Love in Five Drawbridges 

THE AMSTERDAM DISPATCH

By Limi Marie Bauer

“Every minute in a new city is a precious adventure. Cities pick out their national treasures to show you. What makes them special? What would be special to me? Do I want to spend my energy drooling over the most popular kid in the class when there’s a whole world of people to love? I had booked my flight months ago, but wanted to leave time open to write, to meet friends, new and old, and to be. What I’m finding is Amsterdam is a city of no reservations with reservations, a precise scheduling of freedom. Perhaps it is in the anticipation that makes it all the more delicious.”

1. Kinkerbrug – Curb Bridge

In a brightly lit space that was once a tram station in Oud West Amsterdam, I look across a cafe table at my 18 year old daughter, EJ. She’s lost in the deliciousness of a lightly toasted, thick slice of bread heavily layered with avocado, salad greens, and tomatoes that balances in her left hand. I wait for her to notice me looking at her before saying, “What would your ideal day here look like?”

“Oh! Just this.” She takes another bite and mulls the question over before continuing, “I want to sit here and eat this. That’s my perfect day.”

I nod, resting my paper straw on the rim of my glass so it won’t get mushy. I’d just told her that on Friday I needed her to come along with me, and Thursday was to see our cousin, but Wednesday she could plan. Still, I was ready with suggestions. 

I came to Amsterdam for that space between work and play: a writing workshop. I’d invited her to come along, meet other writers, and see that there are so many ways to live a life–especially visible in this city. She’s in that play space between school and work. The past two years have been a path of searching, trial, error, heartache, and getting going again. 

I find myself en-couraged by her courage. 

I pick up my phone and an app with tips from locals called The Secret App is open on the screen. I touch the star with my list of favorites. I scrolled through that list to unstar a few of those items, and closed the app. 

Parenting, if it’s anything, is an adjustment of expectations–sometimes for health, for the future, or for joy.

I swiped over to my voice memos and pressed record. These were the sounds of this moment. Two tracks of music: soft lofi hip hop music from speakers behind the bar, and a faster paced, stronger beat wafting in the front door from the adjoining Foodhallen, a covered market lined with street food stalls and filled with a hundred long wooden “Biertafel” or beer tables that shares the space of this former tram station. A server shuffled past carrying a stack of empty plates. The bartender clinked bottles of orange juice being emptied from a crate. The soft sounds of a conversation in Dutch two tables away. At 1:43 I stop the recording because I’m a sucker for numbers with hidden messages.

EJ, now finished, opens up a linen shopping bag, the one with a painted shape of a human heart that’s filled in with Van Gogh’s Starry Night mixed with Sunflowers on the front. She slowly looks through the postcards we picked up at the innovative art Maker Store just across the hall. I asked her to hand me the abstract print of Amsterdam’s streets I’d picked up for her older brother.

“That’s my store, you know,” she says brightly, “The one I am going to have when I’m ready to have my own. That one is bigger than how mine looks in my head, but it’s exactly how I want it to look, full of art and my books and where you can find the coolest things.” 

A cat strolls in and lays in the sunlight, its fur soft and clean, shiny tag on its collar. A belonging radiating from it. A cat café was one of the items I’d just unstarred on that list. 

It is a beautiful thing to live a moment as one might live in a city. To imagine, this is me on a lunch break with my daughter in a café with a cat.

2. Beltbrug – Belt bridge

“Select number of tickets.” 

I scroll the tiny wheel on my phone screen and select “2.”

“Select date.”

I click on the icon and a calendar pops up. All of the available options are two weeks after my trip. 

I try another site of a Dutch national treasure that’s on my sightseeing list. Sold out. And another. Sold. Out.

I search naively hopeful “how to get tickets to the Anne Frank House when it’s sold out.” 

The first link is to a cheerful blog advising spending the day in the neighborhood stalking the place and checking the website at every tour time in case someone hasn’t shown up, as one can only buy tickets online. 

The blogger writes, “You need dedication and time.” 

I can already feel my dedication waning. 

One comment to the article–one opinion– says, “We Dutch are used to planning in advance. We know that other cultures don’t but still we are surprised when people are disappointed when tickets are sold out.”

I raise my head and look out the window of my studio apartment. Down the canal, just behind the next drawbridge, Beltbrug–if I squint–I can see the windmill built in 1630, the Molen de Otter.

