summer vacation

I am back in Amman after a lovely vacation in the long summer light and cool shade of northern Europe.   Back in Europe, the weather was perfect.  Here in Amman, the plane landed in the early evening in 43C/110F degree heat and - atypically - no breeze. It's stifling.  My cold water taps are running hot as the sun bakes the water cistern on the roof.  I am bathed in sweat and the feeling of clothes on skin is close to intolerable.  Small wonder Adam and Eve - living just next door by the Euphrates River - ran around naked.

So, in addition to being a nice summer vacation, my trip was a wonderful break from all this heat - calm, cool, green.  I spent time in Amsterdam with some friends where we enjoyed bikes, book stores, great food and excellent wine consumed in gardens and on beautiful, leafy, breezy terraces.  To the amusement and puzzlement of my friends, my whole first day in Amsterdam was spent staring at and commenting on trees - their size, greenness, amazing variety and incredible beauty.  In retrospect, I was experiencing a little bit of cultural dislocation...

Amsterdam was then followed by some glorious days on the island of Vlieland in the North Sea, two hours by ferry from the mainland.

Much of Vlieland is a nature preserve/ bird sanctuary with wild dunes and amazing, pristine white sand beaches and big surf.  It is car-free - with the exception of service vehicles - and the one little village of Oost-Vlieland is straight out of a Dutch picture postcard with a long main street lined by 17th century brick houses, happy Fries horses grazing in green fields, and a big harbour filled with traditional sailing barges.  Basically:  my definition of paradise.

(The only thing slightly off-putting on Vlieland:  the blondeness!  I started keeping track of the blonde to brunette ratio in public places - restaurants, shops, etc. - usually around 3 - 4 blondes for every dark-haired person.  And let's not even talk about the blue eyes to brown eyes ratio - even more extreme!  It made me realize I was experiencing a way of life enjoyed by a minutely marginal subset of this global population.  Which in its own way felt like fascinating cultural anthropology:  observing leisure behaviours in the traditional summer habitat of the northern european.)


As always happens when I am there, Amsterdam got me thinking about cities and the ingredients that make great places.  It's all going on there - interesting streets, wonderful parks, great architecture that is always changing, ever new - without uprooting the old -  and that amazing transportation network - cycling heaven.   I made a special request of my friend to spend at least one day seeing art - not something I do very often in Amman.  Originally we had planned to go to Rotterdam to do that - since many of the major galleries and museums in Amsterdam are closed for renovations - but in the end we stayed put and toured some smaller spaces and interesting corners of the city.


We took off on our bikes at 10am and spent the day roaming around the city.  We saw some nice work and that was a pleasure.  But here's what this tour mostly helped me realize:  the city of Amsterdam has really figured out how to reuse and recycle its urban spaces.  And fast.  And in an incredibly creative, fearless and (compared to Toronto, anyway) non-fussy way.

We went to the FOAM, the Photograph Museum of Amsterdam, and, later, to the Huis Marseille, a private photography museum.  These are both located in lovely historic 16th or 17th Century Canal houses that have been converted into art galleries.  There is nothing particularly novel about historic houses being turned into galleries in this way - these two just happen to be superbly located and beautifully done.

We then rode over to the new Central Public Library of Amsterdam - a beautiful contemporary building that is central to the revitalization of the city's eastern docklands (sound familiar, Toronto?).  which are transforming incredibly rapidly and in such an exhilarating, interesting way.  Change happens fast here.  But what makes it work is that everywhere you turn there is a strong emphasis on beautiful public spaces and design detail and pedestrian and cycling infrastructure that leaves me feeling a mixture of envy and pity for poor Toronto.

The biggest revelation of the day for me, though, was a trip to the Noord neighbourhood - a quick hop on the ferry across the river.   This part of town is seeing a lot of change - a formerly industrial neighbourhood of large factories slowly turning into residential enclaves or light industry.  A similar tale to other de-industrializing cities in Western Europe and North America.

Here's what I saw that I loved:  a willingness on the part of officialdom to turn this part of town over to young people, and often creative people - architects, artists, designers, skateboarders, whoever - to shape the neighbourhood.

In part this is being done by providing incredibly cheap housing in refurbished shipping containers.   In part through handing over an abandoned - and vast - former shipbuilding factory - a giant hangar, really - over to a group of artists who have rebuilt the interior, serviced it, plumbed it and turned what was fallow space into a network of studios.   Plus a skate park, filled with teenagers, who are using the space in another cool way.   Great things are brewing

I like that this transformation from factory to studio space is not overly controlled or dictated from above.  There doesn't appear to be an obsession with health and safety regulations.  I like that it is a space built by the people who need it and use it and they care about it, because it is all about protecting their livelihoods.  They are creative people and risk takers who are establishing the neighbourhood.  I like that it is creating a whole scene that other people want to be a part of.

