Dutch Housing and Full Frontal Nudity

Dutch Housing and Full Frontal Nudity

My first apartment in Amsterdam was brand new. It got worse from there.

When I first moved to Amsterdam, I’d had the idea that the entire city was a run-down, dystopian Sodom & Gomorrah. But my first place was 90s nieuwbouw - functional Dutch luxury I’d never experienced before. The building was on the east side of town, by the Entrepotdok & the Scheepvaart Museum. It was not what I’d call a charming neighborhood, but we had a view over the Oostenburgersgracht. It was there that we watched Nelson Mandela being elected president of South Africa.

Apparently, the place had been bought by a Dutch couple. They’d wanted to move in when they got married. But something went wrong at the last minute, and they needed renters, quick. That’s where we came in. For us it was great – the whole place was fully furnished. Everything was brand new. And – when we went to open the kitchen cabinets – we noticed that the dinner plates were still in their wrapping paper saying ‘Congratulations to the happy couple!’ At one point, we had to deliver the rent to the former bride-to-be. She was a tall, blond doctor. Apparently he was a doctor, too. Cautiously, we asked what had happened. She told us he’d had a ‘fear of commitment’ and backed out of the whole relationship. And then we got a long & spirited rant, introducing us to the concept that – as women have become liberated - Dutch men have become ‘wet rag’ watjes.

Dutch relationships. Sometimes they giveth. Sometimes they taketh away. A few years later, I was living in a place my roommate had found. We were subletting from a woman who’d moved in with her boyfriend. It was a nice place, fully furnished, and it was all going well… until one night there she was, crying in our living room. ‘We broke up,’ she explained. ‘He threw me out!’ We tried to console her ‘Aww… there, there.’ And around midnight, still sniffling, she looked up at us and said ‘So – where are you guys going to stay tonight?’

The second place we lived, there was even a bigger group of us. This was right behind the Victoriaplein in the Rivierenbuurt district. We’d heard Rivierenbuurt was a pretty quiet neighborhood, and this spot was perhaps the quietest. The 5 of us had the whole house to ourselves. The south-facing balconies looked out to the lush, green courtyard, and as soon as we got in there we flung open the doors and cranked up The Eurythmics It was perhaps 15 seconds before the angry banging began. It was not the last time the neighbors would protest at us Loud Americans.

Our second place was famous. Anne Frank lived on our street. The Merwedeplein was where the Frank family lived before they went into hiding. As a testament to her memory, there was an old synagogue around the corner, which was of course abandoned. At first, we thought of it as a chilling reminder what happened to the Jewish population of Amsterdam. But after awhile, we realized that there are still plenty of Jews in Rivierenbuurt. It’s just that – like most religions in Amsterdam – they’d rather be dead than seen in a church. I believe the former synagogue is now an auction house. Literally, there are money lenders in the temple.

For a few days, I lived right in Amsterdam center - on the Nieuwendijk, right by the Singel. It was a 17^th century building, straight from the Golden Age. And it hadn’t been properly fixed up since then. Trying to feel at home in that tiny space was like trying to atone for some previous sins. Specifically, the sins of being too loud the year before. That apartment was the noisiest place I’ve ever experienced. I had no problem hearing everyone in the building having sex. At 7am, I’d be awakened by some rebuilding going on next door. At one point, there was someone doing some demolition directly outside my bedroom window. At 7.03, with my wits barely gathered, I flung open the window, looked at my watch and said ‘HEY NEIGHBOR! WHATCHA HAMMERIN?’

But the worst was Queens Day. I was at the epicenter of Ground Zero of the noisequake – right in between a stack of speakers blaring house beats and a concert stage they’d set up for Dutch schlager music. For anyone who’s ever considered remixing the awful, saccharine Dutch smartlappen with poorly syncopated techno beats, I don’t recommend it. I moved out shortly after, (well on my way to becoming a Dutch watje.)

Next came my experience ‘outside the ring.’ If you’ve ever been on the highway, looked out at the charmless 70s highrise tower blocks and wondered ‘who lives there…’ that was me. This time my roommate & I were subletting from a pair of students, who only let us move in if we promised not to blow their cover. They were getting study money to pay their rent, but they were actually off living on Ibiza. If anyone would ever come to the door looking for them – even their parents – we were supposed to say ‘You just missed them! They’ll be back tomorrow…’ It was in that apartment that they had 1 room in bad shape. And there was a DIY center not far away. I actually took it upon myself to renovate their laundry room into an extra bedroom. When you voluntarily renovate a rental you may get kicked out of any day - that’s how you know you’re ready to settle down.