Every minute in a new city is a precious adventure. Cities pick out their national treasures to show you. What makes them special? What would be special to me? Do I want to spend my energy drooling over the most popular kid in the class when there’s a whole world of people to love?

I had booked my flight months ago, but wanted to leave time open to write, to meet friends, new and old, and to be. 

What I’m finding is Amsterdam is a city of no reservations with reservations, a precise scheduling of freedom. Perhaps it is in the anticipation that makes it all the more delicious.

What makes a national treasure? Is it my Dutch best friend and the laughter we experience in her home? The slow melting of hardened syrup of a Stroopwaffel placed over the rim of a mug of steaming rooibos tea. 

I’ve been so used to packing in so much in three days of being in one place. It’s the American way. 

And yet, there was the last time I landed in the US on a flight from Vienna. The couple in front of me in line said they had been to the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria. The sleepy passport control agent waved them through our line for citizens. When I took their place I said I was going to be in Detroit, Richmond, and Minneapolis before heading back to Austria, his eyes widened saying, “Woah. That’s a lot,” as he scanned my passport. 

We both felt the weight of a travel within lived spaces. 

As this trip goes on, I’m getting what I planned for. It’s a new way to move as a tourist, as though I wasn’t only 96 hours away from a departure flight, never knowing when I would return. With my browser tab now open to the website for the Rijksmuseum I spot availability on my last day of this trip, and select two tickets.

Like a hot-blooded human in a committed relationship, I breathe out the wanting–slowly, deliberately, and peacefully–as I settle into the idea of the one activity I have tickets for. 

2.5 – I am a bridge

My toes touched the old continent as I tried to steady my foot in the new one. I couldn’t catch my balance and reached out for hands. My family on each landmass took my hand to steady me. Were they also pulling?

I was steady again. 

Did they let go?

I didn’t want to keep my foot in this new place. Calves ached. The Atlantic underneath me, I felt so exposed. I thought living as a bridge would feel noble. Good. Solid.

I scooped handfuls of mud from the ocean below, formed a brick and baked it in the flames of my breath. I slipped the brick under my shoe and placed another brick on its back. The bridge grew.

I could see one day I would stand on my handmade bridge and not be stretched. I could walk with ease. But I am long from there yet.

A breeze fills my nose with citrus, but when I look over, I see it’s coming from tulips. I put my project down to follow the scent. I stay and rest.

3. Wiegbrug – Cradle Bridge

I fucking love this city. It’s completely in flow. Water flowing under me. Streams of bicycles. A strong breeze winding through buildings. 

The astrocartographer said I would feel good here. It is on a list of 100 cities for me to live in. I wonder for a moment if I’m trying to love it because of a list I paid 7 bucks for. I decide love is bigger–nay, quieter, deeper, more cellular than that. I feel strong here, like a woman with a pet lion she snuggles like a kitten. I wonder if the city could love me back. Cities don’t love like people do. It’s like tapping into a power grid, and I have the right shaped plug for the outlet. I can light up here. Recharge. 

I’m staying in a former drawbridge operating booth that was converted into a studio apartment when drawbridges became automated. 28 bridge houses are considered one hotel called SWEETS spelled like candy. I’m under a down comforter, my face cold in this steel-walled industrial box turned into a modern home. It will be hot later in spring’s noonday sun. I hear the rumble as a tram passes every few minutes over the drawbridge next to me. 

The drawbridge, though, is silent in its movement. Road traffic waits, patiently, as moving by water takes a turn. Cyclists on the red-bricked bike path roll to a stop. EJ points at one cyclist eating a sandwich, “Haaaa! That’s me!!”

Watching the drawbridge be raised for a crossing ship is an illusion. An asphalt painted with straight lines looking like any other now suddenly up-ended, perpendicular, gapped at the bottom at enormous hinges. It lets the boats pass, enjoying a good stretch. Small particles of dirt slowly fall down as the wind whips around it. 

There must be a hundred cyclists that have gathered there before the bridge lowers again. 

I get a text from a friend I’ve been trying to meet with the answer to my question about what a local calls a drawbridge, as Google translate had given me four options. 

“Ophaalbrug.”

It means a bridge you pick up but sounds like “opal” in my ears, reminding me of those stones filled with water. 

“If they dry too quickly they may indeed crack. This is also known as ‘crazing.’” says the International Gem Society’s page opals, and I tuck “crazing” away to name the cracking my soul feels when I’ve been away from an ocean too long.

