The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

Having arrived in Edinburgh on Sunday night, Monday was time for family things. This primarily meant seeing my grandparents – I have  not done so for over a year, and, to use a cliché, they are not getting any younger.

My mother had remarked that my grandma in particular is getting less and less aware of what is going on around her, and is in particular not very able to deal with large groups of people. I actually found her fairly lucid and capable of conversation, but it is clear that she is indeed getting older. It will happen to us all.

After seeing them both off at the bus station on Monday evening, myself, Astrid, Catriona and her boyfriend Dani went for a wander around Edinburgh, which is of course extremely busy with the festival right now. We stopped at a couple of pubs, got a bit wet in the rain, and saw some Nepalese drumming which sounded a lot like hard techno. All the while, myself and Catriona were acting like a pair of tour guides explaining the sights and sounds of the capital.

Today, with it still raining, myself and Astrid took the train through to Glasgow. Tonight we will stay with my old friend Chris, who has been busy for the last year learning to build guitars. He showed us his latest creation, which I was very impressed with, before we all headed off for a wander round the West End. The plan was to see the Kelvingrove museum, which I have not seen since it has reopened, but a general strike by council staff put paid to that. There is really not so much to do in Glasgow when it is raining and everything is shut, unfortunately.

Later, we went round to Danny’s for dinner, before heading back for another early night. Tomorrow we will start walking the West Highland Way, for which we will need all our energy.

Myself and Astrid set of on holiday today – a week and a half in Scotland. This will be as always a strange experience for me, since I am going “on holiday” to what is actually my native country. It will likely be even stranger for Astrid, since she has never been there before, and will suddenly be faced with a whole country full of people who talk more or less like I do and perhaps have some of the same strange habits. We shall see.

There was an impressive, brooding sky over Edinburgh as we landed this evening, a suitably dramatic entry to the land of mists and glens. My parents were good enough to pick us up from the airport, and after a hearty meal of my mother’s home cooking, it was time to hit the hay for an early night.

Fresh from our sailing trip earlier in the week, I have been once again in a boat today. I had been so impressed by our little boat trip on the canals a few weeks ago, that I had set about organising a similar trip with some of the DAI people. This didn’t work out because of weather and other factors, but today we finally managed to get it together for a canal voyage.

The weather was great, and in contrast to the evening tranquillity of the last time, we were now floating along in blazing sunshine like royalty. Some beer, chips, and some tabbouleh supplied by Julien and Rachel added to the atmosphere of sumptuous decadence.

It is my birthday today, and as a present Astrid had promised to take me sailing. Now, I have never been on a sail boat before in my life (rowing on a boating pond is about as far as I have come), but I was very excited about getting to grips with the sails, splicing the mainbrace, or whatever it is that you do in this situation.

The idea was actually to have two days of sailing starting yesterday, but everything went wrong. Firstly, I had had very little sleep and was super stressed about work and the annoying situation about our my old flat, which resulted in a blazing argument between us about nothing much in particular. Secondly, trains and buses kept being missed so that it was late afternoon before we arrived in Loosdrecht, our destination. Thirdly, it was in any case too windy to hire a boat – apparently the insurance wouldn’t cover such a situation. So it was then that we pitched my shittly little tent and made an early night of it.

Today started much better, with weather calm enough to set out on the water. I was of course quite nervous at first and sat huddled in the bottom of the boat as Astrid took control. Slowly though I got a bit more used to the near 45° angles which the thing would lean at when a gust of wind got up.

When it came to be lunchtime, I took great pleasure in cooking up a meal (rice with stir-fried courgette and mushrooms) on board our little boat. It will take a lot of time for this particular novelty to wear off, I hope.

After this, I felt brave enough to take the helm. As it turned out, it was not nearly so difficult as I had thought to control the boat, and soon we were flying over the waves a great speed. I came to realise why it is that people spend so much time and especially money on this sort of thing; it really is an amazing feeling to be in control of this little craft which is moving totally from the force of the wind.

