A couple of days ago I landed in Amsterdam after quite a lengthy number of hours flying. Touching down at Schipol airport was really something special – the dream of a typical stereotype is, no doubt very accurate for the Dutch people and way of life. Leaving customs, a giant Heineken bar presented itself with countless Dutch residents awaiting their loved ones, drinking beer out of giant mugs, wearing clogs and yodeling or something. All at seven in the morning!
Not surprisingly, Amsterdam is a ghost city at anytime before 11am – the events of the previous night always require a healthy amount of recovery sleep in, allowing me to explore the city without distractions or other annoying tourists! The Anne Frank museum was highly interesting, taking me through the life of the Jewish family in hiding for two years during World War II. Anne’s diary is composed in over 300 sheets of diary, newspaper clippings and later any scrap paper which could be written on. To date the it has been published in about 93 languages, some made up (like French).
In the afternoon I met up with my friends from all around the world – Germany, UK, US and Denmark, and we went out for a couple of very good Dutch beers, sitting in quaint cafe’s by the cobblestoned pathways. We moved around a lot to avoid the miserable weather – grim grey skies and light rain are real mood setters for a city, which is such a shame. Speaking of cafe’s, coffeeshops in Amsterdam don’t sell much coffee – instead they provide a wide menu of flavoured joints, and rainbow coloured magic mushrooms. Think everything in the 1970s became legal and jammed into Amsterdam!
Notoriety is among the top reasons which this Dutch city is known – and Thursday evening proved it to me. After being exposed to the highly conservative nature of the city, I really shouldn’t have been surprised with what I found in the evening – the sex city of the world comes out to play. Live pornography shows and prostitutes in windows luring passer byers were some of the less confronting of scenes. Perhaps what surprised me even more was that many of these girls were genuinely gorgeous. What were they doing behind glass windows with the soft red glow of neon lights accentuating all of their actions.
Amsterdam truly one of the most exciting yet scary cities I have ever visited.