Moving by land and sea flows through this city.

Nothing is stagnant here. Me neither in a few days I’ll be gone.

I see Amsterdam as a judge in flowing robes in the middle of saying “I’ll allow it” to the myriad of ways one can move through this world. 

As long as you leave those red brick lanes for cycling only.

4. Théophile de Bockbrug – A bridge named after an artist

I’m having dinner with a friend. We’ve known each other since we were children, and stayed in touch. She lives an hour away, and has come this little bit to see me again face to face. We sat outdoors at a café in the shadow of a church not far from Amsterdam Centraal, the main train station. It’s a touristy spot and the pasta is mediocre. We don’t notice as we’re lost in conversation getting to know each other all over again. So much time has passed. Her children are nearly grown, as are mine. We’ve traveled new paths and have many stories to share. It gets colder, and it’s time to head back.

Standing between the two clock towers of the gorgeous brick facade of the main entrance of the train station, she shares a few more things she decides she wants me to know before we part once again until who knows when. Looking at the station doors, bracing to turn and leave, she softly says, “as an autistic, it’s a lot for me to get on a train. I’ll be really tired afterwards. But some people are worth it.“

My hand in my pocket, I gently touch the round plastic case of my sound-dampening ear plugs, deciding for a moment to share or listen. I choose to smile and ask if I can give her a hug.

4.5 A half finished bridge is whole

I stand at the unfinished, transcontinental bridge, the one I’m trying to build with my own hands, and begin to walk among its unfinished bricks. I see them stacked on either end like what’s left of Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland and Scotland. A giant of the legend comes over and sits down next to me. He picks up one of my bricks, tiny in his massive fingers. 

“I don’t know if I want to find the strength to finish this,” I tell the giant. 

“Do you have to finish it when you already are in both places?” he asks and hands the brick to me now a small white tile printed with a row of houses in Delft blue, a souvenir magnet. As I take it, I’m drawn back to this place at once. 

There is no long-distance in love. 

5. Zeilstraatbrug – Sail Street Bridge

Two black and white plaid towels hang in the kitchenette of my SWEET. They look the same at first, with the same pattern, but one is terry cloth, and the other is a cotton dish towel. This to me is Dutch design. You hardly notice it. It’s obvious that one towel is for hands and the other for dishes hanging there on the two-pronged hook placed on the wall next to the kitchen sink at the height of where one’s hand rests below the hip. It’s ready for use. It’s beautiful in the simple way it solves problems.

Going from Austria to Amsterdam is like living with a Capricorn to hanging out with an Aquarius–a minted coin to a contactless card. Technology is interwoven everywhere to keep that state of flow. The water bearer. 

How amazing it feels sitting up in this bed, laptop cradled on my lap, water flowing from the left to under to the right of me. 

I have found my favorite sight to see in Amsterdam. 

I put the laptop down to begin packing my efficient, gray, carry-on suitcase to return. I stuff a stuffed bunny toy of the famous Dutch children’s character Nijntje, who I’ve always known as “Miffy,” into a ceramic, handmade, hippo-shaped pitcher that I bought for my husband. Then carefully wrap them in the cardigan that I needed to purchase because I mistakenly only packed one long-sleeved shirt, and wedge it between clothes whose next stop is my washing machine at home.

I check the time and it’s 11:43 on the clock. I can hear my godmother’s voice across time saying this is code for “I (1) love (4) you (3)” to remember that things are good and conspiring in my favor. 

I don’t yet know that tomorrow’s flight back to Austria will suddenly be delayed an hour, making my layover two hours instead of three, or that of all the trains going every ten minutes to the airport, I’ll just happen to be on the same one as a few new friends.

I take a moment to sit once more in a wicker nest of a chair suspended from the ceiling, looking out on the water of the “Gracht.” It means “canal” and my brain knows this now, making one tiny permanent adjustment to this place. 

A long, thin, freight ship transporting gravel begins to pass. The drawbridge must be raised behind me. 

I watch sunlight highlight ripples on the water and squint once more at the windmill.

Limi Marie Bauer is a Brazilian American living in Austria with her husband, their three children, and angels disguised as a dog and a cat. She’s a writer, editor, and English language teacher with a Master of Science from the University of Oxford. Connect with her on her website www.LimiMarieBauer.com or on social media @limibauer