Last Summer, while Mrs. Pinetar and I were in Europe, we did a little day thing in Amsterdam to see the Anne Frank Museum and see what all the fuss was about. When we got there, I was shot so I went into a little coffee bar for a double espresso and nearly got knocked over by the weed fumes coming out of the joint. I had the coffee. I needed it. They kind of looked at me funny as if to say, “…no one gets COFFEE in here!”. The espress was lousy, which led me to formulate Foggy’s axiom of coffee in Amsterdam: “The more dope they sell, the lousier the doppio (that’s coffee)”.
Seeing the Ann Frank house and going inside what is basically an in-tact specimen of Amsterdamian architecture, made me realize that moving someone’s furniture up and down the sharply rising staircases would really not be fun. To save valuable space, the staircases are all rise, and no run. They are veritable ladders. So how the heck are you moving a bed or sofa up that pitch?
Well, the old time guys had the same problem. Their solution was to build all the houses slightly out-of-level over the street in the front. And this is something I noticed too, but didn’t understand until the canal-boat tour guide said it. It felt to me like the whole town was sinking slowly, because you just had this sense that NOTHING was level and everything was leaning this way and that. I have a good eye for level and nothing is level and it’s to the point where you feel creepy because it is just EVERYWHERE!
And then the tour guide solved the mystery and told us that ALL buildings in Amsterdam are built to overhang the street (and yes, there is also some random settling to add to the confusion). That means, that you could put your back to the building fronts and if rain was falling straight down (it almost never is but work with me here), you would not get wet!
Also each building has a huge beam on top right on-center. That beam has a heavy duty pulley in it and that is how they hauled furniture and other large items up and down without dragging the stuff up the side of the building and breaking the stuff and/or, the windows! Pretty ingenious. Also pretty odd when you look around and feel like the streets are closing in on you!
I tried very hard to photograph it but that is no easy task. This shot is about the best I did. The camera is as near to straight (vertical) as I can get it and the buildings on the left show nicely, this pronounced pitch, in, to the street. Notice the beams with the pulleys that come out of each roof gable crown.
How is this done in modern times? Well, a few days later in Brussels, Belgium, we saw the same problem tackled thusly:
There’s a pretty big sofa sideways on a lifter. They zipped it up the lift and in the next photo, you see it at the top:
Here is that same hopeless sofa going into the window, easy-as-pie. I don’t want to know what these guys charge but I think for most of us who have done this for friends, it’s worth it. –fog
