Old Amsterdam

Some of my earliest memories are connected to the area where I lived as a toddler, the famously disreputable Tkalčićeva street where I played in the streets and parks, not understanding what was actually going on around me - looking back, I see poor people making the best with time that was given to them, but there was a lot of poverty, hand-to-mouth life, alcoholism, wife beatings, etc. Come to think of it, two things were constantly missing; money and prejudice. Because the crowd who lived in these crooked little houses was themselves on a funky side, being an alcoholic or a streetwalker was nothing unusual for them. They were very accepting about that. However, back than I had no idea who are these people and was thrilled to death discovering old basements, dusty attics and houses that have generally been in various stages of complete neglect. To this day I have preserved that, perhaps ridiculous kick, where I just love to see old houses with their amazing stories of the past times. Mind you, not only elegant buildings but actually really, really old huts where roof is leaning one way and the door another. Why exactly I am so drawn to the old houses, I have no idea except that I feel they speak to me and I can sense there was a story here. (Above mentioned street of my childhood eventually got cleaned up and is now sort of chic promenade but I never ever go there)

I have several very interesting old pictures taken around Amsterdam that fascinated me for the longest time and I get a kick out of them. The first photo was taken by famous Jacob Olie in 1892 and it shows a completely abysmal scene of some incredibly impoverished huts on a canal that was very soon covered and later became De Clercqstraat. As with all the houses inside the canal belt, sewers were connected directly to canals, so you can imagine the smell that was going on. 

The next photo comes from 1916. and it shows typical life in what was The Old Jewish area Uilenburg that in a modern days is very much re-constructed, re-designed and re-populated. As expected, people who comment on these photos are all glorifying some nostalgic nonsense, while in reality people were dying from TB left and right, living in a overcrowded tiny basements and it was basically a slum. 

The last picture shows crooked, old houses in a oldest part of town, around Oudekerksplein and they are still here, except nowadays eclipsed with gaudy signs advertising restaurants, bars and yes, girls in the windows. But the way we see it here was probably going on for centuries. To me this is like the most exciting time machine. I needed to post this because too often people have idea about Amsterdam as some romantic place full of canals, swans, bridges and quaint little houses - true, but as with every big city, there is also a slum, gutter and survival going on.