Visit the place where an angel fell from heaven

BarcelonaI have a love-hate relationship with Amsterdam. Some people seek an idealized, clean, orderly city with perfect houses, clogs, and tulips. And others seek drugs and seeing the prostitutes in the red-light district. I don't like either of those. I'm embarrassed by those groups of men standing around in front of shop windows, joking about whether or not they're going into a hat shop. I also don't like this idealization of the Netherlands as an orderly, methodical place where everything is more beautiful.

Perhaps that's why my favorite place in Amsterdam, aside from those where Johan Cruyff played football, is the Prins Hendrik Hotel. A hotel that would be an understatement. The best thing is the view from the rooms opposite, which overlook the central station. I like the corners that hide stories you can stretch. Where things happen where you least expect them. Who would have told the owners of this hotel that on May 13, 1988, a body would fall from the second floor onto the street below. The autopsy detected cocaine and heroin in that small, wrinkled body that had experienced too much excess. But the press didn't believe it was an accident, because the window from which the man had fallen was closed. The journalists inquired, since the deceased was Chet Baker, one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. Officially, it was ruled an accident.

One way to visit cities is to go to the places where people you admire or are interested in lived. Perhaps it's childish, but many of us want to see the place where Baker died. I can't recommend a classic tourist route through Amsterdam, but I can invite you to pull the thread when you see a plaque commemorating a historical event or a figure. At the hotel door, there's a plaque commemorating Chet. And if you pull the thread, you leave Amsterdam and go further. The musician is now part of the history of that Amsterdam refuge for slightly lost people, where beauty and darkness coexist, as was the case with Baker's life. It makes sense that in his later years he spent long periods in Amsterdam, a city where sin has become normalized. Born in a remote part of Oklahoma, Baker was the pretty face of jazz during the 1950s and 1960s. A handsome young man who played the trumpet as if his heart had been broken. A genius who couldn't make people happy. Who broke hearts, because his was broken into a thousand pieces. His descent into hell would be terrible. Between fights, drugs, debt, and alcohol, she lost her teeth and her beauty. In the 1970s, she would work at gas stations, go to jail, and distance herself from music. At the end of that decade, however, she seemed to recover when she came to Europe. She returned to playing and giving concerts, and made Amsterdam a port of refuge where she always found refuge. A place where few questions were asked, where she could do her own thing.

It was then that Bruce Weber dedicated the documentary to her. Let's get lost, which would bring him back into fashion. Weber paid tribute to Baker, and a new generation fell in love with him. But Chet couldn't enjoy that turn of events, because he fell from that window a few months before the premiere of this magnificent documentary. Many of us wonder what happened that night in that room where many people still ask to sleep today. They want to make a pilgrimage to a drab Amsterdam hotel to remember a tragic figure. They want to see the place where an angel fell from heaven. Baker was that, a fallen angel.

Recommendation for traveling to Amsterdam

Documentary: Let's get lost

Director: Bruce Weber

Year: 1988