We both slept well last night so a trip into the city center seemed in order. Ton found a new place for us to check out called NDSM.
The temperature had fallen compared to the last two days so we bundled up and headed downtown. The nice thing about this campground is access to the city center is quite simple. It is located at the end of the line for one of the metro lines and the trip to the main train station is only 15 minutes. Once downtown we needed to take one of the free ferries across the river to NDSM.
NDSM is a new artist cooperative on the grounds of an old ship repair facility. The old repair buildings have been converted into artists workshops. We could only visit part of the facility as a major tech convention is going to take place on the site next week and a lot of exhibitions were being set up.
One of the old buildings had been converted to the worlds largest “street art” museum. We walked around the outside, but I balked at the €21.50 entrance fee so we did not go inside. I suspect Ton would have loved it, so now I have non-buyers remorse as I write this.
The other main building contains about 20 artist studios with different kind of art being produced. Ton really enjoyed walking around and looking at the outside of the studios. They are working studios so the public is not allowed inside, you walk thru the old shipyard looking at the art on the outside of the studios.
A lot of the old equipment and catwalks from the buildings previous life as a ship repair building were in still in place. I found myself drawn to the equipment and envisioning how the repairs flowed thru the building. My time working in automobile plants makes these kind of buildings fascinating to me.
The repurposing of the industrial site as artist studios had me a little conflicted. I guess most people would see this as an upgrade from the previous use as a shipyard. I found myself wondering if the original work wasn’t just as interesting as the current work, and if the stories of the shipyard workers wouldn’t be just as interesting as those of the artists currently occupying the space. I guess I am a bit of a dinosaur who misses old fashioned manufacturing as a statement of skill and intellectual knowledge on par with more “intellectual” work.
After NDSM we headed to the second best apple pie in Amsterdam. The Netherlands is rightly recognized as having some of the best apple pie in the world. Last year we went to the apple pie place that was supposed to be the best in Amsterdam. After some debate and searching our memory, I decided that today’s apple pie while being very good and worth the walk, was indeed second best. Ton, couldn’t decide so declared a tie, but pronounced Dutch apple pie better than American apple pie in general.
It was gray, cold and blustery so the walks were done with a sense of purpose and directness we might not have had on a nicer day. But Amsterdam remains a beautiful city to walk in.
Our final walk was to a brewery located in an old nunnery in the infamous red light district of Amsterdam. The nunnery was founded in the 1400’s to offer sanctuary to women of bad reputation who wanted to turn their lives around. This made me wonder if the current red light district goes back to the 1400’s also. The nuns brewed beer to help pay for upkeep of the nunnery. Their beer was in high demand, so when the nunnery was winding up operations they sold their recipes to a private party who continued brewing the beer.
The brewery was the last stop of the day, and even better was located just around the corner from a stop on our train line. We returned to the busy campground and had a light dinner to make up for our huge piece of apple pie.
