How do you leave a city when you’ve remade yourself in its image?

Dear Amsterdam

Thank you for 10 years. You carried me and my girlfriend from the ages of 23 to 33; a period of time in which it's possible to be several different people, made and remade, kicking and screaming into so-called adulthood. These present versions of ourselves are entirely your creation. So, how can we be reconciled to leave this city that has given us so much? We weren’t pushed out by your fierce housing market or cost of living. We didn’t compare lists in favour and against, for the same reason that simple accounting exercises are not the way to make a decision about where you live. Instead, we were following the messy and nebulous work of our feelings: the slow accumulation of hunches and intuitions over the last few years. The work of untangling them, however, also gave voice to the repeated commitment you make to the place you live. Do you want to get into a full accounting of all the pain of our breakup, Amsterdam? We have ten years of feelings to make sense of. Let’s try.

In those early years, you were so easy to love. The features the world knows you for - your cycling, your canals, your liberal attitudes - are decoration. Once in Amsterdam, this outsider picture gives way to an insider experience that usually becomes summarised in three words: quality of life. This was my stock answer any time anyone asked me what living in the Netherlands was like at the beginning, which perhaps belied a lack of immersion in, and understanding of, Dutch culture. But, as young adults working and studying in Amsterdam with no reason to leave, the city can feel like a playground for easy living. Long before the right-wing conspiracy theories kicked off about 15-minute cities, the Netherlands had been quietly enjoying them for decades.

Yet, what’s missed by the quality-of-life label is the real colour of Amsterdam. Quality of life suggests something utilitarian; an experience reduced to an index of social wellbeing. And while many people do level that accusation against Amsterdam or the Netherlands, I’d argue that you don’t truly enjoy Amsterdam’s quality of life without its way of living. One of my vital lasting impressions of Amsterdam is one that any newcomer can experience during their first summer in the city. You’ll find yourself one warm summer evening cycling through the city, coasting down a bridge in the Grachtengordel over glowing cobbles and past terraced bars, perhaps two drinks down yourself. And the city will feel like it's your personal theme park. Like it was made to enjoy life. Roll through the city with friends, recline in the parks or terraces, swim in its waters that thread the city like veins.

And then, once you’ve done a few of the Netherlands’ humid winters, you have to start scratching around for something more. To understand what tied us to the Netherlands we had to sift through the silt of easy living in search of the country’s identity and our place in it. If you’re a privileged native English speaker, you have to stop coasting on the coat tails of being understood everywhere, such that you can start to understand the Dutch said out loud and not said out loud. Finally, you have to piece together the fractured blue pottery of Dutch culture. 

The country’s peculiarities, like beloved quirks of personality, contain light and shadow. The reason they are good at some things is the same reason they are bad at others; and this dichotomy casts a light on your own values. In our ten years in the Netherlands, my partner and I wrangled with our own hang ups, which started as gripes and, in later years, shifted to something like reconciliation. As an example, I was on a terrace in Westerpark when I heard a Canadian say with regret that he found the country sometimes “low adrenaline”. Yes, the Netherlands’ high degree of social organization does seem to buffer you against the precarity that “charges” the atmosphere of other cities. Yet, at the same time, this does feel a strange thing to want or even romanticise. Welcome to the Netherlands: there’s good routes into housing for people living rough but it does mean you will never experience the technicolour of inequality!

Migrants and expats will often make a conceptual leap between the Netherlands’ social organization and Doe Normaal, like it’s a guardrail towards conformity; an invisible hand to shave off the rough edges of expressiveness and individuality in society. Maybe the fact that, compared to most other countries, everyone in the Netherlands lives within a narrower range of income means there are smaller differences in difference between people. When a large proportion of a population has a decent standard of living, do societal extremes start creeping towards the middle? A Doe Normaal Distribution? (Sorry). The phrase is more often linked to the country’s religious hinterland, which is the Calvinist sensibility for the unfussy, the down-to-earth, and - depending on your philosophical persuasion - the fallibility of ego. This may be the facet of Dutch culture that most starkly divides outsiders. My partner and I would fall on either side of the line depending on the issue. Women foregoing makeup at work? How beautiful! Bread and cheese for lunch? Why do you hate yourselves? 

