Listening to Amsterdam

Sounds. I've never thought of myself as being particularly oriented towards auditory experience, but even before we arrived in Holland I found myself looking forward to some of the sounds that would be different here. Police and ambulance sirens. The announcements in train stations, which are often preceded by a sort of musical arpeggio. And of course, the sound of people speaking in Dutch.

I was going to wait to write about sounds until I had made some recordings I could post, but it is very difficult to catch the best sounds. They pass quickly, and frequently I am not conscious of them until after they have passed and I hear the imaginary echo in my head. So if I wait to mention this until I have a decent library of recordings, the thought will probably pass me by, too.

Clara's very first experience of Europe was a sound. We were coming along the jetway from our plane at Schiphol Airport when we heard a siren in the distance. "It sounds like a movie," she said, and I had to agree. The two-note repetition of a European siren (I think the interval is a fourth), which doesn't swoop like an American siren, is fixed in my mind in association with movies about the second world war.

Another sound that has become a friend to me here is the recorded voice of the man who announces the stops on the trams. It's the same voice on all the lines, a rich, deep, friendly voice, a little bit cultivated, and very precise. At some of the stops he repeats his announcement in English, and I love the sound of his British-inflected English in a Dutch accent as he says, "While exiting the vehicle, please remember to check out with your public transport chipcard."

My bedroom on the second floor of our apartment (first floor to Europeans) overlooks the street, and it's a quiet street so pedestrian voices carry. Not being able to understand their Dutch makes it easier to sleep through the conversations, but English words are often thrown casually into conversations and the recognizable phrases that float up to my room are always a welcome surprise.

Other characteristic sounds I can hear from my window are bicycle bells (just like the one you had on your tricycle as a child) and the rattle of chains as people lock and unlock their bikes from the long racks in front of our building. Everyone here (us included) uses heavy, heavy chains and padlocks to deter thieves. Taking the chain on and off always makes me feel a little like Marley's ghost.

The sound of footsteps echoing down the street is a really pleasant sound, one that speaks of long narrow streets, infrequent car traffic and nice shoes (it is astonishing how many women wear heels here, both on their bikes and along brick-paved streets). Our neighborhood, De Pijp ("the pipe") is said to be so named because of its long, pipe-like narrow streets.

This morning I went to the street market on the way back from dropping the kids at school, and the vendors were still setting up. The sounds of the vendors calling to one another, laughing and joking, punctuated by the occasional crash of a piece of lumber falling into place (they set up huge canopies for their booths) or the beep of a truck backing up to a loading dock made me feel like I was in a movie. You could construct the entire story of market day using just the sounds.

But my very favorite sound is the sound of a motor scooter accelerating down a long, empty street. It's a sound I associate with European cities (although perhaps also with San Francisco). I'm certainly not a motorhead in any sense of the term, so I don't know what it is about the sound but it seems to speak of freedom, playfulness, a touch of danger and a dash of devil-may-care. Do you remember the New Wave film Diva, about a young postal delivery boy who finds a bootleg tape of an aria in the satchel of his scooter? Perhaps that's where my fixation on this sound began.

It's a romantic, evocative sound. I'll do my best to capture it and post it here but for now you just have to imagine it. Or go see Diva.