Things then became a bit hairy once again as I attempted to manoeuvre the thing using the engine through the narrow channel which connected the lake where we were sailing with a larger lake; I couldn’t steer the thing for toffee and Astrid lost control of the mast while lowering it, sending it flying down to miss my head by a matter of centimetres.

With this, we both got quite a shock: it occurred to me later that I had in fact come within a hands-breadth of death – had the mast hit me on the head, it would have surely killed me instantly. But, as I have thought many times before, it just is not my time yet. I still have too many things to do.

A few months ago, I registered myself with a recruitment agency here in Amsterdam; while art is what I want to be doing with my time of course, it is unlikely that I will make much money from it any time soon. It is necessary then to find something that I can do on the side in order to keep a roof over my head.

The best solution for this seemed to be a job in ICT, because I have experience in this and so can earn a decent amount of money. In this way, I can hopefully work only a few days a week and so still have time and money for artistic projects.

I was contacted last week by the same recruitment agency about a possible position with a company in Hilversum – not ideal, since this is at least half and hour by train from Amsterdam, but still doable. The problem was that they wanted someone for at least four days a week, which is really much more time that I am willing to give.

All the same, I went along for an interview last Thursday, for the experience if nothing else. It turned out that they were quite impressed with me (surprising, since I was so nervous), and wanted me to come back today for a follow-up interview.

I had spent the whole weekend thinking this matter over, since it presented quite a dilemma. This was a pretty good job, earning good money, and there for the taking. However, doing so would make it very difficult to further my artistic career. It is the sort of crossroads that a lot of art school graduates will likely find themselves at, and of course it is quite tempting to take the easy option. However, having considered the whole thing, I decided that I really had to be firm in my commitment to what I have spent so much time studying and working hard at. If they could give me work for at most three days a week, then that would be OK – this would hopefully deliver up enough cash to subsidise my other activities. Otherwise, we were faced with a “deal breaker”.

As I sat in the train this morning, I could not help thinking “why am I doing this?”, but once again I told myself that the experience of performing in such an interview (in my second language, of course) was worth it.

The interview went very well, and it became clear that they were quite keen to offer me a position. At this moment, I took a deep breath and tried my best to calmly explain my position. They listened very politely, and we discussed a few possible options (four days one week, three the next), but it was apparent that we would not be able to reach agreement. For this reason, there was not much point in continuing discussions.

They were very friendly about the whole thing, and said that if I changed my mind to give them a call straight away, which was of course very nice to hear. All the same, as I walked out of their office and back towards the station, I felt quite proud of myself; it was not an easy decision to walk away from such an offer, but I am certain that it was the right thing to do.

I still need to get money from somewhere, unfortunately.

In about a week and a half, myself and Astrid will go on holiday to Scotland – Astrid’s first time in my native country. While we are there, we intend to walk the West Highland Way, a route through the western Highlands of 152km (94 miles) from Milngavie to Fort William. As a sort of try-out (both in terms of seeing what we need to bring and in dealing with each other!) we decided to go camping for a night and walking for a day near Amsterdam. Not exactly the same sort of countryside (nae sheep, nae hills, nae midgies), but very nice nonetheless.

After wasting quite some time seeking the local VVV (Vereniging voor Vreemdelingenverkeer – this mouthful is what we would call the “Tourist Information Office” but translates literally as “Association for the Movement of Foreigners”) in order to buy a map, we finally arrived at our camping site in time to put up my wee tent before it got dark. Next to all the caravans with satellite dishes and so on, it looked quite pathetic. I was with my dad when he bought it back in about 1986, and I think that it’s amazing that it still keeps the rain out at all.

We woke up on Wednesday morning to glorious sunshine, and quickly set about making tea on Astrid’s little gas burner. There is something wonderful about sitting on the grass, eating breakfast, and planning your route for the day – it’s just a pity we were still on a campsite and not really in de natuur.

