If you ever are in Amsterdam with less than an hour to spend and find yourself at the central train station and it’s raining, and you are in the company of a Polish national, here’s something you can do. (You don’t have to have a Polish national with you, but in truth she encouraged me. I was in a lazy mood and would have just hung around the station waiting for the train to the airport, looking glum.) In the five days previous, we did not visit the Van Gogh collection or the Heineken Museum or the “collection of coffins and funeral heirlooms” in the Dutch Funerary Museum to be found in the centre of Nieuwe Oosterbegraafplaats cemetery (though I was keen). We did not seek out a Dutch equivalant of Les Egouts de Paris (quite a treat really) but we had seen a sign on the tram for a Vodka Museum, which is near the Sex Museum on Damrak, but we were never quite near enough, except for today, with nearly an hour to kill. One sign at the station tells us it’s just 500 metres away. I’m unusually reticent and need jollying along to go out again into the torrential bitter cold rain. But I am carried on a wave of Alicja’s enthusiasm across the tram tracks and traffic lights and construction sites to find the museum.
It is housed above a tourist shop, and indeed it is really an extension of this shop really, though you have to pay several euros for entrance. A sign outside says, Russian Spoken. We ask for a ticket and the woman looks a bit perturbed. You want a ticket? Yes please. Ah, the guide isn’t here. Can you come back later? Sorry, no we can’t, our time is limited. She calls someone on her mobile, speaking in Russian. She’s asking some guy to get down here now, explains Alicja, who has command of several languages. Can you wait just five minutes, just five minutes? says the woman. A guy in a smart suit turns up to take our money but he finds the cash register doesn’t work. He climbs under the desk for a while, unplugging and plugging wires. We have a problem, he says with a shrug. The ticket machine doesn’t work. He handwrites a ticket for us and takes us upstairs for a whistlestop tour. We’re joined shortly by two other curious tourists from the United States. The museum seems like a personal collection of vodka memorabilia, beautifully housed in proper museum cases, along with a few hundred (empty) bottles.
Here the history of vodka is almost exclusively Russian, patriotically so. I’m a little disappointed, I say, No Polish vodka in your Top Ten. Yes I know, he says, but we have some Swedish. He then agrees that Polish vodka is also good, particularly the one with bison grass. I ask him if he has a personal favourite and he tells us a story about his father’s home made vodka, made with pears, in his childhood in Armenia. We go through to the final part of the museum which has a neon lit mock bar, with interactive screens set in the bar top – here you can send a video message via email. Then our guide invites us to scroll through a series of vodka cocktail options. As part of the visit, you get a free cocktail! he explains excitedly. Please choose now! We both settle for the one called Russian Love. The Americans deliberate for a long time over which cocktail they want. They avoid Russian Love. We expect our guide will actually make the cocktail, but instead he reaches under the bar and pulls out a small miniature bottle of liquid. We don’t have a licence, he says, but please take this as a small memento of your visit. With a flourish, he then opens a large mirrored wall by the bar to reveal a secret room. He invites us to relax for a moment in the oval perspex chairs hanging from the ceiling – it’s like a scene from a 1960’s spy movie spoofed in the Austin Powers films. Is that really a glitterball?
Was it worth it? I do not subscribe to the school of thought that says: we can learn from every experience. Some experiences should definitely be avoided. Yes, for kitsch entertainment value, it was worth it, but I need to find a real vodka museum. Any suggestions?
