Europe on 5-10 Nervous Breakdowns a Day (30)
DAY 29 – FRIDAY, MAY 24, 1974 – A LOST CHILD—TWICE!
I thought they said our train to Amsterdam left at 8:06, so we got up at 7:00, straightened up things, ate some yogurt (which we had decided to try—and discovered we liked it!), and headed for the station.
We went to the nearby underground station and caught the next tram. After we got off, we just had a few blocks to walk—which wasn’t bad since we had left some of our luggage at the station.
Turned out the train didn’t leave until 8:37, so we had extra time. I found a vending machine dispensing hot chocolate. That finished our breakfast—except for apples and cheese we would eat on the train.
When we don’t have reservations for a train, we usually can’t sit together. The first on the train sit in the first unoccupied compartments they come to. Folks in the next wave sit in the compartments with the fewest occupants. By the time we get on, there is never a compartment with room for five people. So, on the train to Amsterdam, Jo, Debbie, and Cindy started out in one compartment while Angie and I were in another.
Shortly after the train left the station, I shaved. I’m getting pretty good at shaving in tiny shaky rooms using cold water and a pint-sized basin. It is not much harder than it would be on a bucking bronco. After that, I read my Bible and worked on our upcoming travels in the British Isles.
We were scheduled to arrive in Amsterdam a little after 11:30. The letter I had received from Amsterdam indicated that (1) we would be an imposition on the brethren there at this particular time and (2) it would cost a fortune to spend the night there. So I had booked us on an overnight ferry to England. Which meant we wouldn’t have much time in Amsterdam.
Some got off the train so we were finally able to be in the same compartment. We ate our apples and cheese and watched the Dutch countryside go by. A wide canal ran alongside the tracks, then from time to time a smaller canal ran from the big canal across the fields. Some of these secondary canals were big enough for small boats to do down. Along the sides of the big canal were hundreds of houseboats. (They have to pay a fee to use the canal for this purpose.)
We began to see windmills and passed huge fields of tulips (only a few were in bloom—still too early?).
It was almost noon when we arrived in Amsterdam. I exchanged some money and we put most of our luggage in storage. Then I got information on how to catch the ferry. I liked the arrangement in their information/reservation area. At each counter was a little device that dispensed numbered tickets. Above each counter was a device with changing numbers. When your number came up, you stepped to the counter. (What a marvelous idea! I wish they had this all over Europe!) The train we had to catch did not leave until 9:10, so that gave us a little over eight hours in Amsterdam.
I had already figured out that the only way we would see anything in Amsterdam would be to take a guided tour. We had stayed away from costly conducted tours, but we would not have a hotel bill that evening, so could afford it this once.
We could have taken a canal tour, which is less expensive than a bus tour. In front of the train station was a canal with tour boats waiting. There are one hundred canals in Amsterdam (all man-made) and one river. They date back to the 17th century when Amsterdam was the center of European commerce; they were built to provide fast inexpensive transport. But a canal tour doesn’t make any stops and I wanted to go to the museum with Rembrandt’s paintings (the Rijksmuseum), so it had to be a bus tour.
We bought some sandwiches for lunch at the station and started walking, looking for a bus tour. We found one that left at 2:30. We had a little time so we walked a bit more, taking in downtown Amsterdam. The weather was off and on: showers and sunshine. The girls found a souvenir place (surprise!). Here and there we saw people in native costume (a few even wearing wooden shoes).
The tour was interesting. We saw the queen’s palace and the home where Rembrandt lived. At the diamond-cutters, a man explained in different languages how diamonds are cut. At the end of that visit, we were shown a variety of diamond rings. Jo didn’t care for most of them, but finally decided she wouldn’t mind having a simple little wedding band that only cost $700.00 U.S.
Our guide told us there are a thousand houseboats in Amsterdam, largely because of the housing shortage. The strangest one we saw was covered with vegetation. The guide said a U.S. hippie owned it. Of interest to me were the large hooks for hoists near the top of the front of each building. These are for getting furniture in and out of buildings (the stairways are too narrow for this purpose). Can you imagine hoisting a grand piano up four floors, outside the building?!
We passed a little oddity: a massive hotel covering about half of a U.S. city block and many stories high. In the middle of the ground floor is a tiny shop (dated 1600 something) with a narrow three-story home above it (the width of a single room). The story behind this: The man who wanted to build the hotel bought up all the houses and shops in the area, but this shopkeeper refused to sell. So they built the hotel around him.
When we reached the Rijksmuseum, we only had fifty minutes to tour it. Our family tour started by everyone going to the toilet (free!). We then glanced at a few paintings as we headed to the Rembrandt section.
My initial surprise regarding his paintings was that most of them are SO BIG (“The Night Watch” is almost 12 by 14 feet).
There was the familiar painting found on Dutch cigar boxes: “Syndics of the Draper’s Guild.”
And of course “The Night Watch” and many others. I love his light/dark contrast! In one corner was a collection of his sketches showing his preliminary work on the subjects. After a quick look at that, we hurried on so I could buy a few slides, the girls could buy some postcards, and we could go to the free toilet again before it was time for the bus to leave.
