Sailo5 Amsterdam - Tall Ship Festivalclick to start video
Sometimes a city is momentarily transformed, leaving it’s daily metropolitan struggle and strife to focus on and celebrate its roots. Such was the case in last August in Amsterdam. I live in the transformed and revitalised harbour area on the eastern side of the central city, on a group of islands called Zeeburg and surrounded by water. This location is often the stage for the four yearly Tall Ship Festival - this year it was Sail o5. All the famous operational Tall Ships from all the great seafaring nations of the world – from Chilli to Iceland - gathered here, just around the corner from my house, to show themselves proudly to Europe. Within the space of four days more than three million visitors came to see the unbelievably spectacular event. For these four days Amsterdam was momentarily released from the stranglehold of the blanket of shock, disbelief and shame of an event the year before that changed the city for good - and from which Amsterdam has not yet recovered. In these for days Amsterdam was imbued with some of the magic that drew me to this city in the first place many years ago, and there was a true and tangible sense of civil pride. You could see and feel what an incredible place The Port of Amsterdam must have been a hundred year ago and more, when those elegant, slender masts still adorned the waterfront, beckoning young men to adventure in far off places. History was truly alive and kicking. Just around the corner from my house in the other direction, now just over a year ago, another event took place in a very dull and ordinary shopping street around nine in the morning when everybody was on their way to work. Theo van Gogh, the director, filmmaker and criticaster was ritually slaughtered by a radical Moslem in the middle of the street. After shooting him several times the assassin calmly attempted to ritually decapitate Van Gogh with a ceremonial knife but ceased his efforts due to lack of progress and calmly walked away commenting “he had it coming to him” in perfect Dutch to an astounded onlooker. The trail has gripped the nation for the past year as the unimaginable details became public bit by bit. These were indeed truly difficult parts of reality to deal with. But for those four days Amsterdam again acquired the frivolous innocence for which it was famous.
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