.

For dinner we picked the Tearoom Berkoff based on the KLM
guidebook's suggestion. It was 1) further up Leidsestraat than we
expected and 2) closed. Luck of Leeper strikes again! As time was
running short--we had tickets for an 8 PM boat cruise--we settled on the
Camp David, an Israeli restaurant. Dale got the mixed grill and the
rest of us got spaghetti. (Okay, so it's not typical Israeli food.)
Nothing was outstanding except the difficulty the waiter had in taking a
Visa card--he had obviously never done one before and couldn't even work
the imprinter.

In spite of these difficulties, we made the boat on time. Starting
from the Singelgracht, we went northwest to the Leidsegracht, then
northeast to the Prinsengracht. We followed the Prinsengracht past the
Anne Frank House, then went east on the Brouwersgracht, south on the
Keizersgracht, east on the Leliegracht, and north on the Herengracht.
This took us past hundreds of classic canal houses, including the
oldest, the narrowest, the thisest, the thatest, .... (By the way, the
reason canal houses are narrow and deep is that, canal frontage being
valuable, houses were taxed based on their width.)

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Through all this we had some drizzle but the main difficulty in
seeing things was the boat itself. Fully enclosed is nice, but the
framework holding the windows and skylights in place was wide enough to
block one's view. Maybe other companies' boats are different--look
around. Another problem was that, since the tour was given in five
languages (I think), you might be almost past something before you heard
a description you could understand.

We then took the Brouwersgracht into the Singelgracht and out into
the Het Ij. (There must have been a somethingest on the Singelgracht,
because we went south a bit, then turned around and went north, but I
can't remember what.) By now the twilight and the rain conspired to
make viewing difficult, but we did pass the Maritime Museum and the Sea
Palace, a floating Chinese restaurant copied after Jumbo in Hong Kong,
only about a quarter of the size. This is still pretty big--900 people
versus 3000. Then we came back in on the Oude Zjids Voorburg Wal to the
Grimburg Wal and then onto the Amstel River. We followed this down to
the Magere Brug ("Skinny Bridge"), then turned around and headed north
to the Herengracht and then wets, returning to the dock via the
Leidsegracht. (All this makes more sense if you follow it on a map.)

Luckily the rain had pretty much stopped by now, and it was dark,
so we decided to see a bit of the nighttime look of the canals with the
bridges lit up and all. And because the rain had stopped, we didn't get
soaking wet as we went for ice cream and then back to our hotel.

August 20, 1990: After breakfast (the same as yesterday) Mark and
I went off to do the Jewish Walking Tour of Amsterdam. We got on the
tram to the Central Station, but part way there we realized we had
forgotten our cameras. So we rode around back to the stop near our
hotel, got our cameras, and returned to the Central Station. (Well, at
least we got a tram tour.)

The tour began by walking from the Central Station past the
Schreierstoren, or Weeping Tower, from which ships set sail and at which
women waved good-bye to their husbands, often for the last time--hence
the name. Then we went along the Gelderskade to Nieuwmarket. In the
Nieuwmarket (the article seems to be optional) is the Waag (Weigh House)
which held the Jewish Historical Museum until 1986. Not the museum is
in newer quarters (more on that later) and the Waag is under renovation.

Under the Nieuwmarket is the metro station, with photo montages of
life in this Jewish quarter as it was. Much of the quarter was
demolished for the building of the metro, commemorated by a wrecking
ball poised against a brick wall at its moment of impact (at the top of
the stairs leading to the train platforms). Eventually metro
construction was halted as Amsterdammers decided too much destruction
was needed to finish it, so the metro remains limited and trams continue
to operate.

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Exiting the metro (via an escalator that turns on and off via an
electric eye--a good way to save electricity), we found ourselves on
Sint Anthoniebreestraat, which in spite of the name was more than half
Jewish at the turn of the century. The Huis de Pinto is here. De Pinto
was a Portuguese Jew who came to Amsterdam in 1492 (see Spain log for
details on why) and converted the house into one of the most elegant in
the area. We arrived too early to see the interior, with its painted
ceilings, so proceeded to Jodenbreestraat and the Museum Het
Rembrandthuis (Rembrandt House), where Rembrandt lived from 1639 to
1660.

There are some paintings in the Rembrandt House, but they were done
by Rembrandt's masters and pupils. It is instead devoted to his
etchings, containing almost a complete collection (about 250, according
to one book).

