Exploring Amsterdam

During the war years, the Filipinos’ stock of food and dry goods dwindled, its commerce completely drained by the needs of the tight-fisted Japanese. The commuting public was forced to walk since gasoline was in scant supply. Forced to protect their feet from sharp pebbles and deep mud, the traditional bakya became a popular commodity.

Unfortunately, the women found the slippers too bulky and masculine for their tastes. My hometown Paete, could not permit such drabness, so they invested the wood with exquisite designs to the cheers of the local women. Bakya became high fashion. What remained of the decorated clogs surviving the war years are now treasured as relics of a wartime era. Decorated with sculpted designs, motifs of bahay kubo, flowers, animals and pagodas and painted with brilliant colors, those wooden clogs were wonders of the war years. Famous Filipino painter Romeo Tabuena (now based in Mexico) spent his war years in Paete and did woodcarving and painting wooden clogs later on. He eventually married one of my kababayan.

The memory of those wooden clogs, ever-fresh in my memory, compelled me to visit the Netherlands many times. Since 1975, I always found time to explore the beautiful city of Amsterdam. I exposed myself to every interesting souvenir shop I could find, examining hundreds of different sized painted Dutch wooden clogs so much like the wartime bakya of Paete. None of them could (ahem, ahem) compare to the latter.

Of course, Amsterdam is not all clogs and souvenirs. Windmills, cheese, tulips and the Red District (for observational purposes only) are all attractions that draw me to this historic city, but it’s the myriad art museums, galleries and architecture that are a lifetime dream of any serious artist.

Amsterdam is built on impossible ground. As Pliny the Elder said during Roman times, "One doesn’t know if these regions are land or sea."

Built on sandy waterlogged soil, Amsterdam is supported by innumerable wooden piles serving as foundations for all the famous buildings. Buildings anywhere in Amsterdam involved patience, engineering skills, experience and expense. Of the 7,000 listed historic buildings surviving the water, plus wear and tear inflicted from the centuries, half are from Amsterdam’s Golden Age.

Amsterdam is the chief city and nominal capital of the Netherlands. Originally a medieval fishing village, the first settlement was nestled beside a dam across the River Amstel, hence the name. By the 17th century, Amsterdam was already a major trading center for merchant ships all over the world.

For many travelers, Amsterdam is a city of preconceived ideas and, for the sanctimonious, a center of excessive liberal values. Personal freedom, liberal drug laws, and the gay center of Europe are images synonymous with the Dutch capital since the heady 1960s and 1970s, when it led the pack as Europe’s most radical city.

Honestly, my main purpose, besides looking for clogs, was a personal and intimate exploration of the Museum Quarter, where some of Amsterdam’s cultural monuments, the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum, the Van Gogh Musem and other interesting contemporary art galleries, are.

In October 1975 I was so lucky to see with my own eyes, Rembrandt’s original masterpiece, "Night Watch," which he painted in 1642, in the Rijksmuseum. This museum, almost rivaling the Louvre in size, is a familiar Amsterdam landmark and possesses an unrivaled collection of Dutch art, meticulously gathering artworks since the 19th century. It is impossible to explore and savor the entire museum in a single visit. Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to find "Night Watch" as there are an abundance of signs and arrows pointing to the location of this masterpiece. Strangely enough, the painting was vandalized the day after my visit. I guess the vandals didn’t have much trouble finding it either.

The Van Gogh Museum was built shortly after Vincent Van Gogh’s death. His beloved younger brother, Theo, a Paris art dealer, amassed a collection of 200 of his paintings and 500 of his drawings, just as his brother’s name started to circulate among collectors and critics. These, combined with around 850 letters by Van Gogh to Theo, along with selected works of his friend and contemporaries, form the core of the museum’s outstanding permanent collection.

The Stedelijk Museum was built to house a personal collection bequeathed to the city in 1890 by art connoisseur Sophia de Bruyn. In 1938, the museum became the National Museum of Modern Art, displaying works by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Cezanne and Mondrian. Exhibitions are presented and changed constantly, with recent acquisitions reflecting the latest developments of contemporary art.

The rows of stately houses, balanced by their reflections in the shifting waters of the canals, the formal lines of gables softened by avenues of elm and linden trees, the church towers soaring heavenwards from the low-lying city, I feel like I know now the ethereal inspiration this city has which drove the Dutch masters in creating great masterpieces.

I made a quick side stop to the house where Rembrandt lived for many years. Now a museum, it remains, for the most part, unchanged since the great artist last stepped foot in it, though he would probably have difficulty recognizing the rest of Amsterdam.

After the heady delights of museum hopping and an exploration of the handsome and welcoming city of Amsterdam, I found my shoes worn out and in extreme need of replacement. I set out to find a pair of Dutch clogs while thinking to myself how nice it would be if I had on hand a pair of Paete’s plain bakya.