De Finishlijn

 

I was, in truth, getting tired of the Amsterdam Metro.  (Reader's voice: YOU'RE TIRED?)  Not tired of the stations, not tired of the city, but just tired of the relentlessness.  This was, don't forget, meant to be a leisurely three day quest, and instead it was crammed into two.  Add in the general stress of it all and my brain was getting a little fritzed.  On top of that, my feet ached.  I'd not worn my big sturdy walking boots because I wanted to get through airport security without any problems; the trouble is, now I was learning that Vans aren't really built for pounding the pavement, and they're certainly not very good when it comes to cobbles.

I uncurled myself from the seat on the train and stiffly walked towards the escalators at Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA station.  (Yes, that final A is a capital as well, work with it).  At least it was an impressive station.  Comprehensively rebuilt in 2007, there's an intriguing mix of colours and textures that really impress.

There's something quite sci-fi about it, quite Star Wars-y; those shooting roof pieces feel like they could be the roof of an X-Wing hangar.  Deep voids lead down to the passenger concourse. 

All this space is, of course, to accommodate the thousands of people who pass through on their way to the complex of entertainment spaces just outside.  Amsterdam put in a bid for the 1992 Olympics, the ones that went to Barcelona, and the centrepiece was a brand new stadium here in Bijlmer.  Though that failed - Amsterdam went out in the first round, before Birmingham - the spot was still suitable for a new football ground for Ajax.

Even I've heard of Ajax.  They're one of those European teams you can name off the top of your head, like Spartak Moscow or Real Madrid or Borussia Mönchengladbach.  Ajax have won the European Cup/Champions League four times, and that is the beginning and end of the football chat here, because even looking at the Wikipedia page for them bored me senseless.  All I wanted to know was if they were any good and suddenly I'm being bombarded with tedious stats and factoids.  (Also, the last time I tried talking about football, Queen of Women's Soccer Carrie Dunn swept in and corrected all my points about Manchester City Women, so I'm not doing that again).  

The plaza outside the station is very Wembley; a series of alluring traps to get people to spend money on their way to and from an event.  The night before I visited, Coldplay had played; I believe they're a very popular beat combo.  I mean, I know who Coldplay are, I've just never heard one of their songs and had it permeate into my brain to the extent that I recognise it as a Coldplay song.  Actually, that's not quite true - there was an advert for BMW that played before No Time To Die and on about the sixth viewing of it I found myself pulling out my phone and Shazaming to find out who was doing the music.  It turned out it was Coldplay's Higher Power, but I wouldn't take that as a win for Chris Martin, because I also became enamoured with the music they used for the Matrix Resurrections and House of Gucci trailers; I'm in a very vulnerable state when there's a new Bond film about to play.  

The music venue next to the stadium had posters showing people who'd previously played there and - hang on, who's that next to Sting?

I felt strangely proud seeing Trixie & Katya there with the greats.  Those weird little Season 7 Drag Race queens - who didn't even win - were now featured artistes.  This must be what it feels like to buy a band's first album and then see them explode a few years later.  I know gay culture permeating mainstream Dutch society is hardly a revolutionary concept - even I was starting to get bored of the rainbow flags everywhere - but it was a nice reminder that not everywhere in the world has lost its mind over drag queens.  They're entertainers, Barbara, and they're not here to groom your kids.

I walked down a side road, past a restaurant called Burger Bitch because we can no longer have nice things.  A cafe had put out a board: "Why have abs when you can have Kurio's kebabs?" and here, have a link Kurio, because that sort of marketing must be supported.  There were also public urinals, cross shaped plastic depositories for those attending the events to use, because men are disgusting.

Round the front of the arena was a statue to the most famous Dutch player of all, Johan Cruijff, the man the stadium was named after.  There'd been calls to dedicate the stadium to him from the start, but the City of Amsterdam has - in my opinion, very sensible - rules against naming items after living people.  You can't risk the person turning out to be a later in life arsehole - imagine if there was a JK Rowling Bridge or a Right Said Fred Park or an Elon Musk Penitentiary (actually I would support that one).  After Cruijff died, however, the family gave permission for it to be renamed in his honour (and please note that I'm using the correct Dutch spelling of his surname, not the internationally used version of Cruyff).  