It was only in my last year in the Netherlands that I felt I scratched beyond the surface of a Dutch philosophy. I started sensing the imprint created by the second World War on present day Dutch society, how it differed to the UK, and understanding how these allied countries’ different traumas forged different paths and collective psychologies. The occupation and Hongerwinter cast a long shadow that I saw reflected in the sobriety of certain Dutch cultures and tropes. I could somehow feel that beautiful restraint walking through the dunes of the Kennermerduinen or De Nieuwe Ooster. For this reason, and I mean this with the greatest respect, I think the Netherlands would be a great place to die. There may not be monumental mountain ranges or deep forests, but there is a lot of peace carved into the Netherlands by the careful balance between natural and man-made geography.

For this reason, and I mean this with the greatest respect, I think the Netherlands would be a great place to die.

Another wrinkle in the otherwise smooth cultural landscape of the Netherlands is a fear you may have experienced. You have mistakenly put your trash in the wrong communal, underground waste container (an elegant solution in space-limited cities). You have stopped/not stopped at the red light while cycling (delete as appropriate). Whatever social sin you have just committed, be sure that - your body will sense it before seeing - a buurman is close by. And, and as they tell you exactly what you’ve done wrong, is that faint glimmer in their expression delight? ‘Tjso! Dit is niet de bak voor milk karton. Jah, klopt it is karton but speciaal karton is voor de restafval!’ Yet, beyond being thankful for having the best expression to describe this character - mierenneuker - after ten years, I can also see this behaviour as an expression of the pride and social responsibility that comes with living in close quarters with so many people. For our last two years in Amsterdam, my partner and I have owned an apartment in the IJplein area of Amsterdam Noord. One of the most welcome pieces of news to leave with is that the industrial buildings on the Ambeeldstraat - where you can find the institutions of Monk climbing gym, FC Hyena, De Goudfazant, among others - will be preserved amidst the planned redevelopment of the Hamerkwartier. This particular stretch of concrete next to the IJ has long been a favourite corner of Amsterdam for me and my partner. Sit out on a sunny day or moonlit evening and look over the river as the inland barges quietly carry their vast cargoes, backlit by Oosteneiland tenements. It is a perfect expression of modern Amsterdam: a post-industrial riviera that can be directly traced back to its mercantile and maritime past. 

I cannot bemoan the city’s plans for redeveloping this area if every Tom, Dik and Ari agrees Amsterdam doesn’t have enough housing. I hope the city’s planners, however, do not politely sanitize the dark and interesting cultural innovations happening in former industrialised spaces in Amsterdam Noord. The mid-rise tower residencies that already dominate nearby NDSM and Buiksloterham are inoffensive, yet they risk erasing a stronghold of the city’s cultural identity. Along with its neighbour the Papaverhoek, the Hamerkwartier is one of the city’s only incubators for cultural innovation due its wealth of empty warehouses distant from residential housing. Together, they host some of the country’s finest cultural venues: Garage Noord, Skatecafe, Het Dorp, De Ceuvel, Café Soleil, SUBCULT, De VerbroerderIJ.

Although we have travelled far over ten years, I am reconciled to leaving a country I am now only just working out. I’m comforted as I leave the Netherlands as a proud Dutchier version of myself. I arrived here as a British person who would apologise to a person who just walked into me. I leave as someone who understands the profound power of speaking simply and directly, having learned from people who don’t waste words. And, I hope to take that sense of duty towards my community as well. This common feeling is a good way of weaving people together, particularly against the atomised living in cities. So, you can call me a paid-up subscriber to Dutch Directness and, if not a mierenneuker, a sympathetic party to proud buren. 

Thank you, Amsterdam. Thank you, the Netherlands. I will miss your joined-up infrastructure, particularly cycling and digital. I will miss your built-in vakantiegeld. I will miss how seriously you take leisure time after work. I will miss your 70s municipal architecture for social housing and public buildings. I will miss the gemeente’s map of every tree in the city. I will miss your continued forward-thinking even as the latest government coalition falls. I will miss the ultraviolet colour reflected by the vijvers in the dunes. I will miss your plain speaking and rozijnebolletjes met kaas. I will leave behind your cost of groceries and the monopolies of your biggest supermarkets; the six-month advance planning of social events; Zwarte Piet, and; the segregation of some of your inner-city neighbourhoods.

Thank you for carrying us for ten years. Amsterdam is a fitting backdrop for a formative decade. We hope to be back soon and regularly. You’re not gone and never forgotten. Because, make no mistake, whether you’re off a dirt road in some untrammelled Colombian province, or halfway up an Altai mountain only accessible by foot, the first other Europeans you bump into will be unmistakably blonde, tanned, and slender. And, even though you know it’s coming, you’re still surprised when the youngest boy (Tijs, undoubtedly) says ‘Mam, wat eten we?’ It will bring extra comfort in years to come.