Upside-Down In Amsterdam
♦︎♦︎♦︎ Part 1
The bedroom with the rooftop access belonged to two boys, fellow flat-mates. We lived in what is best described as a glorified compound. A multi-level house that had been converted to dorm-esque bedrooms, a large shared living room and an open kitchen at the far end of a huge dining area. Tall Dutch windows faced Willemsstraat - Our street. The word I’d often misspell on post-cards or letters sent to ex-boyfriends and friends.
We were all from somewhere else. Fellow travelers, artists, and outcasts on their way to find something - Maybe God, or our version of it, or something akin to purpose in an ancient metropolis where so many had searched before us. We were strangers who’d come to know one another by living in this kind of proximity. Separated from whatever happened to us without our choosing the rooftop was the equalizer. It didn’t matter where you came from, it only mattered that you were there. We perched like little gargoyles above the world staring out into the vast cityscape. This is what we’d all chosen for ourselves; to find whatever we were looking for in a city too beautiful and too alive with itself to ever look on us disappointed.
The calm quiet of the rooftop invited us as reprieve from the bustle of the city below. It was a place for drinking and dreaming. Feeling the energy from the world below us. We’d laugh, listen to music with shared headphones, blankets wrapped around our bodies and cigarettes between our fingers. Several twenty-something intellectuals with an all-too-elevated sense of mastery at life’s complications. We all settled into a somewhat withdrawn and contemplative Euro-style sense of maturity - dipping our toes into politics, religion, and having opinions about topics previously untapped. Suddenly finding we had particular tastes in specific beverage brands and cigarettes - choices that made us feel like we were on our way to truly knowing ourselves. We’d watch silently as the sun would set, oranges and reds engulfing the birds and tiny chimneys that peppered the Jordaan district.
I’d ride my bike to work at the hostel for day shifts as the sun rose. The markets set-up along the canal, the smell of morning-caught fish and fresh-cut flowers floating beside me. Even in the thick of summer the cobblestoned streets near the canals were cold. There were pockets the sun never reached as buildings lining the city were fence-like in their grand architecture. Casting impenetrable shadows.
Every move that summer was like a shimmer of light. Days spent on the top floor of the OBA Oosterdock Library near the ports. The bathrooms with the frosted glass doors and the insane food at Babel. Late nights spent drinking on the canal boat at P96 - the dive in the Jordaan district where I lived. Even there I’d find myself dallying upwards. I’d take the stairs to use the single-cigarette vending machine and sit on the long wooden bench near the windows to look down on the world.
On days off there was Cafe Blue - a solace with incredible espresso and a panoramic glass window view of the city. It sat above a little mini mall crammed into an old ancient strip of historic buildings. Fast fashion brands and corporate logos of the time clashed against intricate architecture and aged brick. The juxtaposition was jarring. It made me dizzy as I’d pass through the strip jumping onto the escalator with my head down. Blue was for writing because it was always empty. In the early 2010s information was still a luxury and it was hard for your average tourist to find.
To wander the city upwards was where I found peace. I was so used to the flat expanse of the north-west American landscape. I soaked up all the tales of the hostel and it’s vast history. The whispers from managers and long standing employees about how Van Gogh paintings had been discovered in the attic, tucked away, forgotten for years. I thought about that as I’d walk my usual rounds in the afternoons - noting beds had been cleaned and prepped for the new set of travelers.
My favorite rooms at the hostel were on the top floor. Long before I would end up sneaking around in those same rooms with him, they knew my presence first. Walking the narrow spiral steps to see the city from tiny windows. Getting lost at length in the alcoves from yards away as the old clock glistened set ablaze by the sun.
I was alone living a sweat-soaked summer in a city I’d only seen in architecture magazines. I don’t think it was the hight that mattered to me so much as the wanting. Maybe wanting at twenty-one made me crave the reaching. Navigating desire for more against the impossible weight of childhood tragedy and directionless youth.
If a summer could be defined by a space, there was always the rooftop of our flat and what it meant to be there. Sunsets came with reverent opportunity. Peering down on the shadows of Amsterdam at dusk and the black glass canals in the darkness, it never made me feel alone. Friendships carved out of serendipity knowing the circumstances wouldn’t last forever. Living with strangers I’d end up loving and would eventually say goodbye to because this was what we all chose. Drifting and climbing through Amsterdam, hopeful and searching for what some of us never found.
Xo