Unfortunately, in 1997 I came across the nastiest apartment in Amsterdam. It was in the east on a street called Vrolickstraat, or ‘Happy Street.’ If anyone had ever been happy there, it was a long time ago. The place was in a row of 19^th century working class houses, some of which were being gutted & fixed up. Not ours. The front door opened, and the stairs smelled like a wet cave. The crooked staircase led us up to a completely empty apartment – except for the balcony, which was completely full. Full of pigeon shit. Years of pigeon shit. Pigeon shit atop stacks and stacks of pigeon shit. Our jaws dropped. There was even a net to keep the pigeons out, but someone had clearly ripped a hole in it. Obviously, that someone was the pierced and unwashed woman showing us the place, who explained ‘pigeons need a place to live too.’ And she casually suggested ‘You can clean it if you want.’  

Somehow, my roommate convinced me to take the place with the rationale ‘we just won’t go out there.’ And ‘anyway, the floors are beautiful.’ And he was right. The solid oak planks were lovely. And they were gone. When we moved in they were just …gone. That was my introduction to the Dutch version of unfurnished. There was just particle board laid over the crossbeams. ‘Oh yeah, didn’t we tell you? We took the floors with us.’ No, they didn’t tell us. But we figured it out.

From the east side, I moved to the northwest in the charming neighborhood called Bos en Lommer. Here we found ourselves renting from a circus duo. It was a nice, big place.. but there was a catch. The circus wasn’t doing so well, so they’d moved into the storage space upstairs to live rent-free. The deal was we had the place to ourselves – unless they needed to use the toilet. Or unless they needed to use the kitchen. Or unless they needed to rehearse their act in the living room. To be fair, they were on the road a lot, so it was a pretty good deal for us. And when they’d rehearse, it was amazing. He was a huge dude with a Hans Klok hairdo, and she was a tiny east-european girl with a lot of makeup. We’d wake up hung over on Saturday mornings, and he’d be throwing her all over the place. We loved it.

Vincent and Marli started getting paid more, so they moved back in and kicked us out. That was around the time I fell in love with a Dutch woman – who owned her place. I moved in almost immediately. The apartment was also in Bos en Lommer, on the 3^rd floor, above a tram stop. Our downstairs neighbors were from Aruba, from a family that seemed to keep growing. The father was a brown, pudgy man with wild hair and a penchant for Latin music. Music with a lot of bass. He wasn’t the only one in the family with this condition. One day their family had grown into the storage space above us with a teenage boy who liked deep house – with a lot of bass. We’d just had our first child, and our bedroom was being bombarded constantly from above and from below. We’d be polite and knock on the door below. He’d always accommodate by turning the music down – not realizing that the bass was still as prominent as ever. This process repeated itself constantly.

One Saturday afternoon, we’d finally gotten our 6 month-old to lie down for a nap, when the bass kicked off again from below. Our daughter woke up right away. This time we thought we’d do something different. We’d all go downstairs to knock on the door. We weren’t sure what the neighbor was doing with the music so loud on a Saturday afternoon, but we soon found out. When he whipped open the door and said ‘YES?’ …he was stark naked. With a condom in his hand. Apparently, he hadn’t expected to see me AND my wife. And he certainly didn’t expect a 6 month-old girl. ‘I’ll turn it down,’ he said. NO. My wife insisted: ‘Leave it. Leave it JUST like it is, and come with me.’ The naked neighbor trudged upstairs with us, and we ushered him into our bedroom. It was at that moment that he realized. Months’ worth of sympathy and shame flooded his eyes, as he said ‘Nou – da’s wel horig.’ Yes, it’s pretty loud. He looked at us with a quizzical expression that seemed to say ‘How did you survive?’ We looked back at him, equally quizzically – saying ‘I don’t know.’

Soon after that, we were invited to leave our apartment by the landlord who wanted to renovate the building. And he wanted to pay us to go. So we went. We’d found the house of our dreams, and now all we had to do was our own renovation. As it turns out, it’s cheaper to buy a place and fix it up yourself than to let a developer do it for you. Especially when you hire those eastern Europeans. I remember one morning when the Russians needed to go out for some supplies. They announced that they needed to drive over to the DIY store, and they’d be right back. They were not right back. After a few hours, they showed up, battered and traumatized. There had been a car accident. The accident involved a tram. In his heavy Russian accent, our man explained exactly what had happened: ‘The tram – it came out of nowhere!’

Despite the rails in the middle of the street – normally a pretty clear indicator of where the tram might be coming from  - the Russians had been foiled! The question on my mind was: at what point had they started drinking? Perhaps they’d started drinking after the accident to calm their nerves. Or perhaps they’d been drinking before that. Either way, the smell of vodka was wafting off of them with every failed attempt to explain. Soon, they’d conjured up an image of the tram having willed itself off its rails in a long-contemplated act of liberating spontaneity. Needless to say, no work got done that day. But I couldn’t help sympathizing with the Russians. After having dealt with magically gift-wrapped dish sets, disappearing floorboards and living room circus acts – who’s to say that there are no Flying Trams in Amsterdam?