The canal in IKEA’s Amsterdam photo
When we moved to our apartment in Amsterdam, all its walls were bare except for the living room wall where this cheesy, mass-produced IKEA print hung:
After a few days of living in Amsterdam, we began to wonder where this picture was taken. Not once did it occur to us to consult the all-knowing internet (our old-fashionedness manifests itself in strange ways sometimes). Yesterday, while randomly browsing some of the pictures I had taken earlier this year, I came across a picture that looked vaguely familiar. As I looked up from my computer screen to the print on the wall, it dawned on me that I had finally found the canal where the original had been clicked.
The wife didn’t believe it at first, but once we compared the details, we became sure that my picture and the IKEA print depicted the same canal (those mis-aligned stickers on the window panes of the house boat sealed it for us).
Of course I had no idea where exactly I had taken the picture so we started scouring my photo for clues that would give the location away. The wife spotted a hotel (Chic and Basic) in the photo and from there it was just a matter of firing up google maps and switching to street view:
That print on the wall will never be the same again.
P.S. The pictures were taken near the intersection of Brouwersgracht and Herengracht.
Update (9 Sep 2019): A local TV channel produced a documentary last year about this print. The documentary is in Dutch but if you watch it on YouTube, you can turn closed captioning on (click the tiny CC icon on the bottom right of the player window) to get English subtitles:
I was interviewed about an accompanying print article and it’s funny to think that my idle curiosity from 6 years ago led me to contribute to the corpus of knowledge about this print on the Internet.
Comments:
HR: This print taken pride of place in my living room the past four years. Even though I’ve never been to Amsterdam, I’ve always been curious about its actual location. Friends who have been to Amsterdam offered their suggestions but none were sure. And normally I’m the first to google an answer for even the mundane, so I’m surprised it didn’t cross my mind earlier to do the same with this. Thanks for the detailed post! The location is certainly on my list of places to visit when I do eventually make it to Amsterdam.
Ann: Where can I buy that print???
deepakg: It’s available at the Netherlands IKEA, hopefully you can find it in elsewhere too: http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/catalog/products/20150946/
cavecats: I absolutely love that IKEA print. In 2009, hubby and I visited Amsterdam for a couple of days. For one of those days we rented bikes. When I saw the print at IKEA (Canada), I got goose bumps and had to have it.
Once home from the store, I checked all our photos of Amsterdam and found one of him on a “red” bike leaning on the railing above a canal. Not the same one mind you, but still eerily similar. Very cool! I then did some internet research on the actual print and found that it had been taken by the late Fernando Bengoechea who had been the partner of Nate Berkus, a regular on the Oprah show. Fernando lost his life while vacationing with Nate in Sri Lanka during the tsumani of 2004.
Curious, I too, scoured Google Earth and found the coordinates of this photo to be N52 22.761 E4 53.535. It was the tree, lamp and sewer grate that proved the location for me.
Fast forward to 2013, would you believe we have planned a couple days layover in Amsterdam this September to literally go to the photo’s location to take photos while WE are on red bikes. I’m also potentially planning a “geocaching” flashmob event asking others to come on their bikes to this location. Know any good photographers in Amsterdam? ;)
deepakg: Sorry to hear about Fernando. I hope you enjoy your next visit.
cavecats: Thank you, I’m sure we will. Now that I have found your blog, I may visit from time to time to view your wonderful photos.
dutchie: I have this great picture, I was born in Amsterdam and moved to Canada in 1967, I bought my picture at IKEA Toronto, my daughter has had hers for a few years. When I got it home I started wondering where this was taken, searched with google st view along all,the canals. But had no success, typed some words in on the internet and there you were, you helped m us, thanks this is great info, I am so glad to know where this is, and will enjoy itmeven more. Will check in to your site often to enjoy all the great pictures you have taken, grretings from the Willemsen’s in Peterborough Ontario
Allison: I stayed in this houseboat when I visited Amsterdam last year and have been searching everywhere for a copy of that Ikea print in Australia! If anyone is interested the name of the houseboat is called “Jannetje Reinette” and is an amazing place to stay in Amsterdam!
