On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
The next couple sets are from Friday, on which I slept late, walked quite a bit, and spent about an hour at the Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum).
Inside the Rubber Duck Store. There was at least another one of this particular store, so at least a chain of two, and another rubber duck store entirely that I saw. Apparently, this is A Thing in Amsterdam, or the Netherlands in general.
A sculpture inside the Rubber Duck Store.
A statue in Rembrandtplein. I’m pretty sure it’s not Rembrandt, though it’d be cool if it was.
This would be Rembrandt.
The Stopera, combination Stadhuis (City Hall) and Opera House. I have long had a theory that when budget or other negotiations are tense, the mayor orders up a dissonant postmodern opera or symphony to expedite the process.
“Okay you f*ckers, it’s early Philip Glass with the most hungover third of the orchestra plus two screechy sax players I found in the street last night until this gets done!” (nb. I like early Philip Glass, in certain doses)
The Monument to Jewish Resistance (Joods Verzetsmonument), with the Amstel and Munttoren in the background.
I love the drawbridges in Amsterdam.
A houseboat on the Amstel with what appears to be a lawn on the roof. If I had the means, I would not mind living in such a houseboat.
AlaskaReader
Amsterdam will always remind me of the Amrâth Grand Hotel de l’Empereur.
Well, that and the butcher shops.
Christopher Mathews
There are (or were, five years ago) a pair of rubber duck stores in Lisbon, as well.
eclare
That houseboat is very cool.
Don
A rubber duck store. Does anyone remember the “Scotch Tape Boutique?”
Central Planning
Thanks for putting the Amsterdam posts together. I was there last year for work and touristy stuff. These pictures bring back good memories.
brendancalling
On our first day busking in Amsterdam, some (Italian?) guy came up to us and said we were on his corner, but he would be done in a half hour. So we watched while this guy butchered American pop songs. “I am yolker/I am smoker/I am midnight toker/I don’t wanna hurt yoooooou.” He had trouble remembering lyrics.
We wound up busking on a different side of the platz in front of a restaurant. After an hour of playing, two young guys came out and asked us in for a drink. They handed us a piece of paper (this was before IPhones) directing us to a bar called the Winston. Apparently these two guys had liked us and booked us, a bluegrass trio, a gig that Saturday with a bunch of Dutch punk bands.
Its a glorious city.
Geo Wilcox
@Don: Or Spatula City?
eclare
@brendancalling:
How fun!
J. Arthur Crank
@Don: Yes, that was Saturday Night Live, circa late 1970s.
AWOL
Of note, the Dutch are finally facing up to their history of collaboration with the nazis. It wasn’t all “Soldier of Orange” and hiding Anne Frank and her family—the Dutch had the highest per capita amount of people align with the nazis.
On my last visit (December 2022), I noted the Rijksmuseum and the Amsterdam Historich Museum revised their displays to admit to their actual history.
bjacques
Those rubber duck stores have to be a mafia or money laundering front. Sometimes I eat at Oriental City (good Dim Sum, but expensive) opposite one, a couple blocks from the Dam, or Moon Garden (ditto), across the Leidsestraat from another. Nobody ever seems to buy anything in either. The second one has a neighbouring candy store and the proprietors seem to know each other.
I’m still kicking myself that I blew multiple opportunities to see Einstein On The Beach at the Stopera several years ago. I did manage to see Bulgakov’s “Heart Of A Dog”, though.
Barbara
The city hall (I think that’s what it is) in Amsterdam is a beautiful building with stunning ceilings and wall plaques that memorialize the wisdom of buying insurance for your shipping — cargo, crew and ship. We laughed — all that marble to uplift commerce — but we went to Amsterdam during the same trip we went to St. Petersburg, and after seeing one incredible palace and garden after another, it struck me that all things being equal, most of us would have been way better off in Amsterdam glorifying insurance.
Barbara
@AWOL: I am very slowly making my way through an exhaustive history of the resistance that was recently published. There are reasons why resistance movements took shape the way they did — how fast, how many, with what intensity, and much of it had to do with how brutal the Nazis behaved when they arrived in your country. That is why the Polish resistance was fierce, pervasive, and unstinting. And why Czech resistance was much less forceful. I think the Dutch and French were somewhere in between. The book is 1000 pages long and I can only take so much of it at a time, but boy is it interesting.
Which is to say, there were very few countries in which native people did not collaborate to some degree. In some cases collaboration was also seen as a way to protect people, but of course, that usually required even if not initially then over time cooperation with Nazis in rounding up Jews.
Alison Rose
Oh man, my old boss (and still friend) had a huge collection of rubber ducks. I gotta let her know about that store so she can plan a retirement trip there :P
AWOL
@Barbara: I’m glad you’re looking into this. I guess my intro to how wide collaboration was was when I read “Eichmann in Jerusalem” (Arendt) eons ago.
I’m just learning that the French rightists were making France soft for a fascist takeover in the early 1930s. Cue Mavis Gallant.
BTW, I live in NYC—born-and bred. I only visit liberated nations that have tolerance/legalized cannabis (the Netherlands and Canada), albeit that freak Wilders’ election has made my long-booked venture to A’dam in 2024 a bit of a downer.
Captain C
@brendancalling: I love it when things work out like that, and Amsterdam is indeed a great city for this.
Captain C
@Central Planning: Glad you dig ’em!
Captain C
@bjacques: The one in the pics seemed to be doing reasonably brisk sales (I got a few for my partner, who likes such things), but I did a quick mental calculation on the economics of the business and couldn’t figure it out either.