If you are from Kolkata and looking for a bit of the old College Street in Amsterdam, you have to visit the Oudemanhuispoort or the Old Man House Gate or simply The Gate.
While our tour guide, Jacob took a sharp turn and disappeared into the doors between the Oudezijds Achterburgwal and Kloveniersburgwal near the Staalstraat, we stood looking deep into the muddy canal water - just to see if there was any sign of the drowned bicycles Jacob was mentioning. The group of tourists that Jacob was in charge of was a diverse set of humans with only two things in common – they were all very tall (excluding me) and all spoke English as their native language (again, excluding me). The fact that they were all intrigued by Amsterdam is a given, so I do not count that shared interest. Armed (?) with long legs, they all walked ahead of us.
Midget Bangalis, me and my friend had to run and catch up with them every time. And most of the times, we were too lost in our admiration of the sights and sounds to even realize that we had been left behind.
So we ran after them again. Only this time, the scene that greeted us inside the large heavy doors was something slightly familiar. Bookshops. In carts, in cabinets, in makeshift stalls by the road. We had come to a unique book market inside a college square! A closer look revealed that most of the books were secondhand. Two steps ahead, we approached a covered alleyway smelling of weed and old paper. We had entered the Gate!
The Gate dates from 1602 and the building inside has been remodeled several times. The place served as a hospital for poor old men and women. In 1786, the walkway was turned into a covered alley (just behind the gates we entered) with eighteen little shops for rent to gold and silver smiths. They were called ‘winkelkasten’ (‘winkel’= shop and ‘kasten’ = cabinet) because they were too small for a shop and too big for a cabinet. In 1879 when the nearby ‘Botermarkt’ (Butter market) was shut down the book merchants from that place
restarted their book business in one of the ‘winkelkasten’ in The Gate. Since 1879 the Oudemanhuispoort is home to Amsterdam’s best known daily book market. And in 1880 the University of Amsterdam claimed it as its own.
Here, you'd rub shoulders with University of Amsterdam professors thumbing through volumes of Homer and Nietzsche. On week days you'd find students leafing through cheaper versions of revised latest editions. Some would end up buying, some just spend the day browsing. We saw a few locals buying. And the rest were tourists like us. Most books are in Dutch, though quite a few were English editions. Like we found and bought Salinger and Murakami (translated :) ). Five euros for a book. And mine was a present.
The book sellers looked as ancient as the Gate themselves. Silver haired, wrinkles lacing their smiles and frowns, they looked like fairy god fathers waiting to weave their magic spell on you. And what magic theirs was!
There is an interesting but a sad story about one of the popular booksellers in the Gate, Barend Boekman (1869-1942). In 1939 he celebrated his seventieth birthday, along with his fiftieth anniversary as a book trader in the Gate with his fellow booksellers. But he was a Jewish Dutch at the wrong place and the wrong time. Along with 100.000 Dutch Jews, Barend Boekman and his wife were deported to the German concentration camps. Both died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on September 14, 1942.
Menno Hertzberger(1897-1982), another Dutch Jewish bookseller, who survived the Second World War has written Barend's story in a small book, “Barend Boekman van de Oudemanhuispoort” (Amsterdam, 1955) to remember and celebrate the life and time of Barend.
The book, I hear, is now a collector’s item.
While our tour guide, Jacob took a sharp turn and disappeared into the doors between the Oudezijds Achterburgwal and Kloveniersburgwal near the Staalstraat, we stood looking deep into the muddy canal water - just to see if there was any sign of the drowned bicycles Jacob was mentioning. The group of tourists that Jacob was in charge of was a diverse set of humans with only two things in common – they were all very tall (excluding me) and all spoke English as their native language (again, excluding me). The fact that they were all intrigued by Amsterdam is a given, so I do not count that shared interest. Armed (?) with long legs, they all walked ahead of us.
Midget Bangalis, me and my friend had to run and catch up with them every time. And most of the times, we were too lost in our admiration of the sights and sounds to even realize that we had been left behind.
So we ran after them again. Only this time, the scene that greeted us inside the large heavy doors was something slightly familiar. Bookshops. In carts, in cabinets, in makeshift stalls by the road. We had come to a unique book market inside a college square! A closer look revealed that most of the books were secondhand. Two steps ahead, we approached a covered alleyway smelling of weed and old paper. We had entered the Gate!
The Gate dates from 1602 and the building inside has been remodeled several times. The place served as a hospital for poor old men and women. In 1786, the walkway was turned into a covered alley (just behind the gates we entered) with eighteen little shops for rent to gold and silver smiths. They were called ‘winkelkasten’ (‘winkel’= shop and ‘kasten’ = cabinet) because they were too small for a shop and too big for a cabinet. In 1879 when the nearby ‘Botermarkt’ (Butter market) was shut down the book merchants from that place
restarted their book business in one of the ‘winkelkasten’ in The Gate. Since 1879 the Oudemanhuispoort is home to Amsterdam’s best known daily book market. And in 1880 the University of Amsterdam claimed it as its own.
Here, you'd rub shoulders with University of Amsterdam professors thumbing through volumes of Homer and Nietzsche. On week days you'd find students leafing through cheaper versions of revised latest editions. Some would end up buying, some just spend the day browsing. We saw a few locals buying. And the rest were tourists like us. Most books are in Dutch, though quite a few were English editions. Like we found and bought Salinger and Murakami (translated :) ). Five euros for a book. And mine was a present.
The book sellers looked as ancient as the Gate themselves. Silver haired, wrinkles lacing their smiles and frowns, they looked like fairy god fathers waiting to weave their magic spell on you. And what magic theirs was!
There is an interesting but a sad story about one of the popular booksellers in the Gate, Barend Boekman (1869-1942). In 1939 he celebrated his seventieth birthday, along with his fiftieth anniversary as a book trader in the Gate with his fellow booksellers. But he was a Jewish Dutch at the wrong place and the wrong time. Along with 100.000 Dutch Jews, Barend Boekman and his wife were deported to the German concentration camps. Both died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on September 14, 1942.
Menno Hertzberger(1897-1982), another Dutch Jewish bookseller, who survived the Second World War has written Barend's story in a small book, “Barend Boekman van de Oudemanhuispoort” (Amsterdam, 1955) to remember and celebrate the life and time of Barend.
The book, I hear, is now a collector’s item.
