Amsterdam - A little high brow, a little seedy

  Amsterdam, Netherlands
Friday, October 6, 2006

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Once we stepped off the train in Amsterdam we knew that this wasn't the same kind of city we have been visiting so far. This town was a little more seedy with a whole different type of tourist. I had to smile when some Americans got on our train at the airport and started talking in their stoner/frat boy lingo, dropping the f-bomb every third word. One even had dreadlocks and a grateful dead tattoo on his calf. Come on now. Could you be a bigger stereotype in Amsterdam? We knew our quest for this city was to find some fun that didn't involve clubbing, smoking weed or visiting prostitutes. A difficult task indeed.

Our first day was spent trying to get some culture. We went to the Rijksmuseum where they have the largest collection of Dutch masters in the world, including plenty of Rembrandts. It is the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt's birth so there are posters of him all over town. We enjoyed the museum, although Sara seems to enjoy these things more than Julius. Sara is figuring that she will be going to art museums alone as the trip goes on. It is one thing if these places were free but they cost money and we are on a budget! There are plenty of other things to do in a city and other more interesting historical museums to visit. A good piece of advice we got from a well traveled couple was not to do everything together, especially if one person finds the activity boring. :)

Speaking of budget, we realized early that this city costs a fortune! Our dorm bed at the hostel costs 29 euros ($36), beer is 3 euros a glass for the cheap stuff and food is all over 10 euros if you want to sit down. Sometimes fries were all we could budget for.

Tourist Ghetto Restaurant Row

Sara did get a dutch pancake which was pricey but tasty, though the ones made by her friend Nicole's Dutch mother while growing up were better.

After getting some high brow culture at the art museum, we decided to get some low brow culture at the Heineken Experience. This is basically one big Heineken commercial with a little brewing information mixed in. It helped reinforce what we learned on the Bruges brewery tour but also packed in things like virtual reality rides where you find out what it is like to be a Heineken beer bottle going through the bottling plant. It sounds cheesy but it was pretty fun. Better yet, they give three free beers on this tour getting you good and buzzed by the end.

The next day was a self guided walking tour alà Rick Steves, courtesy of our cousin Matt's Rick Steve's City walking guide that he so graciously gave us. We walked the main streets and learned some history of the cities and buildings. We snuck off the tour a bit so see some other parts of the city, namely the red light district. Not much was going on there at 10 am but all the "coffee shops" (places to buy a legal joint) and brothels probably made it a busy place at night. The women were there in the windows, beckoning men in through the window. The women looked a little bored and not very happy to be there. It all seemed kind of depressing in the light of day.

One of many things we noticed on our walk through central Amsterdam was that the whole Calvinist/Dutch Reformed movement didn't keep rolling along like it did with their brethren in the US. During the Reformation, militant Calvinists tore down statues and managed to turn the large Catholic churches into Protestant churches. Catholicism was even declared illegal, though people worshipped in secret. Of course, Catholics can practice openly now and have built a large church near the train station. All the rest of the churches are semi hidden in normal looking buildings that open up to large sanctuaries. Very interesting. Anyway, back to the dutch reformed church. In Amsterdam there are two large dutch reformed churches: the New Church and the Old Church. The New Church has been turned into a museum. Not a religious museum, just a museum. In fact, the exhibit this month was on the history of fashion design. Entrance fee was 8 euros. The Old Church didn't have exhibits but we didn't know what was in there because they charge 9 euros to enter! Say what you want about the Catholics, they don't charge a dime to enter their churches, even in Amsterdam. One mearly asks for 15 minutes of prayer with God. How sweet is that?

By the end of the tour I (Sara) began to wonder if that is all Amsterdam was, a big tourist ghetto. There were more American shops that we had seen in all of Europe and every gift shop seemed to sell tacky plastic "wooden" shoes, clothes with pot leaves on them, and countless other things you don't want to take home and show mom.

Tourist Ghetto Flower Market

 Amsterdam has been a major trading hub since the 1400's so people say that they are very good at adopting culture from all over the world. This is very true. Only 10% of the restaurants seem to serve dutch food. The rest are Indonesian, Argentinian, Turkish, Indian, American etc. One dutch restaurant we went to had an all Egyptian staff. I imagine that one has to leave the city center to see a more "Dutch" city.

Later that day when it started pouring rain (again) we went to the Van Gogh museum for some more high brow culture. A very interesting museum, especially when you track his life along with his paintings and his many bouts with mania and depression.