Corri: Someone near Page, Arizona, USA, painted this photo on the side of a metal building. It’s almost in the middle of nowhere, a treat to drive by on one’s way to Antelope Canyon inn the Navajo Nation. (Check out images on the internet of Antelope Canyon, AZ for a visual treat!!
Hand painted IKEA print on the side of a container in Arizona
Bobby Ray: The IKEA photo is on the wall (of all places) of my therapist’s office! I’ve studied it for years, until I got curious enough to want to find out where it was taken. It is a brilliant photo. Thank you so much for solving the mystery for me!
Lisa P.: Pride of place in my waiting room! Just got back from AMS, and wish I’d duscivered your excellent detective work sooner. Thank you so much.
Dick de Koning (Living in Zwolle, the Netherlands): Well hello to all of you. I was borned (1958) and lived in Amsterdam till my 18 the birthday. So this place is familair to me. It is the corner of the Herengracht and Brouwersgracht. I only want to know in which year this picture was taken.
Greetings, Dick de Koning
Cathy: I just purchased this print at the IKEA in Bolingbrook, Illinois. It was half price at only $25 and it’s huge, barely fit in my car. Thanks for the location info.
Sweet: Deepak & others. Thanks for the great detective work and colorful stories! I lived in Amsterdam and the surrounding areas for 13 years off and on and was racking my brain where the IKEA picture had been taken.
Matt: Just bought this print at IKEA in Burbank. Love it even more now knowing where this image was taken.
Venice: bridges, streets, canals
Hundreds of bridges criss-cross the maze of streets and canals that is Venice. While we didn’t keep a tally, we must’ve walked across at least a fourth of them:
It’s not uncommon to see a small bridge extend from one side of a street over a canal to the entrance of your house on the other side. Then there are bridges that simply connect two houses. In Venice, the distinction between a street and a canal is a tenuous one and I am sure the terms are used interchangeably…
…except when you are standing over a bridge over looking a “proper” canal
We saw a lot of streets that had clotheslines stretched across houses on either side. I must be smitten with Venice because even something as mundane as drying laundry looked a little surreal.
Another fascinating aspect of Venice was the statuettes, plaques and the little niches, mostly depicting religious and historical themes, built into the walls of houses and small chapels.
But the walls in Venice are fascinating even when they are unadorned for each one bears a distinct time-worn look.
Related post: Venice - I
My one-word review of Aamir Khan’s latest film
तलाश
Seriously, I should’ve known better. Clearly I didn’t learn my lesson 3 years ago.
Thank goodness we were watching Talaash in a Dutch cinema hall, which means that when I lost all interest in the movie, I could kill time reading the subtitles. The translations of Hindi song lyrics in Dutch sound very dry and read like factual instructions for using a drain cleaner.
Here is a sample of original Hindi lyrics followed by Dutch sub-titles and their literal English translation:
आ पास आ और जी ले ज़रा
kom dichterbij en leef een beetje
come close and live a little
Dutch, wikipedia informs me, “is capable of forming compounds of potentially limitless length”. This is evident in translations of lyrics too:
ग़म के बादल
pijnwolken
painclouds
The words I learn this way do tend to stick a little longer, so may be it is not such a bad strategy for adding new Dutch words to my vocabulary.
P.S. Given Aamir’s association with programs that carry a strong social message, I wonder (perhaps too harshly) if he should have censured himself from doing this movie. The last thing India needs is people taking this movie seriously and developing a faith in psychics and related paranormal phenomena (as if we didn’t inherit enough superstitions already). I am all for artistic expression but where does one draw the line between cinema and real life?