I have to be honest - the stadium's not a looker.  While the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium is a classic design, one that was highly influential throughout the world, the Johann Cruijff ArenA is a hulk, a big heavy lump.  A retractable roof means it has strong braces arcing over the top and much of its exterior was covered with commercial advertising.  It has none of the charm or elegance of, say, Anfield, though I will say the experience of arriving and departing and the immediate environs are infinitely better.  I'm looking forward to all those Eurogays who fell for Liverpool during Eurovision heading to the city again for Taylor Swift and then having to deal with the Sheil Road Circular and the somewhat "earthy" pubs outside.

It was while I was stood there among happy families who'd just paid twenty three Euros for a pair of socks in the club shop that I realised I'd not taken a picture in front of the station sign.  It's no exaggeration to say my stomach lurched in horror.  That's how tired I was - I was forgetting the essentials of my trip.  I'd been so keen to take a picture of the stadium when I left the station I'd completely forgotten about it.  I dashed back, walking twice as fast, a slight sense of panic inside being quashed by the reassurance that I would soon sort it.  Imagine I had got home to England, downloaded all the photos... and realised one sign was missing.  It would have been a tragedy.

Phew.

Now I had to trek back the way I came, past those same smiling families, only a bit sweatier and more panic ridden than I was before.  On the way I passed the ArenA's other station, tucked round the back and simply called Halte Amsterdam ArenA.  This is a single platform, only accessible from the direction of Diemen Zuid, which exists purely to separate, shall we say, contentious fans from one another.  If there's a game between Ajax and one of its fiercer rivals, the other station can be brought into use, allowing the away fans into the stadium via a purpose built bridge that keeps them well apart from the home fans.  

I hate that we have effectively normalised this behaviour.  That we have, as a society, simply accepted that if you get a load of football fans together they might fight and attack one another, and what we should do is build physical barriers and architectural get outs to mitigate the damage.  I bet Trixie and Katya's fans didn't have to be corralled and guarded in case a tranche of manic Violet Chachki supporters came running over the hill, ready to pulverise them with sharpened stiletto heels.

A walk past more football pitches brought me to Strandvliet station, ArenA's little brother and a handier station to use if you don't want to go anywhere near the commercial quarter.  Much like Sandhills will soon be to the new Everton stadium, Strandvliet was a quiet station that got a massive tourist attraction dropped on its doorstep.  They hastily rebuilt it to accommodate the crowds, with a special entrance for match days - something I sadly don't think is going to happen at Sandhills.  No, that's not fair; apparently it's going to get a special Fan Queuing Area.  So that's alright then.

One thing I forgot to mention about the refurb of the Oostlijn stations was the coloured glass entrance.  Above the open front, a high window was put in with abstract glass colours.  It let more light into the ticket hall and also gave each station its own identity.  At Strandvliet there were rainbow colours, which extended to the windows over the escalator as you ascended to the track.

Duivendrecht came into existence because of its location.  There wasn't anything here until 1993; the trains went on to Van de Madeweg, which was known as Duivendrech Centraal because, well, it was in the middle of Duivendrecht.  However, the Ringspoorbaan - a rail line from Schiphol across the south of the city - was constructed in the early 90s, and at the point where it met the metro line, they built an interchange.

It very much feels like a station that was constructed because they thought they should, rather than there being a specific need for it.  It's big and airy and full of glass and steel, but it doesn't feel like a hub.  I got off the train with one other person, who went down and through the gates alongside me and waited outside to be picked up by a friend.  He looked at me a little askew, as though he was surprised to see anyone else there.

There's space for buses outside, and a park and ride, but both were unpopular with the public.  Eurolines operate coaches from here, but that's about it.  I walked outside and took my picture under the ostentatious sign.