After stopping by the train station to buy tickets, an activity that took us far longer than we expected with a huge line ahead of us, we marched through the cold, blowing rain to our final tourist site - the Anne Frank Museum. Sara was one of the few Americans who had never read Anne Frank's diaries and Julius didn't know much about her, but we were both looking forward to seeing the house and learning about the Jews hiding here in WWII. But alas! We had read the ticket times wrong and the museum had just closed. Very disappointing. So, we slogged back to the hostel where we found the usual crowds of 18-22 year olds that we had seen around the city.

When we were asking some questions at the reception desk, a young guy ran up to the desk and in very broken English said that they needed a doctor. The staff kept asking who it was for, but he spoke no English beyond that. They followed him outside to a courtyard at a back entrance of the hostel. We were walking by to our elevator and saw a young man, probably in his 20's gasping for air and not looking well at all. He was on the ground and his friends were holding him in a sitting position. One was trying to spray what appeared to be an albuterol inhaler in his mouth. The manager went to make some phone calls after seeing him and the other staff members basically did crowd control to keep all the 18-22 year olds from rubber necking at the scene. It occurred to me (Sara) that no one knew what to do for this guy. As a nurse I couldn't leave him there. I went over tried to assess what was going on. None of his friends spoke any English beyond a few words (I found out later they were on holiday from Hungary). They kept repeating "Asthma". I kept asking if he had done any drugs or anything. All they could tell me was Marijuana, though it could have been something else too. I couldn't learn when his breathing difficulty started, when he collapsed, if they carried him here, or any other information I needed to know. I assessed his pulse which was not strong, though it was difficult to feel because he was very obese. He was not conscious at this point and his color was not good. I hate dealing with medical problems that I never encounter at my job and I hate not having the tools at hand that I need (in this case, oxygen). When I tried to decide what to do next the decision was made for me. As we repositioned him he stopped breathing entirely. I have never done CPR on anyone, even at my job (maternity nursing) so I just kept thinking back to my CPR course which I thankfully renewed in the Spring. I gave the guy two breaths and felt for a pulse which I couldn't find. At that moment, thank God, a girl who must have been walking to the elevator saw me and ran up to us. She asked if I felt a pulse and I said no and that he needed chest compressions. She knew CPR as well. Neither of us felt a pulse so she started chest compressions while I gave mouth to mouth. I am surprised how calm I was but it just didn't seem real. I kept thinking "Once the ambulance shows up everything will be ok" but they were taking forever. The man's mouth was oozing vomit and his nose was oozing snot and I just kept trying to wipe it off while she did chest compressions. She gagged as she watched me and had to look away. I just breathed, spit out the vomit that ran into my mouth, wiped the vomit and snot off my face, wiped the vomit and snot off his face then turn his head to the side before it was time to breath again. When I became a nursing assistant and eventually a nurse I mastered one important skill, the ability to see any body function and not gag or become even slightly nauseous. I hardly noticed it.
The EMT's finally arrived and took over and I went to the room to brush my teeth and wash my face. His friends all thanked me but looked so scared. I felt so terrible for them. When I came down a few minutes later I asked what had happened and one of the staff told me he had died. I couldn't believe it. I don't know why - I watched him die in front of me, but I just assumed for some reason that they would be able to revive him. The manager and all the staffed thanked me for helping and gave me drink tickets for the bar. I took them because at that point I needed a drink. Julius was going to bed by then so I used all the drink tickets myself. I kept thinking "Should I have started CPR earlier? If they had revived him, what if he had been without oxygen for so long that he would be a vegetable?" We still didn't know how long he had been struggling to breath.
When I finally did go to bed, the only thought that allowed me to sleep was that it was a blessing that I happened to be there right then to help. What if I hadn't been there? The Hungarian friends were scared, couldn't communicate with us at all and had no idea how to help their friend. The staff did not realize how serious the situation was. They see people have a bad reaction to a drug and assumed it was that. No one was out there with us. In fact, when I assumed that the manager was calling an ambulance he was actually calling a doctor. Who calls a doctor at 9 at night? He didn't call the ambulance until he looked out the window and saw me giving the guy mouth to mouth. I wonder if sometimes rescue people are important just to do something just so when people there look back on it they can say "I didn't know what to do, but someone there did and she tried her best to save his life" and their guilt is not as strong. Who knows. It was a sad situation all around.
So on that note we left the next morning for France. Skies were bluer in Normandy, literally and figuratively. That report will come in the next blog.