The Canadian Grand Prix was on that night, and to Dan's great delight our private room was equiped with a television. I took a little walk to explore the centre, ringed with canals. A few of the buildings are pretty, the museum is a mass of adventurous architecture and colour. And I found the red light district by accident - it's much more discrete than the one we'd see in a couple days. But after my wanderings, I too had an early night.
On Monday morning, we grabbed a train and within a few hours we'd crossed half of the tiny country and arrived in Amsterdam.
We has intentionally split our four nights between two hostels - Monday and Tuesday aboard a little barge in the harbour, Wednesday and Thursday we decided that to get a taste of the city's wilder side, we would stay at a hostel in the red light district.
The boat - the Avanti - had tight quarters, but was cute and well-kept. Our twin cabin had bunks that were half the width of the room, and ran the entirety of its length. Which makes the cabin sound roomy - let me assure you that at roughly one and a half metres wide and two metres long, it was not.
But we did fit in - Dan literally just barely fit into his bunk - and the staff (crew?) was very helpful and friendly. It was great to try something new after the dozens of hostels we'd been to over the past months, and at €56 was one of the cheaper (and I bet cleaner) private rooms in the city centre.
In the first two days, we explored the city centre and its extensive canal network by foot. We checked out the Van Gogh Museum - expensive, but it was nice to focus the day's learning on one artist and his immediate peers. I am sure I retained more this way than I usually do in my scattered veering around museums. It helps that I enjoy Van Gogh and his enthusiasm for colour. We also wandered through the Vondlepark and went to the Heinekin brewery. Which is pricey and at times a bit campy, but the tour shows you very comprehensively how beer is made, and includes three beers. Sold!
We didn't party as such while staying on the boat - past the Heinekin brewery we only had a couple of beers on a patio to celebrate the sunshine. We did buy a piece of 'space cake,' and then spent the evening crammed into the bottom bunk watching Arrested Development in an agoraphobic huddle. When we did get up to the kitchen to make our cup-a-soups, we found ourselves watching This Is Spinaltap.
Our second hostel was the infamous Bulldog, known primarily as a well-established chain of coffeeshops throughout the city. Remembering that in the Netherlands, coffeeshops serve soft drugs along with a caffeine hit. The hostel itself has been around for twenty-odd years, which often would mean worn-out facilities, but here means that they have the management of stoned-out backpackers down to a science. Our room was clean and blissfully removed from the racket of the bar, smoking wasn't allowed in the rooms.
We briefly explored the heart of the red light district once we got to the Bulldog. It's everything you assume it is: scantily clad ladies in windows who would like to get to know you better... biblically. They stand in pretty underthings under red lights, some smiling, some on their cell phones. The window is actually a door that opens into a small room containing a bed and little else (it also has a discrete panic button for the prostitute's safety. There are advantages to a legal sex trade). Closed curtains mean business.
Wednesday night was the Stanley Cup final. We had heard from another Canadian in the hostel that a bunch of people were planning to watch the game at a sports bar nor far away. We had a nap, and then around one in the morning, we set off. Fortified by kebabs (with questionable meat in Dan's, we discovered later) we found the bar. Turns out that no one in Holland really cares about hockey - the gaggle of Canadian and American tourists that had gathered were unceremoniously booted out at 3. Which is fine except that I had just bought a round of beer and we weren't warned... anyway, probably best that we went home. After stopping for frites and mayo. Obviously.
The next day we woke late, and spent most of the day wandering around the canals again. The architecture in Amsterdam is so pretty. The houses are thin, no more than three or four metres usually, but rise upwards at least three, often four or five stories. There are few alleys. In a city of canals, space is precious, and so the houses are shoved up against each other.
The peaked roofs are often hidden by a false front that contains a pulley for swinging furniture through the massive windows. So that nothing smashes into the walls, many of the street-facing walls lean forward at a conspicuous angle, as if craning over the bricked streets to see the swans floating down the canals.
Amsterdam is an interesting city. I think the novelty of the sex and the drugs would wear off quite quickly for anyone who stayed for long (with the exception of a few time-battered hippies we saw who have in all probability been in the same haze since the eighties). The Dutch are actually known to be a generally conservative bunch. Just because they have decided that a person should be allowed to smoke dope or hire a prostitute does not mean that they themselves wish to do so all the time, or even at all. It just means want the right to make the choice.
In fact, apparently a law is coming into effect soon banning the sale of legal soft drugs (meaning weed, hash and truffles/mushrooms) to non-residents. Amsterdam doesn't want to be known as the city of drugs anymore, and having witnessed the mayhem of stoned tourists in the city centre, I can't really blame them. The city has so much else to offer - why specialize in getting the rest of the world blazed?
That said, it's fun to smoke a joint without feeling like a criminal. The trick is to not get so wasted that you abuse the priviledge, or miss out on the delights of a beautiful city.
S.
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