The road out of the station complex is long and straight and really quite dull.  I think it says a lot about the amount of pedestrian usage it gets that a tree had fallen across the footpath and nobody had thought to move it.  It had been there long enough for most of its green leaves to turn brown.  The highlight was a heron, which stood on the path and watched me approach with a certain amount of arrogance.  It didn't seem inclined to move, as though I encroaching on his territory, and I was within a metre or two and wondering if it was possible or even wise to pet a heron when he lifted his wings and lazily flew off and into the trees.  

I was deposited on a huge junction with a massive depot for the postal service, but I turned right, past small units and car dealerships.  The grinding engines of the city.  I crossed another street, and then swore, quite loudly.

I'd been here before.  A few hours ago, in fact.  I'd thought I was simply in another industrial estate but no, there was that cash and carry again, and there were the pictures of food again, and then I was passing under the motorway with the lollipops painted on the supports and the big silver sewage machine was up ahead.  

I felt terribly disheartened.  I was tired and sweaty and grumbly, and now here I was on the same grimy strip of traffic blasted tarmac.  It was my own fault of course; if I'd turned left out of Van der Madeweg station this morning, I would've gone a far more interesting route.  I could've gone through a housing estate where all the streets were named after space - Lunaweg and Meteoor and Astronautenweg - and maybe gone to the Duivendrecht precinct on Telstarweg.  Then the metro junction and the pumping station would've been a nice surprise in the afternoon.  I'd planned badly.

I crossed the road, going between gaps in the traffic rather than pushing the button, because I was knackered and dejected.  The road shadowed the metro line, and I passed a group of enthusiastic looking young people in hi-vis jackets and helmets being marshalled by a man from the GVB; I wondered if they were engineering students, or apprentices with the transport network.  They were far too pretty to be fellow train nerds.

Two men stopped their conversation as I passed, leaning on their parked BMWs and watching me suspiciously, pausing in whatever illicit trade they were engaged in.  I feigned disinterest, while secretly wanting to know everything about what they were up to, and walked up to the station at the end of the road.

Overamstel was added to the network in the 90s, when the Amstelveen tram-train line came into existence, and now it's a handy spot to change between the green 50 and the orange 51.  We'd moved off the Oostlijn now, onto the newer line I'd mainly collected the day before, and so it didn't get the same refurb.  This meant, sadly, no tiled station name.  Instead I had to put up with a shiny one under the viaduct.

I promise you that says Overamstel up there.  I didn't know the sunshine was exactly on it when I took the photo.  Look, I've fiddled with the colours, and you can clearly see a stel.

Once again, if you want me to go back and get a proper photo of the sign, feel free to send cash to my Ko-fi.

This was it.  One more train journey and I'd have done it.  Every station on the Amsterdam Metro, collected, visited, photographed.  Two days and a lot of walking.  I was tired but exhilarated.  This was genuinely one of the best things I have done in my life (Reader's Voice: Jesus Christ) and I enjoyed every second of it.  In some ways, I didn't want it to end.  In others, I was glad it was over.

Towers and glass told me I was back in the business district of the city.  This was Amsterdam Rai, the station for the conference complex I'd been to a million years ago when I did the Nord-Zuidlijn.  The 52 passes right underneath Rai station but they didn't build an interchange, instead putting Europaplein station directly outside the convention centre and removing the lengthy walk passengers on the 50 and 51 needed to take.  

It was another rail/metro hub, though rather better used than Duivendrecht.  I followed the crowds down, thinking of how I'd shared a lift with two of the delegates for the dementia conference at the RAI in the hotel that morning, and they had studiously avoided making eye contact, even though they were both wearing lanyards showing they were going the same place.  I walked out into the road outside the station, raised my camera, and took my last Amsterdam station selfie.

Battleground

Most cities would be thrilled to get a Metro.  Amsterdam is not most cities.

In the 1970s, the city council and the government were working together to drag the city into the present day, and the metro was part of that plan.  The Nazi Occupation had left parts of the centre hollowed out and ruined, even decades later; a new transport network would be the catalyst for the rebuild of these districts, with new office developments and commercial opportunities.  It would be marvellous for everyone.