I have to say I found the etchings of Rembrandt in many ways more
interesting than his paintings. Maybe it's my math and technical
background, but the preciseness of the etchings, and how Rembrandt could
use this to show light and shadow, softness and motion, is really
amazing.

Also, there seemed to be many more small touches, often humorous.
Many of the etchings have dogs in them, for example, playing or watching
or (in the case of "The Good Samaritan") relieving themselves. (In the
latter Rembrandt even included the "residue" in the engraving! I was
reminded of the tapestry in El Escorial which shows a drunken man
urinating against a wall in one corner of a courtyard scene.) In "Adam
and Eve" there is a very plump elephant about the size of a puppy. And
a self-portrait of a "startled" Rembrandt makes him look like Tom
Baker's Dr. Who. It is possible that his paintings had these touches
but that the darkening they have undergone may have concealed them.

Portraits show his range in style. The etching of Ephraim Bueno is
formal, with great care given in making the clothing drape naturally and
reflect light. The portrait of Jan Six, on the other hand, is done in a
much more natural style: Six dressed informally and leaning against a
window reading a book.

Not surprising for the time, many of Rembrandt's themes were
Biblical. I've mentioned some, but one that really stood out was the
"Raising of Lazarus," not so much for itself as for the fact that Van
Gogh's "Raising of Lazarus" seemed to be a copy in oils of the exact
composition of Rembrandt's etching.

One etching is called "The Woman with the Arrow." No one seems to
know who she is or what the scene represents. Some have said she is
supposed to be Cleopatra; others have said it is not really an arrow but
part of the drapery pull (she is seated on the edge of a bed with
curtains around it). Since a man's face is dimly visible on the bed, I
thought perhaps it was Jael preparing to slay Sisera (why does the word

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"slay" appear only in Biblical contexts?).

This all took about an hour and a half, including a slide show
about Rembrandt. We then walked down a side street past a diamond-
polishing works (with a parking lot full of tour buses) to see the Fifth
Synagogue of the High German Community. At first there appeared to be
nothing but a wall with some rubble behind it, so we walked to the other
side of the street to return and, glancing back, saw a huge 50-foot tall
building set back from the street with Stars of David in the windows. I
think we both were expecting something much smaller, like we had seen in
Spain, and weren't looking at large buildings. That the Jews could
build such large synagogues says something about their acceptance by the
Dutch.

We walked back to Waterlooplein and had lunch in the Waterloo Cafe.
I had a roast beef brooje (sandwich) and Mark had a croquette with
fries. This was definitely not a tourist place--no one spoke English
and our pronunciation of Dutch was so poor we ended up having to point
to menu items.

After lunch we walked past Moses en Aaronkerk, which in order to
disorient people is nowhere near Moses en Aaronstraat. It's also no
longer a kirk, or church, but a youth center, and was (as is usual when
we're around) under renovation behind scaffolding and fencing.

Waterlooplein is once again a flea market, though it has lost its
Jewish character.

The Jewish Historical Museum is housed in a restored complex of
four Ashkenazi synagogues. It is different from other Jewish museums I
have seen in that the text on the displays seems written more for non-
Jews than for Jews. There is, not surprisingly, a heavy emphasis on the
Holocaust, but also a large section on Jewish ceremonies and holidays,
and another on Jewish life in Amsterdam in the past and now. This
included a picture of a Shalhomo seder; Shalhomo is an organization for
gay Jews and it is, I suppose, representative of Amsterdam's (and the
Netherlands') attitude that such a group is included as
straightforwardly (if I may use the word) as it is.

We joined Jo and Dale in the snack bar of the museum, as we had run
into them there. They were doing an abbreviated tour, and in reverse
direction. So after a rest they went off towards the Rembrandt House
and we went off towards the Portuguese Synagogue.

The gates outside the Jewish Museum, which are the original gates
around the synagogues, have an emblem of a *five*-pointed star with a
harp in the center--the symbols of the High German Jewish community.
The pamphlet describes them as Solomon's Seals and David's Harps.

Just before the Portuguese Synagogue across Mr. Visserplein is "The
Docker," a statue by Mari Andriesen commemorating the February 25, 1941,

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strike by unarmed dockworkers and others to protest the Nazi oppression
of the Jews.

When the Portuguese Synagogue was completed in 1675, it was the
largest synagogue in the world. It has the same tall, boxy shape as the
Fifth Synagogue of the High German Community we saw earlier--both were
modeled on the Temple of Solomon and look very unlike the low buildings
of today. On the other hand, to light an area as large as was needed
without electricity required tall windows by day and large candelabra by
night, so the height was also practical.

