Initial responses to the mention that we were coming to this city included knowing looks with a little upwards nod of the head, or in one case ‘Gemma, I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff!’ Drugs and sex are uppermost in people’s minds (especially those at our age) when they think of Amsterdam. And it is here, everywhere. There are over 300 coffee shops (which are what the shops that sell cannabis are called) in the city and they vary from the commercial ones like the Grasshopper which is the largest but purely touristic, to the Bulldog which is the most famous and a chain store which started with what is now the oldest coffee shop in Amsterdam. There is the Green House where our friend Pete has just started working, which is the second largest chain and wins most of the trophies in the annual cannabis cup. The rest of the shops are largely independently owned and every single one is themed differently, from having fish in the floor, to crystals set in the counter. Some are clean cut and stylish and others have walls covered in postcards and stickers. And that is only the smoking shops, other than that there are also many many seed shops where you can buy cannabis seeds and get information on different strains and how to grow them, and there are also the head, or smart shops which sell magic mushrooms as well as many other hallucinogenic producing products. And of course they are all legal, you can smoke joints anywhere in the street but you can only carry 5 grams on you at a time, shrooms are also allowed in the streets. They have so many ways of consuming the cannabis (excuse me for going on about it but it truly has been an educational experience!) For instance in a coffee shop you can roll a joint, use a bong, eat a space cake or try a vaporiser which heats up the cannabis and expels the drug into a big plastic bag which you then breath in. Outside the coffee shop there are cannabis lollypops sold in the marketplaces and all the tourist shops sell hash cookies.
As for the red light district, it is an area made up of one of the main canals and the spidery web of side streets around it. The buildings here are the same as any others in the city except for one thing, all their doors are glass and are looking into tiny little rooms, lit with red light showing off the girls that are in them. The girls stand in the red light in their underwear, talking on the phone, smoking or just posing and they wait for guys to come up to the door, they then open the door to encourage them in. We watched a few guys organise prices at the door then she would take the guy inside and draw a curtain whilst the friends outside laughed and cheered and threw high fives. The red light doors are scattered everywhere, sometimes five in a row and often on the second floor as well. Walking through the area in the daytime we have also seen many women who obviously ply their trade all day long. The red light district is the main area for this kind of prostitution, and it is also where all the sex shows are on, but we have found the red light windows in other parts of town. Google images has pictures of the district but I assume they must be for advertising purposes as we experienced firsthand what happens when you take a picture of these ladies of the night. The girl being photographed opened her door and threw an entire jug of water over the guy who ran away as she yelled at him. According to Pete this guy got off easy as he has heard that some of the girls have guys who will run out and smash cameras if photos are being taken.
My original point was supposed to be that Amsterdam is so much more than just the weed and sex, but then I do find those aspects very interesting so I just had to tell what we had seen and learnt before going on to the many other aspects of the city.
I should explain first who Pete is. Back at UWS Pete was doing a journalism course but did many of his electives in tourism and that’s how we got to know him. He just moved to Amsterdam in February after graduating and is doing freelance journalism for an Australian tourism company whilst working part time in a coffee shop here. He has a gorgeous little apartment on Rembrantplein (it’s the Kings Cross of Amsterdam) and Claire and I have been treated with a mattress on the floor and spare keys to the apartment so we can come and go as we please. During the day we have been exploring the city and during the night Pete takes us out walking to his favourite places.
The whole city is built slightly like Venice, originally it was a watery, marshy area and the Dutch built up the land and founded the city around a series of canals that crisscross and surround it. Also similar to Venice, the city is moving. The soggy land is not ideal for building on and everywhere we go we see lopsided houses leaning side to side or precariously leaning forward. Even Pete’s apartment is not totally straight and tilts to the right. The houses (from the few we have experienced) have crazy, ladder-like stairs for moving from floor to floor. Pete has had someone stay with him who went down them backwards because she found them too steep to go forwards. They don’t have front gardens but often rose bushes push up from between the cobblestones and climb over the doors. EVERYTHING is cobblestones. The road, the bike path, the footpath which makes it very easy to use the roads as footpaths and whilst the cars don’t seem to mind, bikes can get quite annoyed at you as they almost run you over. The other thing that makes the streets hard to traverse is the trams. When crossing a road it is split into six sections. First is the bike path, then the road, then the tram line, then it is all repeated again for the other direction.
Bikes are out of control here, near the station there is a multi story bike parking lot. They are all old because bikes are stolen often here and they have no gears because the land is so flat, but many have boxes and baskets on the front with flowers twined across the handle bars and often there are children’s seats attached, or a bucket like thing that sticks out the front which kids sit in. For transporting adults they will often just sit on the bit at the back of the bike which sticks over the wheel. The Dutch don’t even need to hold on in this position, sitting side saddle and hopping off when they are done. Today we even saw someone in this position dragging a suitcase on wheels behind her as they rode along the road.
The bridges are many and varied. Yesterday we tried to find a bridge which you can supposedly see 15 other bridges from. We tried three in the same area and the most we could count from one spot was 11, which is a fair bit! Last night we had dinner at a small Italian restaurant whose seats had spilt out and onto the street and bridge and so over dinner we watched the boats and barges making their way through the city. There was a large variety, from the big tourist barges to small dingys, almost sinking under four men enjoying their beers. There were party boats with wine and cheese and one expensive looking boat filled with good looking guys, as Claire said “It looks like a Ralph Lauren ad!”
Claire and I have visited the Anne Frank museum which was a sobering view into the war years but have not made it to many other attractions yet. We have found several markets and outside Pete’s place there are always art dealers set up. We are also treated to many buskers outside our window as we are above a restaurant for which they are performing.
Claire and I have set ourselves a task, to learn a word each day from the language of the country we are in. We aren’t doing too badly with it so far except that everyone in Amsterdam speaks English fluently so we haven’t been practicing so far. Restaurants are slightly hard when the whole menu is in Dutch but we have discovered that they often have English menus nearby.
In terms of food, our first night we went to the shops to buy some ingredients for a stir-fry. We wanted to buy the cheapest meat but we weren’t convinced that it was actually beef. We bought it anyway and I said that I would eat it first then we would translate the packaging and find out what it was. It turns out it was cow heart, it tasted great so it was a good mistake! Our traditional foods that we have eaten so far extend to Dutch pancakes (poffertjes) and stroopwafels. We also like to stop in all the cheese shops and try everything they have on offer, which are about 15 different cheeses! There is also often chocolate and wafels for tasting, it makes for a good snack.
That is about most of the experiences we have had so far, we are heading out for dinner now and Rembrant Plein is pulsing and the sun is still out even though it’s 9pm. Goodnight all!