The first thing that annoyed the residents was the way the subway was being built.  In most cities, you get a tunnel boring machine under the ground, and it works away while the world continues on top.  Alternatively, there's the cut and cover method, where the ground - often a roadway - is peeled back, you dig down, and then cover it back up when you're finished.

Amsterdam's wet, sandy foundations made neither of these methods easy.  The decision was made instead to construct the line using caissons; enormous, prebuilt concrete tunnel sections that would be sunk into the ground along the route.  They connect up to form a long concrete tunnel that can then be filled with the services needed.  This is, as you might expect, something of an undertaking.  It also needs a huge amount of land, because you need space alongside the route to build the concrete sections and have sufficient space to lower them in.  Hey, but that wasn't a problem, was it?  After all, it was all getting demolished anyway.  And when it was all laid, you'd have enough space left behind to build something really useful on top.  Like a big, four lane motorway.

As the line crept further and further north, the protests got louder and more forceful.  It was particularly contentious around the future Nieuwmarkt station.  The reason this area was so run-down and deserted was the Nazis had systematically eliminated the population of the former Jewish Quarter.  After they went, a terrible winter hit the city, and with the occupiers unwilling to help the Dutch they had to help themselves.  They ransacked the empty homes and buildings around the Nieuwmarkt, stripping them of anything they could use as firewood in the bitter cold.  The result was a district that was falling to pieces, right in the city centre, and which never really recovered after liberation.

In the Sixties, though, the hippies moved in.  Those empty buildings became squats for people who couldn't afford the city's expensive rents.  They made them, if not habitable, then at least occupied.  They formed a community and they made it work.  And now the city was going to bulldoze them out of the way for a new world of unbridled capitalist indulgence.  A place where people were finally able to live cheaply would be replaced by office blocks.  The squatters would be turfed out to who knows where.

The climax of the resistance came in 1975, when riots broke out around the construction - or, more accurately, demolition - sites.  Water cannons were called in, the protesters were subdued, but their point had been made, and now everyone could see it.  

The city council backed down.  The metro would still go ahead - it was too far gone to stop - but the highway on top was scrapped.  Also abandoned were plans for new commercial properties and a whole new look to the area.  Instead, the street lines were restored to what they had been before, the old historic plan.  The offices and shopping centres were scrapped and homes were built instead - social houses, at a reasonable rent, so that the district became a place for people again.  

Nieuwmarkt station commemorates all this with the artwork on its platforms.  There are pictures of what used to be here, the homes and shops and bars that were demolished for the metro.  Some parts look like smashed mirrors, or perhaps windows.  There are pictures of the protests.  And above it all, as you head down to the platform, there's a wrecking ball.  A reminder that this progress came at a price.

I love metros.  I love underground railways.  I get why the residents were furious.  It soured the city on underground railways for decades (and then, when they finally built another one but with more traditional tunnelling methods, that also went over budget and caused subsidence; really, Amsterdam had terrible luck with its infrastructure).  Part of me thinks that they should've sucked it up for the greater good of the city.  You can't fight progress.

Stepping out into the Nieuwmarkt itself, though, I got it.  This was a human place in a way that the areas between Waterlooplein and Weesperplein hadn't been.  Low buildings - still a few storeys, but not the envisaged tall concrete behemoths - built in a scattered form around a square.  Homes with balconies and the odd playground.  A civilised space to live.  And now they had a fast underground railway as well.  The best of all worlds.

I walked around the square.  I was now at the edge of the Red Light District, and the rest of my time in the city would be a descent into decadence and hedonism, the likes of which I had never seen before.  Sex, drugs, more sex; it was all to come.

Nah, of course it wasn't.  I got straight back on the train to go and collect some more stations.

Happy Places

 

Strolling.  I've never been good at it.  

I'm a fast walker, too fast probably.  My body sweats and complains the whole time but I persist.  I'm going somewhere, I'm walking somewhere, I get there fast.  There's no point hanging about.  Walking with other people becomes a frustration.  Why are you holding me back?  Why are you dawdling?