A combination of circumstances allowed the Portuguese Synagogue and
its contents to survive intact. The building survived because the Dutch
had declared it a national monument, though the Nazis did use it as a
warehouse. The contents were packed up by the Nazis for display in
their "Museum of a Dead Race." But instead they were recovered after
the war and are once again in use.

In contrast to the Ashkenazi synagogue gates, the gates of the
Portuguese Synagogue are decorated with a pelican.

After crossing the Hortusburg Bridge we walked through what had
been a Jewish suburb. In it was the Natura Artis Magistra, one of the
oldest zoos in the world. And in front of the entrance was a protest
against zoos, with a protester locked in a cage to get people to put
themselves in the animals' place. I am of mixed feelings on this issue,
I suppose. I agree that caging animals up for people to stare at is
probably a bad thing, but the animals in the zoos can't just be let
loose--they haven't the ability to survive in the wild any more. And
for many species, zoos seem their only hope of survival these days.

The last stop on the tour was the Hollandsche Schouwburg Theatre.
Before 1940 this was a Jewish theater, but that of course ended and from
1942 the Nazis used it as a transit center from which Jews were
transported. After the war the theater auditorium was demolished and a
garden with an obelisk "In memory of those who were carried off" and an
eternal flame are all that is left behind the facade.

We arrived here at 3:55 PM, just making it in before they lock the
gates at 4. So the two-and-a-half-hour walking tour is really closer to
six hours if you actually stop and look at things, go into museums, eat
lunch, etc. (This does not include shopping--so far all our shopping
has been done in museum shops and consists of three books and twenty
postcards.)

We then returned to Waterlooplein via Weesperstraat, going past a
monument dedicated in 1947 "to the protectors of Dutch Jewry in the
years of occupation." So the tour was actually a bit more than six
hours. By now the wind had picked up and it was colder. In addition,
all three sets of batteries we had with us decided to die at once--
luckily at the end of our picture-taking day rather than the beginning

Benelux Travel Log 1990 Page 12

(though of course then it would have been relatively easy to buy more).
We did take a few more shots with my camera (an Instamatic has few
virtues, but its non-dependence on batteries is one of them).

We wandered around a bit, looking for someplace to sit and write,
but couldn't find any. We decided to eat dinner and walked down
Damstraat, settling on the Sukasari, an Indonesian restaurant. I had
nasi gurih, rice steamed with coconut milk and chicken in a soy sauce;
Mark had a different chicken dish. Good stuff and reasonably priced--
about $21 (including coffee) for the two of us.

After dinner we decided to walk through the infamous red light
district. From the map we had, we decided to walk up Oude Zjids
Voorburg Wal. As usual, we managed to shoot ourselves in the foot.
First, it was still only 7 PM. Second, this was not the primary street
(as we discovered later). The result was that I began to think that the
heyday of Amsterdam decadence had passed. Oh, we did see a few windows
with red lights and women sitting in them, and a small number of sex
shops, but it all seemed much toned. As we later discovered, this was
not quite accurate.

When we got to the end of the street we decided to return to the
hotel. While it wasn't very late, we had been on the go all day and
even with the coffee I was fading fast. So we took the tram back and
wrote in our logs for a while. Dale dropped by about 10 PM; they had
also walked through the red light district but his description sounded
almost totally different from what we had seen. We ended up making
tentative plans to go back the next night, perhaps later in the evening.

August 21, 1990: Today's schedule included the Bible Museum, the
Amsterdam Historical Museum, and the Royal Palace. Luckily the opening
times were in sync: the Bible Museum (which was the closest) opened at
10 AM, the Historical Museum at 11 AM, and the Royal Palace at 12:30 PM.

The Bible Museum (for which we used our Museumkaarts) was mostly in
Dutch though there was some English throughout. The slide show (in
English) and the exhibits put much more emphasis on the Old Testament
than on the New; in most museums, etc., covering both the emphasis is on
the New. One of the major exhibits was a series of models of Solomon's
Temple, including a lucite impression by Mulder which is probably more
accurate proportionally than the others, though obviously the Temple of
Solomon was not made of lucite rods. This model also lit up (once we
found the cord to plug it in) with rays of light emanating from the Holy
of Holies which was itself in darkness. And if you tried to look in
through the front at the light source, a lens prevented you. The
caption said this was because one could not look directly into the eye
of God.

We also watched some of a "Son et Lumiere" about the Temple, but
because it was in Dutch, we gave up part way through. One item of
interest was that several of the models show figures of angels and such.