Seaport Days #4 opens with residents' breakfast

A beaming sun shining on the water, coffee and a croissant, and on stage a shanty choir from Almere singing, filled with nostalgia, about that little café on the harbor. There are worse ways to start the day than like this Saturday with a free breakfast at the Kop van Java for residents of the Eastern Docklands area. "There people are equal and happy," it sounds over the quay.

Breakfast with residents
The breakfast kicks off the Havenfestival being held on Java Island this weekend as part of the Zeehavendagen Amsterdam. The Port of Amsterdam is holding an open house for three days, but is also coming to the city with the Havenfestival . "To underline our connection with the city," explains Roel Mostert of the organizing Amports. "We belong together."

Connectedness
No better place to demonstrate that connectedness than these islands, inhabited today, but constructed a century and a half ago as an extension of the then port. That nautical past is still reflected everywhere in the area. In the former warehouses, in the names of the streets, in the quays where people now walk with or without their dogs, and especially in the abundance of water.

Liberal
The East District cherishes that history, says Daily Director Jan-Bert Vroege during his talk at the breakfast. "The port has always been decisive for the economy of Amsterdam, but also for the character of the people of Amsterdam. A port literally stands for connection with the world. This also applies to the people of Amsterdam: they are adventurous, curious and liberal."

Crane ship steals show
The festival turns the Kop van Java into a port area once again. The almost sixty meters high crane ship Zeearend steals the show and on the shore companies and organizations from the port are present with booths to highlight their work. For young people from Oost, the port is a very interesting employer.

City with a port

For that, it is important that those young people know how to find the port as well, says Ramon Ernst, president of Amports until the middle of this year but still a port man. "Over time, the port has moved further and further away from the city. Amsterdam is a city with a port. In Rotterdam, it's the other way around. That is why it remains important to keep telling the story of the port, as we are doing this weekend."

National Slavery Museum
In that story, space has also been made for the colonial past. Also present at the festival are the quartermasters of the National Slavery Museum, which is scheduled to open its doors on this very spot in about five years. Together with residents of the islands, a temporary exhibition was created that will be on display at the Kop van Java until the end of July.

Paramaribo
For quartermaster Peggy Brandon, Java Island is a special place for other reasons as well. As a toddler in 1963, she and her mother stepped off the Royal Dutch Steamship Company ship that took her from Paramaribo to Amsterdam here. "Later I experienced wild parties at this place in the abandoned and boarded-up warehouses. I found that very exciting."

First pole
Question for John Leerdam, now designated as the museum's first director: how long will it take before the first pole can be struck? The organization is nowhere near that far, Leerdam explains. "There is still an awful lot of work to do. We are starting with the international architectural competition for the design of the building. And the first pole? I hope in four years."

Cockles and clams
Onstage, the shanty choir chanted its next song. A tall soloist sings with great feeling a song about the miserable end of Molly Malone, the Dublin street vendor of cockles and clams. There is clearly audibly still a good deal of unresolved grief on the singer's part, and it is not made any better by the fact that the choir around him keeps cheerfully repeating, "Crying: cockles and mussels, alive, alive ho.