A week ago, Mad Dog was in New York City, USA.
Hampton, N.H., USA
Today, he has just got back from 5 hours walking around Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
What he is most struck by in Old Amsterdam is what is not there.
The noise, of course, is the most striking thing. Emerge from a bus at Port Authority or a train at Penn Station and step out onto a New York City Street and you are blown back by a tsunami of sound, mostly auto horns blaring, but car engines reviving and people shouting. To the uninitiated this must sound like a tidal wave of anger, but it's just normal, angry New York.
In Old Amsterdam, there is the silence of bicycles and the low purr of the occasional trolley. The streets, filled with people, are remarkable quiet.
In New York City, you pick your way down the street stepping past or over the bodies of homeless people.
In Old Amsterdam are are no homeless to be seen, not even at the train station.
In New York City, you walk by beggars with their hands outstretched, their pleas invoking instant guilt, but nary a pan handler in Old Amsterdam.
In New York City, the trash bags are piled up on the sidewalks in front of restaurants.
In Old Amsterdam, they apparently generate no trash, or in good Dutch engineering fashion, they turn it into energy or wound dressings for hospitals.
Every block in New York City you hear angry people shouting at one another, or at least people shouting, angry or not.
In Old Amsterdam you simply do not hear people raising their voices. People may not display harmony, or even a lot of joy, but they do not display much hostility.
In New York City everyone belongs to a tribe and they display their team hats, (New York Yankees or New York Mets) or their Hoboken High varsity jackets or their Harvard sweatshirts.
They must have teams, at least soccer teams, in the Netherlands, but people do not walk around in jerseys with the names of their favorite players.
Amsterdam is filled with people on the streets, walking, talking, dodging into restaurants or little bistros that make french fries as their sole product, but there is little palpable, visible anger.
New York is all about anger. And joy. More anger than joy, but emotions are raw and very much out there. Amsterdam, people smile, they chat, but nobody much looks ready to engage in mortal combat. In New York people live on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and they seem to like it.
Dutch women do not look bold.
New York women look bold.
Obadiah Youngblood (Not VanGogh)
Dutch women strike Mad Dog as concerned about their looks; false eyelashes are very common. Dutch women in this city dress stylishly, but not daringly, for the most part. It is as if having long blonde hair, high cheekbones and no weight problems is not enough.
Waiting outside the women's bathroom at the Van Gogh Museum, Mad Dog was fascinated by the cluster of Dutch women who stood in front of a mirror fussing with their hair, striking poses, turning for a left side view, a right side view. It went on and on. Mad Dog could not see the mirror which had claimed their attention, but it was clearly what stopped them for all the preening. It was placed there so they could check themselves out before leaving the bathroom.
The men's room had one, too: you could see if your fly was down on the way out.
The women's room mirror could show you if you were insufficiently beautiful from any angle.
The Van Gogh Museum is wonderful, by the way. Even if the bathrooms had no mirrors, it's worth going to the Van Gogh Museum to see a hundred Van Gogh paintings, from all along his career is stunning. They also have a flair for display, with Large walls plastered with out takes from his paintings.
You do not see all the Van Goghs you know and love from calendars and posters and that's a downer, but then you realize the reason not every Van Gogh is in that museum is because they are hanging in museums from New York to London to Melbourne to Paris to Berlin. He painted a painting a day at Auvers during the last year of his short life, but even those 300 plus paintings cannot all be in Amsterdam; too many people around the world want the thrill of seeing them.
***
The Dutch have their political problems: Geer Wilders stokes hate for immigrants and his followers have occasionally claimed the second most seats in the Dutch parliament. But, somehow, the Dutch quietly seem to do well.
Once, at an Endocrine Society Meeting in the United States a Dutch physician described how they manage patients who become addicted to testosterone medications, a sort of male version of anorexia nervosa. After he outlined all the steps an American physician remarked, "God, they would never let us do that in the States! You'd have the DEA or the sheriff in your office inside of a week."
"Well," the Dutchman said. "Everything's easier in the Netherlands."
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