It’s going up. Edwin Kornmann Rudi pressed the top button of the outside elevator. In the cramped cabin, we leave the IJ estuary with ferries, barges, cruise ships and the area of the former shipyard Nederlandsche Scheepsbouw Maatschappij (NDSM) in the trendy district of Amsterdam Noord below us.
The grey-haired man in jeans and a T-shirt calls himself an “alternative real estate developer”. He bought the 50 meter high steel skeleton colossus for a symbolic euro and converted it into an “overnight event for people with a head for heights”. There are three two-storey suites stacked on top of each other in the crane tower: “Free Spirit” at 35 meters, “Secret” at 40 meters and “Mystique” at 45 meters.
Kornmann Rudi pushes open the folding door to the two-storey “Secret” suite, where I will spend the night. The ceiling glows purple like the patterned wallpaper on the walls and the velor curtains. A blue steel staircase leads up to the glass pulpit where the crane operator once sat. A bed with cuddly pillows and a bath in a metal tub from Morocco await me there.
When it’s getting dark outside, I open the small door to a steel plate the size of a doormat, my “balcony”. Thin railings separate me from the abyss. I carefully push out a stool and look across to the south bank of the IJ, to the church towers in the city center, overlook the beach bars and restaurants below me and the factory buildings of the shipyard that went bankrupt in 1983 and were converted into offices. Ferry number 906 takes you from the main train station in just ten minutes.
A strong breeze jolts me to sleep in my “bunk bed” and wakes me up several times. The crane arm creaks, it turns with the suites in the wind. In the morning I wake up with a new perspective. A glorious adventure has come to an end, which unfortunately has its price; just using the whirlpool on the top platform costs 90 euros extra.
Info: Crane Hotel Faralda, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, NDSM-Plein 78, Tel. 0031-20-760 61 61, www.faralda.com; Double room from 895 euros.
Also read:
– With whirlpool and sauna: How Honecker’s plane was pimped into a luxury suite
– Aman Hotel in Japan: Soar in the sky above Tokyo
– Shangri-La at the Shard London: In a four-poster bed 200 meters above the Thames