I walked along the side of the Amstel, along the Weesperzijde, and I still wasn't strolling.  I was still pounding my way along.  But this was a different walk.  I was so utterly happy.

Everything around me delighted.  The buildings, the people, the slow moving cars and polite cyclists.  The gentle breeze that rolled in across the river.  There were houseboats lined up on the shore, neat, preserved, one with a chicken coop with actual chickens pecking about.  I felt a lightness I'd not felt in a long time.

It's rare to get an opportunity to be utterly self-centred.  We live amongst structures of friends and family and people.  If you do exactly what you want to do, it will affect someone else.  Your partner won't be as happy as they could be.  Your boss will become frustrated.  You have obligations and duties and a whole set of other frameworks piled up inside your head.

I realised, walking in Amsterdam, just how deep those pressures were inside me.  I realised that I spent every day of my life buckling under obligations and options and "stuff I have to do".  No wonder I'm a little bit nuts.

Here though, it was just me.  Nobody around on the riverbank knew about my plans or what I was up to; they didn't care either.  I was entirely anonymous.  Anyone who cared about me or was aware of who I was was hundreds of miles away.  I had a schedule that was entirely my own, a plan I'd conceived and was executing without interference or discussion.  I was exploring a beautiful city at my own pace, visiting buildings I found interesting, being me without any other duress.  I wasn't strolling physically, but my brain was.  Finally, after too long, it was taking a break.

I realised my mind was gently drifting along.  Normally when I walk I have to have headphones on.  Something to drown out the noise of my brain, the darkness that hides there, the thoughts that swell up when I'm alone.  Here I was simply enjoying everything I saw.  That doorway.  That bar.  That woman.  It slipped into my mind and was appreciated, coveted, gently stroked before being filed away.  There wasn't any pain.  A little bit of me wanted to stay here, riding the metro, forever.

Eventually I turned away from the river and onto a green side street lined with houses that no doubt cost an astronomical amount entirely disproportionate to how tight and tiny they were. Balconies were laden with chairs and patio tables.  Parked cars hugged the kerb.  It was dense and yet silent.

It meant that arriving on the busy Wibautstraat came as a bit of a shock.  Suddenly there were tall buildings and a wide carriageway full of buses and trucks.  It wasn't a gentle avenue, as I'd become used to in Amsterdam: this was a through route, a busy highway, the Euston Road but with a Dutch twist.

I found Wibautstraat station outside the "Church" of Scientology.  I noticed that the signs outside for a Free Personality Test were all in English, not Dutch, and I decided this wasn't linguistic colonialism, but was instead the locals being too clever to fall for it and so they had to target gullible tourists instead.  

After the glorious sign at Spaklerweg, I was disappointed there wasn't something similar here.  Until I noticed the station name was actually inside the entrance - a nice stylistic choice, but not exactly great for people wanting to get about the city.  It meant that to get the name of the station and my fat head in the same shot, I had to go onto a piece of pavement between the edge of the entrance building and a busy cycle lane and squat.  I got quite a few curious looks.

Below ground again, the place where I was most content.  From here to the end of the 51/53/54, it was underground stations all the way.  Perhaps I'm secretly part mole.  Perhaps that's why I'm not so jolly wandering around the world as a human being.  A wide concourse under the street with its own snack bar lead down to the island platform.  

All the underground stations on the Oostlijn were built with artwork on the walls.  At Wibautsraat, it's large coloured letters, scattered along the trackside; they symbolise the newspapers and magazines that relocated to this area in the 60s.  

One quick train ride and I was at Weesperplein.  There's a run of W stations here - Wibautstraat, Weesperplein and Waterlooplein - which may be geographically accurate and a pleasing pattern, but caused no end of confusion in my brain.  I could never quite get my head around what order they came in.

There wasn't an island here, but instead two separate platforms opposite one another on the tracks.  The reason for this is that Weeserplein was designed as an interchange with an unbuilt East-West metro line, so passenger numbers were anticipated to be larger as people changed between lines.