It makes me think a lot about how a city goes about creating new neighbourhoods from brownfields.  Maybe its not by spending lots of money on a waterfront park or a stadium, say, but by attracting and handing control over to smart, risk-taking, young people.  The kind of people that other people want to be around.

After our day out on the town, we rode back home to my friend's place - a converted 19th century schoolhouse that has been turned into art studios and a daycare and co-op apartments - and there we had a nice glass of wine on the roof terrace. A day well spent.

As another aside:  when I was in Amsterdam, I was interviewed on the topic of cities and the environment by Radio Netherlands Worldwide for their weekly radio program "Earth Beat".  If you are interested in hearing my voice (which personally makes me cringe!) here's the link below.  Click on the most recent episode entitled "Cities That Work":

http://www.rnw.nl/english/radioprogramme/earthbeat

Life Goes On

It is 9pm and the stars are out.  After a searing hot day in the mid forties, the temperature is hovering around a pleasant thirty degrees celcius and a lovely breeze is blowing.   Without question, the early evening is the best time of day here.  A friend just got back to Amman after a month-long summer holiday in Scotland and Provence.  I asked her if she missed anything when she was away.  "The colour of the sky at dusk," she said, "and the incredible calm that happens in the evening amidst all the chaos."

I am sitting on the patio of Books@ - a neighbourhood cafe-bookstore that has a breath-taking location on a hillside overlooking East Amman.  Like every night this month, there's an endless spectacle of wedding fireworks from the nearby hilltops.  The rush has been on for weddings the last couple of weeks - i think to get them out of the way before Ramadan begins this coming Wednesday.   Or at least that is the only explanation I have for the non-stop nightly round of drums and gunshots and honking and fireworks.  Tonight's displays have been particularly impressive.   Meanwhile, people on the patio are lounging around on sofas or sitting at tables drinking tea or smoking argileh pipes.  Or drinking beer - also something that won't be seen once Ramadan begins.  The atmosphere is very relaxed; taking it easy is a pastime that people have honed to a fine art here. I am learning to get better at it myself.  The heat definitely helps.

And this is where I encounter the eternal paradox, the circle that I cannot square in my head:  how can a place so serene exist amidst so much turmoil?   This past week saw an upswing in violence in Iraq with more rockets in Baghdad and a serious bombing in Basra.  Several friends here whose work for the UN focuses on reconstruction in Iraq say the situation is definitely worsening - a couple of them just got back from (55 degree heat!) Baghdad and were very pessimistic about the situation.  Meanwhile, last Tuesday, a serious border skirmish occurred between Israel and Lebanon - the first since 2006 - with 3 or 4 deaths and a lot of sabre-rattling from Hezbollah in the aftermath.  Also last Tuesday, missiles shot from an unknown location in the Sinai desert targeting Eilat in Israel landed off course in the south of this country, in Aqaba.  The story is similar to a news item from last April that I posted about.  Only this time a person - a taxi driver - was killed and several more injured.   The wife of a close colleague was in Aqaba for work that day (he is a very close colleague.  He sits 18 inches away from me... and can hear me chew my lunch every day... poor dear) . The rocket landed on a taxi right outside the Intercontinental Hotel where she was staying.   She could see the aftermath out the window.

And again, just like in April when this happened before, none of these events really raised eyebrows or generated conversation.  I think a group of us chatted in an off hand way for about 5 minutes during a work break about the rocket landing in Aqaba and whether my colleague's wife was OK.  Just a mild curiousity.  We all just assumed that she was fine and there was nothing to worry about.  Then we went back to work, reviewing excel spread sheets and pouring over aerial maps.  I try and compare this reaction to what would have happened in the office in Toronto if one of my colleagues' spouses had been away on business and looked out the window of the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, say, to see a taxi flattened by a scud missile and dead and injured people lying around.  I venture to say that a lot of chatter - maybe even some tears of concern - would have been generated.

So it is all a bit strange.  My general experience is that the reaction to gossip and minor events here is much more amplified that I am used to.  Small slights often get blown out of proportion.  But when it comes to things that would constitute 'big' or 'newsworthy' events in Canada - bombings, landslides, city-wide blackouts - they tend to get shrugged off as nothing more than the minor annoyances of everyday life.  I even have to admit I kind of like the nonchalance.

But it still doesn't quite make sense to me.  And I have to wonder, relaxing on the patio, whether I am continuing to play the role of the Sissy Spacek character in the film Missing.  Am I witnessing some kind of distintegration?  In it but not of it.  I guess that's the eternal mystery of being here.