if you go to the website, www.blijburg.nl, you can't help but be carried away to a dream world. as you browse through photos of this seeming vacation destination, you can hear the calming ocean waves and singing seagulls in the background. everything about this website makes this beach seem quite appealing. a holiday at the sea only a 15 minute tram ride from the heart of the city! can this be true?! i have to admit, i had high hopes of this little excursion--something to take me away from doing what i always do in Amsterdam...
patricia and i stepped off the tram, and we immediately noticed a plethora of stone and concrete surrounding us...what the website claimed to be a "3 minute walk" turned into a 15 minute walk. everything was a construction zone. multiple cranes jetted up into the sky, piles of dirt and brick salted our path as we continued toward the "beach." we couldn't quite reach the waters' edge, as the sand was surrounded by tall wire fencing. we had to laugh..."this is Blijburg aan zee?" roughly translated as happyland at the sea. what was even more hilarious was the sign that welcomed us to this "fabulous" happyland-as you see above. But as you enter in, you see ever more clearly how incredibly deceiving the website really is. it felt like we were stepping into the back end of an old beaten down trailer park. porto-potties lined the hill, and everything considered "beach" was downwind. i don't know if you will believe what i saw next as we settled onto our beach blanket.
I learned a new Dutch word: Drijfzand. Can you take a guess from the look of the the sign? Quicksand. Yes, it's real. They discovered quicksand on the beach, only the day before when someone had fallen in! i couldn't believe it!
we still made the most of our time. we tossed the frisbee around, breaking out into random dance to the pumping music coming from the outdoor cafe, and we took a break to watch the sunset over the skyline of cranes. it was a strange night. there were moments of feeling like i was transported into some kind of fairy tale like the "princess bride" (my only reference to quicksand)... or as if i was back in Colorado at the edge of a reservation camp (i don't think there is a tepee in any other place in Holland!)...but there were also moments of feeling like i was in the middle east, meddling in a war torn land. maybe that's being a bit dramatic--but it did cross my mind!
whoever designed Blijburg certainly has quite the vision. and maybe one day it will be up to standards. but sometimes i wonder if this facade of a holiday getaway isn't a metaphor for the way a lot of things work in this world. on the outside, the appearance of things is so much greater, is so much happier than actual reality. it's something i've been pondering lately. so, if you were wondering whether or not you should visit Blijburg aan zee... well. now you know the truth.
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