The tunnels for the planned line were constructed , but never put into use for transit.  Instead they were repurposed as nuclear bomb shelters, and Weeserplein got a variety of "upgrades" that would enable it to be sealed off completely.  Personally I'd rather die.  I don't see the point in going down into a hole to live for months, just so I can re-emerge to some blasted wasteland.  If the four minute warning went off I'd go outside and welcome the blast with open arms - there was a report a few months ago that said Liverpool would be one of the first targets for a Russian attack, and I thought "good".  I've seen Threads.  I don't want to be scrabbling around in a feudal society while my teeth fall out.  Come friendly bombs, and fall on Scott.  

It means there's a huge circulation area above the platforms which was largely empty and unused.  Part of the recent refurbishment saw all the clutter being taken away to create open spaces in stations, which is admirable, but left Weeserplein feeling distinctly vacant.  Perhaps at rush hour it fills up.  The new East-West metro plans, which I first mentioned about eight hundred years ago, would finally create the interchange it's been begging for for nearly fifty years.

I picked an exit at random.  They all chucked you out onto the Weeserplein; it was simply a question of using Google Maps to reorient myself once I got up top.  I walked along the busy street, past an Asian tour group who politely lined up with their phones, one after another, to get exactly the same photo of a canal from a bridge.  I hope they all go home and have What I Did On My Holiday nights round each others' houses where they all have to look at 400 identical shots of Amsterdam.  Further along the street had been closed and filled with flower tubs.  I'm not sure if this was a permanent move, or simply part of some local festival, but it was remarkable how much of a change it made.  You don't realise how stress-inducing the relentless grind of traffic is, how it exists as a constant noise under your thoughts, until it vanishes.

At the top of the street, a series of angled shapes poked up from behind a low wall.  This was the Netherlands' National Holocaust Monument.  The area I was in had once been the Jewish sector of the city.  When the Nazis invaded, they first closed off the area, marking it out as a no-go area with signs, putting out roadblocks, raising bridges.  Jews from other parts of the Netherlands were forced to relocate to Amsterdam.  Then, of course, they began to send them away.  75% of Amsterdam's Jewish population were killed by the Nazis, about half of them in Auschwitz.  A once thriving section of the city was forcibly emptied and abandoned.  The names of the victims were memorialised in horrifying quantities.

Waterlooplein station is spread over a wide area of the city.  Its main entrance and exit is under the Stopera, the city's Town Hall/Opera House complex, but I was headed to a smaller entrance, tucked away under a bridge at the canal side.  Something about the way it was almost hidden appealed to me.  Again: mole person.

The tiled notice was visible through a glass window over the escalators.  Pedants will note that a strut of the window covers up the AT of Waterlooplein; I assure you they are very much present in the sign.  To be frank I'd rather you concentrated on that than my multiple chins.  

In an attempt to discourage anti-social behaviour, GVB has taken to playing music at their stations.  At Weeserplein it had been gentle classical music; at Waterlooplein it was Ebbs and Flows by Aaron Taylor.  I'm not sure what the thinking is behind this.  I sort of get that hyperactive teenagers don't really want to spend their time hanging around somewhere that's playing Debussy Preludes; it's not really a conducive atmosphere for a bit of light vandalism and rowdiness.  Ebbs and Flows, though, was quite a pleasing song; I'd loiter a bit longer to have a listen.  That makes me horribly middle aged, doesn't it?  Young people are listening to that and waiting for the bass to drop and I'm gently swaying along.  Although it didn't make me want to tear up the seats either, so job well done.

Waterlooplein's main feature is its tiled mural of the word WATERLOO in a delightfully 1970s font.  There was some suggestion of replacing all the original artworks on the line with new ones in the refurb, until there was a public backlash; we quickly become used to what was once brave and innovative and make it comfortable.  

99% of you now have Abba bouncing around inside your head.  

1% of you are thinking of Timothy Dalton at the end of The Living Daylights.  I love all my readers equally, but I love that 1% just a little bit more.  

Happiness is being in an underground station, thinking about James Bond and Eurovision.  It's as blissful as I ever get.