During one of several chatting breakfasts, Michiel van Os, a former university professor renowned for history, answers us with restrained emotion and some nostalgia: “I retired exactly on the famous September 11, 2001.
During my farewell speech, people seemed a bit agitated but only told me what had happened at the end of the day”.
René, the wife, finished his career as a judge a month later.
Not that it could compare to the terrorist cataclysm that razed the Twin Towers, but by then the building in which they lived was suffering its own structural damage from the sinking of the flooded ground in which Amsterdam had long since settled.
Line of facades of historic houses in the vicinity of Amsterdam's Grand Central Station.
Also more and more affected by the demands of the stairs that they had to overcome in their day-to-day life, the van Os found a more than adequate alternative in the top floor duplex of a building from the beginning of the century. XVII.
They were enchanted by its historic architecture and location next to the Jordaan district, opposite Westerkerk and Anne Frank's house-museum.
The couple shared the privilege of living there, in an elegant home with a lot of antiques and a library, harmonious expressions of two obvious passions, reading and the antique.
Decoration of a building in the vicinity of the Rijzksmuseum with an illustration of Bartholo's “Amsterdam Civil Guard Banquet in Celebration of the Peace of Munster”
We, due to almost family relationships, found ourselves gifted with a few days of kind welcome in their secular home. It's been a long time since we intuited the passing of time like there.
At night, the ticking of old clocks, rope and cuckoo clocks lull us. Simultaneously – or almost – the ringing of the bells of several churches around.
The Pungent Past of Anne Frank and Family
By day we inspected the huge line of visitors to Anne Frank's house who, like a kind of human hourglass, we watched flow across the Keisergracht canal from the large window on the lower floor of the dwelling.
During our stay in Amsterdam, fresh news reported that Annelies Marie Frank – her full name – would have succumbed two months before the date her death went down in history, victim of starvation and typhus, in the German concentration camp in Bergen Belsen.
Today, in a patient and only symbolic sacrifice, hundreds of people wait in the cold and rain to peek into the hiding place that the Frank family has built behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father worked.
The shelter served its purpose until they were betrayed, captured and joined by the millions of victims of the Holocaust.
Tickets to visit that dismal hideout were sold out for several days.
The Proliferation of Inescapable Coffee Shops
As such, we pass through the door of the building, proceeding to explore the heart of the once working-class neighborhood of the Jordaan: its functional houses and, along the canals, the elegant houseboats in which thousands of Amsterdamers have become accustomed to living.
Friends relax by the Oudezids canal, in the heart of Amsterdam's Red Light District.
We walk along the threshold of the city's historic and tourist ring.
Over there, the coffee shops there were a good number of them. They give the streets and alleys an eccentric aroma that only the frequent gaufre houses competed with.
Many residents complained that the first ones were smearing their homes.
Electronic signs throughout the city warned of the danger that the dealers street performers in Amsterdam: “White Heroine Sold as Cocaine. Last November, three tourists died.”
Dispersed warning throughout the city warns of the danger of the fake and potentially deadly drug sold by dealers deceived or unscrupulous.
A Comic-Drama Starring Death
We ended up coming across death, even more unexpectedly.
We rested in Dam Square, in the vicinity of statue-men and other mobile characters, those who make their living by foisting photographs on passersby.
Passersby clustered at the base of the National Memorial statue on Dam square.
Among them stood out three reapers wrapped in black tunics, with skull masks and plastic scythes. Believe it or not, these macabre businesswomen recruited interested parties in large numbers.
One of them, middle-aged, looking like a bully, took his photo but refused to pay for it. Discussion leads to discussion, there were already three Deaths who, allied, were stirred up to the man.
The latter, more than in good health, in excellent shape, backed off but, while responding verbally, also countered with raised fists.
The scene lasted several minutes, until the police appeared and put an end to what we labeled the most morbid and absurd fight we have ever witnessed.
Amsterdam's Frantic Cyclist Transit
Wherever we go, the traffic proves to be as organized as possible.
Still, many of the narrow streets that line the canals are shared by cars, buses, trams, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, residents and thousands of outsiders who, for the easter week, arrived from all sides.
Going through them or traversing them without incident requires constant concentration and perfect movement management. Even so, things always went well.
Maid prepares to open the doors of a bar in the oldest part of Amsterdam.
René, for example, still complained of pain because some all-terrain vehicle had recently passed over his foot.
We arrived at the historic center of Amsterdam as night fell, a little chilled. Safe from incident.
Amsterdam's Controversial Red Light District
As it's supposed to, we stalk your lewd Red Light District.
Imbued with the pure and hard democracy that Holland is so proud of, the city had been discussing for a long time the permanence of prostitutes in the windows of brothels.
Meanwhile, hordes of tourists, many of them just sexual, assessed her charms.
Others, mere curious people, tried to photograph the exposed women even against their express will.
Friends chat between a channel and a sex shop in the Red Light District.
A notice in a half-walled window with the 800-year-old Protestant church of Oude Kerk – the oldest building and church in Amsterdam – warned, in English: “Sex workers don't want to be photographed. Do not take pictures of windows.”
And the Women's Right to Privacy Complex behind the Showcases
The website pic-amsterdam.com (PIC of the Prostitute Information Center) which, founded by the whore Mariska Majoor, promoted tours through the Red Light District, workshops and other businesses and initiatives, complemented the warning: “disrespect can give rise to problematic situations for yourself and your camera.
Remember that many sex workers lead a double life. Photographs represent a danger as they can be seen by acquaintances or invade your privacy in other ways”.
The scarlet lights of the Sex Palace, one of the Red Light District's sex establishments.
Yet every now and then, instead of the conventional eye-blinks and other bolder customer seduction schemes, we see and hear scarlet or purplish women slamming their hands with all their might on the glass.
Or go outside and intimidate the offenders with angry screams and a collection of curses.
We also heard impressive accounts of persecution carried out by both them and the pimps.
Amsterdam's Civilization Exuberance and the Contribution of the Jews Expelled from Iberia
The following afternoon we ascend to the top of the belfry tower of the Oude Kerk.
From that top, we can see 360º the old houses as far as the eye can see, largely spared during World War II – the port of Rotterdam would be the most battered Dutch city.
View of historic Amsterdam houses from the top of the tower of the Oudeskerk, its church and its oldest building.
As we climb the dark staircase, the guide reminds us that the city and the Netherlands have benefited enormously from having welcomed the Jews expelled from Iberia by the Inquisition and that many of its inhabitants still have Portuguese or Hispanic nicknames.
It still pushes us that Portugal is not part of Spain only thanks to the Netherlands. "How is that?" we ask, intrigued to double the premise's total absence of historical context.
"It's just that if it wasn't for the fight we gave them in the Eighty Years War, you had not been able to get rid of the Filipes.”
“Oh, OK! Well seen, well seen!” we support you without reservation.
Resident passes by one of the city's famous design signatures