Venice - I
When your plane flies over a city, you cannot look down and tell if the city looks like it does on the map. That’s because the borders marking the city on a map are man-made and the are not sketched out on earth. But if it’s a small city on a cluster of small islands, then the water marks those boundaries out. Venice from above therefore looks exactly like Venice on the map - two interlocked wrench heads. The Venice Marco Polo Airport is on the Italian mainland and is a short bus ride away from the Venice of Bollywood and Hollywood movies. Our tickets had to be stamped by a yellow, mechanical machine at the bus-stop. No matter which way you’d put in the ticket, it wouldn’t work. When the bus arrived, the conductor got down, gave a contemptuous look to tourists struggling with the machine and then without a warning proceeded to give this machine a hearty smack or two. It started working immediately. The incident reminded me of the general apathy and the ways of dealing with it at
home in India.
Our hotel was a short walk away from the bus stop. The sun was about to set and Venice was bathed in its (fast fading) golden light.
The reception desk at the hotel was being attended to by a balding man in his late 30s who loved to chat. Since the weather is usually a safe middle ground for conversation with strangers, we began discussing how cold it still was in Amsterdam. We were visiting Venice in March and just a month ago the canals in Amsterdam had frozen, so naturally, it came up during the course of this conversation. We learned that the canals in Venice too had come quite close to freezing - the man had photos on his phone to prove it which he showed to us with unfettered enthusiasm.
When we stepped out the sun had set but since it was a clear night, the sky retained a touch of light and was a beautiful cobalt blue. After walking a little we felt the need for a good cup of coffee. Almost by chance we found ourselves at this small café that called itself ‘The Tea Room’. There was something about this place that drew us in. The blue walls were covered with colourful paintings of birds and animals. Bach’s Goldberg Variations played softly in the background. The wooden shelf standing against one of the walls was packed with quaint ceramic jars and tin boxes full of different varieties of tea. The old couple running the place reminded us of ourselves in a parallel universe 30 years from now.
Venice at night is hauntingly beautiful. The street lights, their shimmering reflections in the numerous canals and the abandoned gondolas all feel a bit unreal.
Venice is also famous for its elaborate masquerade masks which look at you from the shop windows and add to the dreaminess.
We wandered aimlessly for a few hours and once our feet could take it no longer, returned to our hotel for a deep, dreamless sleep - the dream after all was outside.
Documentaries
Two documentaries that I really enjoyed recently:
Jiro Dreams of Sushi was suggested to me by a colleague. The documentary explores the life and craft of Jiro, a sushi chef in Japan. I found its overall of theme of perfection and dedication to one’s craft fascinating:
The wife has been volunteering at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and had picked up two tickets for the screening of Search for Sugarman at Pathé Tuschinski yesterday. The Pathé Tuschinski is in a striking little building that is a lot bigger inside than the façade lets on. The decor is reminiscent of the Art Deco style of the 1920s which is not surprising considering that it opened in 1921. While the wife’s mind kept going to The Shining, I kept thinking of the fictional theatre in The Inglorious Basterds.
The documentary tells the story of the search for singer, songwriter Rodriguez. An entire generation in South Africa grew up listening to his music (“to many of us South Africans, he was the soundtrack to our lives”) but hardly knew anything about the the man behind the music (many thought him dead). It was a classic case of reality being stranger than fiction. I wondered if such a search would have been possible in the pre-internet days.
It also kept reminding me of Philip K. Dick’s novel - Flow My Tears The Policeman Said. In the book, an actor suddenly discovers that he is no longer famous and hardly anybody knows him.
P.S. There a scene in the documentary where one of the people looking for clues to Rodriguez’s whereabouts in his lyrics, pulls out an old Atlas to show the location of ‘Dearborn’. The Atlas initially opens on the map of a random country. Both me and the wife recognised it to be the map of India in less than the 1/10th of a second that it must have been on the screen. It’s a map you grow up looking at in school and later in newspapers, news telecasts, weather forecasts and who knows where else. So may be the split-second recognition is not all that surprising.
P.P.S. At the dinner after the documentary, I mused if something I did 10 yrs ago has made me a celebrity in some random part of the world and I just don’t know about it yet. The wife jested that perhaps my poems have been translated into some obscure language and have become a runaway success there. I tend to agree. Usually things get lost in translation, but in case of my poems the source material is in such a bad shape, that it might actually have gained something in being translated.