Tuesday, April 25 and Wednesday, April 26, 2023 – Amsterdam – We started our morning with an early tram ride to the museum quarter – a little too early it turns out since it was cold and a bit rainy and we had 45 minutes until the Van Gogh Museum opened. But it was also fortunate, since we decided to wander around the neighborhood and discovered the pleasant area along the canals near Spiegelgracht – where beautiful brick homes with polished black doors and gleaming red shutters line the canals. There was none of the seediness, or crowds, that we had experienced our first day, and the streets were cleaner, but still surprisingly not that clean. I know that coming from Portland, where the downtown is basically a garbage pit, I don’t have any grounds to criticize anyone. But still, it’s a bit of a mine-field here – you have to watch your feet to avoid stepping in something while at the same time keeping your eye scanning for the ubiquitous bikes. Especially deadly are the harried moms who hurtle down the street at full speed, a bobsled full of small children attached to the front, car seats and helmets be damned.

Ok, back to Van Gogh. We arrived back at the museum with our timed-entry tickets just in time – to get in a massive line. Since the museum was sold out for the day, these were all ticket holders like ourselves, eager to get in to see the largest collection of the Dutch artist’s work in the world. It is an unlikely collection, mainly from the many paintings Vincent sent his brother Theo, who believed in and supported his older brother’s artistic endeavor. Theo kept his brother’s paintings, since no one was buying, and when he died months after Vincent, Theo’s widow, Jo Gogh-Bonger, dedicated her life to preserving and promoting Vincent’s legacy.

Van Gogh may have been hated in his own time – dismissed by other artists, feared by small children, a misfit who couldn’t keep a job and quarreled with his parents incessantly – but he certainly is adored today. As the crowds poured in to the lobby, scrambling for audio-tour guides and the coat check, I had a moment of true inspiration. I looked at the map and saw there were four floors to the museum. It is chronological treatment of Van Gogh’s life, starting with his dark, clumsy early works and his self-portraits on the lower floors, and slowly rising, floor by floor to his masterpieces from the end of his life displayed at the very top. I looked at the crowds, and at Rick, and said, follow me – we are headed for the fourth floor! We raced up the stairs and found the galleries populated only with a few chatting guards getting ready for the hordes to ascend. We had a glorious 30 minutes practically alone with some of Van Gogh’s most beautiful and iconic paintings — seascapes, fields in Provence, a peach blossom in a glass of water, his glorious almond blossoms on a blue background (made for his newborn nephew who would one day help inaugurate this museum), a man sowing grain against a halo-like golden sun and green sky, the twisted and almost surrealist tree roots he painted just before his suicide at age 37. We wandered through the galleries and were able to spend some time alone with each painting, before descending into the lower floors, sort of like Dante descending into various rings of hell. The next level down wasn’t too crowded, but by the first level, the crowds were unbearable – it was impossible to see or even get close to the paintings, especially the many self-portraits. It was a Mona Lisa moment. As in, nothing about art at all, but mostly about the selfies.

We were fortunate to follow up our museum visit yesterday with a road trip today one hour east of Amsterdam to see the Kroller-Muller Museum, which has the world second-largest collection of Van Gogh paintings, as well as an extensive modern sculpture garden set in a huge park. We had hoped (and had read) that because the museum was so far off the beaten path, that it would be quiet. But we found out, as we arrived a half hour after the museum opened, that we had been beaten to the punch by no less than five tour buses and several smaller minivans, including a large tour group of Chinese speakers, a few Japanese families and lots of Italians and French. Van Gogh is a global phenomenon. Fortunately, his work is phenomenal, and we had some lovely time in the galleries dedicated to him. Helene Muller, an early 20th century heiress, had purchased a number of Van Gogh paintings, as well as other modernist art, and this museum in the countryside was built to house it all. We loved the collection – a peach tree in bloom dedicated to his recently deceased uncle, a drawbridge in sharp, limpid colors, iconic portraits of his friend the postman and his wife, haunting cypresses, enigmatic haystacks, a reaper under a yellow sky and sun, lost in the golden yellow wheat field. Each painting seemed to express Van Gogh’s emotions – you could almost feel his passion in the fast brushwork, the thick paint, the movement that seemed to make objects like the trees vibrate. I can look at paintings endlessly online, or in classes, but standing in front of them and seeing the surface and the intensity of color, is like nothing else. You have such a sense of their physicality, that this strange and brilliant and very tormented young man had created them. It was very moving.

We decided to skip the planned bike ride in the park, since it was cold and rather bleak out. So we drove to Utrecht, a university town (and the fourth largest city in the Netherlands) that dates back to the ancient Romans. We wandered the beautiful canals, admired the houses dating back to 1300 and watched the 21st century inhabitants set up their stalls for the biggest party of the year – King’s Day, tomorrow, April 27, the birthday of King Willem-Alexander and apparently a day when the whole country goes berserk, wears orange (for the Princes of Orange), and loses its collective mind. In Utrecht they apparently start a day early, explained one young mother laying out her old clothes for sale. But despite the main squares being filled with huge beer pavilions and tents and stages of unknown purpose, we were charmed by the medieval winding streets, the busy street side restaurants – all filled not with tourists (like ourselves) but with locals out enjoying their city. The average age seemed to be about 21, no doubt because of the university, so it felt vibrant and fun. We loved Utrecht and would have loved to spent more time there. Next time…