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 17th 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 19th
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 3rd 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?
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