The decision was taken to walk through the forest in the direction of Baarn, where we could take the train back to Amsterdam in the evening. This proved to be less than straightforward, since the Dutch military has fenced off quite large sections of the countryside here for their own purposes. Not only that, but there is a royal palace in the vicinity, the grounds of which also take up quite a large area of the forest. Still, it was just about possible to pick our way through these obstructions and find a route away from the crowd.

One of the strangest things that we encountered was the Lange Duinen (“long dunes”), a large rolling expanse of sand and scrub which (if it were not for the forest all around it) could almost be the desert. I found it a quite amazing space and would really like to film something here sometime (watch this space).

So, after a days walking, some impromptu cooking on the dunes, an ice-cream from a conveniently-placed petrol station, and tea next to a wee loch (I don’t know if you can call them that outside of Scotland), it was time to fall exhaustedly into the train and head back home. It was certainly quite a shock to pass by the huge concrete office blocks next to Sloterdijk station, and made me look forward even more to our holiday.

Last summer, I spent a week camping in a park in Münster, Germany, as part of the Beautiful City project organised by the artist Maria Pask. During this week. I constructed a three-wheeled taxi-bicycle from a collection of parts and bits of wood salvaged from the nearby university. All very good fun.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Maria asking me if I would be interested in reconstructing the bicycle, this time for money. Of course, I absolutely love doing this kind of thing anyway and would gladly do it for free given the time, and so I naturally agreed.

Today I went to see Maria at her studio in Zaandam to discuss how exactly this would take place. The idea she has is to prepare an exhibition of all the objects made by the Beautiful City participants, but this time “re-made” as an archive. The idea, as I understand it, is to recontextualise the objects into an “acceptable art context”, as something of an ironic comment on the deification of the art object; this is indeed quite a strange phenomenon, and one which can reach quite bizarre proportions as the definition of what art is becomes ever more broad. There remains a need seemingly to have a “something” which is the “work”, however superfluous that thing might be for the message that the artist is attempting to communicate.

In any case, it was nice to see Maria again and to spend an afternoon drinking endless cups of tea, chatting, and meeting the other inhabitants of her building; in one space, a whole room had been filled with tents (with the pegs sunken into holes drilled into the concrete floor), while in another a Welshman with long hair was busy working on paintings of small plastic toy animals. It is at times like these that I realise I am in the right business!

Last week saw a lot of activity with moving house, and of course spending quite some time cleaning up the old one ready to hand it back to our now-ex landlord, Benoît. We had paid quite a large deposit on the old flat (two months’ rent), and we were of course keen to do our best to ensure that we would get all of it back.

I had had a sinking feeling for some time that this would not be so easy. I can’t really put my finger on what it is, but there is something about Benoît which gives me the creeps. It turns out that I am not the only one; Matthias has said pretty much the same thing.

What was a bit unfortunate was that the others were all away when I came round today to hand back the keys: Matthias and Romy have returned to Germany, and Julien is on holiday in France. I didn’t much like the idea of having to deal with Benoît on my own, and it turned out that this was with good reason.

As soon as I was in the door and had given the keys back (and so had no cards left to play) he started acting like a total arsehole. He began a long, somewhat theatrical tirade about how the flat was not clean at all and that he was very disappointed about this fact. This is simply not true; everyone has their own definition of “clean” of course, but the place was easily in the same state as when we moved in. Not only that, but we had to pay €75 then to get it clean; now he expected it just as clean for nothing. He really is such a dick. Needless to say, if it had not been about cleaning then he would have found something else to complain about.

After this performance had gone on for about 15 minutes, during which time I felt myself get angrier and angrier, he proposed giving us back 3/4 of the deposit for now. Of course I said that this was totally unacceptable; we had fulfilled all our obligations and expected 100% of our money back, less any outstanding bills of course. After some further intense argument, I agreed to accept €1700 (we’re owed €2000) now and discuss the rest when he had worked out the final energy bills. This is not an ideal solution, and if he causes further trouble I will make it my business to make trouble for him; I have already been to the huurcommissie (rental commission) to enquire about our rights in this matter, and the law is totally on our side.