But when we got to the next room, we realized Angie was not with us! For ten minutes or so (it seemed much, much longer), we could not find her. I felt certain we would locate her, but I knew she had to be frightened and upset. Turns out she had stayed at the sketches. When she missed us, she retraced her steps–away from us. When we finally found her, it was obvious she had been crying. A scary time for everyone.
We hurriedly bought some slides and postcards and checked out the toilet again. By my watch, we reached the tour bus exactly on time. By their watch, we were a minute late and the last ones to board.
We got back to where we started shortly after 5:00. On our previous walk, I had located a self-service food place the book mentioned. It has a wall of little glass doors on the outside wall (i.e. next to the sidewalk). In the compartments are sandwiches, potato salad, sausages and other hot items. There is also a dispenser for hot and cold drinks and veggie soup. Each item costs 50 cents (20 cents U.S.). I gave each member of the family $2.50 ($1.00 U.S.) to get whatever they wanted. We tried almost everything. The drawback was that we had to eat standing up on the sidewalk and it was cold. (You can go inside, but the food costs more in there.)
Afterward, on the outside of a nearby shop we found an automated dispenser of soft ice cream for 25 cents (10 cents U.S.). Best ice cream bargain in Europe.
By this time, we were all very tired. We headed back to the train station to find a place to sit down. As far as we could find, there are no seats or waiting room. (The only “waiting room” is a restaurant. Apparently one is supposed to pay to eat and drink while waiting.) Near the baggage counter, there was a platform not being used and we claimed a spot on that—next to two Dutch tramps. They were eating small fried eels. They pinched off their heads and threw the heads on the floor. They peeled them and threw the peeling on the floor. They ate the meat off the skeletons and then threw the skeletons on the floor. They offered me one, but I said, “No, thank you.”
The girls roamed the station, bought some postcards, and then told me they wanted to look around some more. Jo stayed with our luggage while the girls and I again checked out downtown Amsterdam. We returned in about an hour. We were dying of thirst so we all went to the W.C. (10 cents U.S.) and drank out of the tap after we washed our hands (yes, you can drink the water in Holland).
We got the rest of our luggage out of storage and found the platform where we would catch the train to Hoek, where we would board the ferry. When the train arrived, we were among the first ones on and had a compartment to ourselves. I was exhausted and my hip joints felt like they were on fire—a result of playing ping-pong I guess, followed by all the walking. This was our last use of our Eurail passes, which expired at midnight. From here on, we would use our Britrail passes.
We left Amsterdam at 9:10 and arrived in Hoek at 10:45. Apparently everyone on the train was going to the ferry. We got off the train, went through a plainly-marked door, lined up for a passport check, walked through another door, and there was the “ferry”—really a massive ship the size of a small ocean liner. (The pic below is a commercial shot of one of English Channel ferries.)
We went up the 2nd class ramp, but then didn’t know where to go. I heard a man tell someone where the cabins were and I told him we just had seats (the guy in Vienna said he made us reservations for seats). He directed me to a woman who told me our family was not on her list for seats (these are seats similar to airplane seats that lean back for sleeping). She told us to go to the purser. The purser said that all we had were tickets for the crossing and that we needed to go up one deck to the “sitting rooms.” Some were taking their luggage downstairs but we weren’t sure what to do so we took ours with us to the sitting room—which turned out okay since we had to open our suitcases in the night to put on more clothes to try to keep from freezing.
The sitting room was already full of people, most of them sprawled out on the seats without arms. Turns out you can board the ship at 9:00 and the space in the sitting rooms is “first-come-first-served.” We found a few seats with arms and sat down. The ferry has a cafeteria, a bar, a shop, a deck, etc.—all open until 1:00 a.m. They even had free WCs with paper cups for drinking! Many folks lived it up for the next two hours, but all we wanted to do was get comfortable and maybe get some sleep.
There was carpet on the floor and it was not long until Angie lay down on the floor near our seats. Soon Debbie followed, then me, then Cindy. Turns out this was not uncommon since the back-packing young people who hadn’t grabbed a seat to sleep on pulled out their sleeping bags and laid down. Eventually Jo joined us.
It was one of the most miserable nights of my life. Either they turned off the heat or else my metabolism plunged. At any rate, we were very, very cold. I got out my other coat from the suitcase but that didn’t help much. Then they left on all the lights for most of the night and some lights all night. Then there were two loud-mouths near us: an English young man with an American kid as an audience. They were filthy-mouthed as well as loud. When they started telling dirty jokes, I raised up and said, “Hey, podnah, I’ve got young girls back here.” All my fuzzy, sleepy brain could come up with on the spur of the moment. The guy said, “Sorry” and went back to filthy talking.
In the night, Jo poked me and said, “Angie’s not here!”
We had lost her. Again!
Jo found her two groups of people away. She was huddled up with another family that was also sleeping on the floor.