So all in all, a shitty way to spend an afternoon. I really really hate angry arguments with people, and the worse here was that I saw it coming but could do nothing much about it until it arrived. If one thing is certain, it is that this only confirms my belief that it is pretty much always the people in this life who have plenty money already who will act the most shamelessly in pursuit of even more. Clearly trying to swindle a bunch of young people with very little money to spare does not trouble his conscience at all.

I woke up quite late this afternoon after a late night yesterday, still feeling a little hungover when Astrid rang to ask if I felt like cycling to the IJsselmeer for a swim. It didn’t really appeal immediately in the state I was then in, but I figured that it would be worth the effort.

So, an hour and a half cycling later, and we were on the shores of the IJmeer (as it is called at that bit) just past Durgerdam. Unfortunately, it seemed like half of Amsterdam had had the same idea; as I have come to realise only too well, the idea of a bit of peace and quiet in the Dutch countryside is more or less impossible.

All the same, we were able to find a spot that was not to crowded and where a little home-made jetty had been constructed for getting into the water. Quite surprisingly, it was not at all cold; perhaps because it is not so deep here, and in any case it is quite far inland from the sea. This was once the sea (the Zuiderzee, to be precise), but has now long since been shut off from the ocean waves. This also means that it is fresh water, which avoids getting all sticky and salty as happens in the sea.

It was very comforting indeed to realise that (large crowds of people aside) it is possible to get to somewhere like this by bike from the centre of Amsterdam. It makes the city seem just a little less claustrophobic.

Just as we were sitting eating some fries outside a café in Durgerdam, Matthias rang me to ask if I wanted to go on a boat tour of Amsterdam later that evening. It seemed like a nice way to round off the weekend, and indeed their time in Holland (tomorrow they return to Germany) and so of course I said yes.

We assembled at 10pm just next to the Holland Casino near the Liedseplein. It turned out that this guy had used his life savings to invest in a small but very well-equipped boat, with which he is giving tours of the city’s canals. I have been on one of the big tour boats before, but this was so much nicer, and also cheaper. You see a totally different perspective of the city, and sipping wine and eating chocolates while leasurely drifting under the bridges makes it perhaps possible to imagine what life is like for the super-rich swine of which there are plenty in Amsterdam. Oh, and his boat is electric, so it is extremely quiet and does not pollute the air. What luxury!

I met up with Laura this afternoon at the Blue Tea House in the Vondelpark, just in time to get under the sticky-outy roof bit before it started to rain (complete with thunder). Little Sara was there as well, peacefully sleeping through everything.

It was then a nice surprise when we were joined by a former co-student of Laura’s, Eduardo. We had stayed with him and his girlfriend a few years ago in Barcelona, and now he is over here with a bunch of blokes for his stag weekend. I didn’t actually know they had those in Spain, but well, yes, they do.

Without thinking anything of it, the boys soon had a bunch of beers that they had brought themselves cracked open, which conveniently avoided the queue at the bar (as well as being much cheaper). I knew that this would cause a problem sooner or later, but when a woman from the bar came to complain I just explained that this was “completely normal in Spain” and that they didn’t know any better. Of course that is total nonsense (probably) but it got us off the hook. The boys had in any case bought three bottles of wine from the bar, so it would have been nice of them to let us away with it. That is not the Dutch way, unfortunately.

Regarding Dutch ways of thinking, I was quite curious about how the recently-imposed smoking ban was being observed. When it came in in Scotland a few years ago, people just seemed to pretty much accept it immediately. Here though people have a strange way of interpreting rules: for example, hash is of course “sort of” legal, even though it is not at all officially. Clear?

Well, of the three bars we ended up in this evening, people were still smoking in two of them. Perhaps this was just coincidence, but perhaps a sign of how things will turn out in the long run. Of course, if and when the owners start getting huge fines things might change quite quickly.