Amsterdam

Amsterdam

9/1/2011 2:51pm

On a train now to Paris from what is easily the most refreshingly strange city I've ever been to. It's a city where the cops might bust an establishment for letting its patrons smoke tobacco inside. Couldn't smell it? Oh, simple explanation. It was masked by the marijuana they mixed in with it. The buildings there look like they were built by Esher and Dahali Construction. Apparently building a city on a swamp has some disadvantages. Each house rest on wooden piles driven into the mud. If during that process an air pocket develops, the pile rots. Pile rots, pile shrinks, house sags, then BOOM your windows are crooked. That's been going on for a few hundred years so all the houses tend to lean on each other with crooked exterior molding and windows. Oh, and the houses lean toward the streets too. That's apparently a trick used to maximize the floor space of the incredibly narrow homes by, in turn narrowing the staircases which are actually more like well built ladders. Doing this allowed the Dutch East India Trading Company working stiff a proper arrangement to load cargo from the harbor into their attics via a hook and pulley, cutting out the narrow and strangely built interior passages altogether. It would be far too many years before they realized they could just build the house vertically and extend the hook outward.

            And the citizenry of Amsterdam, for all its liberal policies, is fairly conservative about its architecture. Change is bad and they have codified that. In the 1960's, the city took to rebuilding the devastated Jewish district. Trying to seem hip, the same way an old man tries to seem hip by humming along to a Jay-Z beat, they turned responsibility over to local architecture students who apparently had only three loves: architectural design, cubism and LySergic acid Diethylamide. What resulted didn't exactly mesh with its surrounds or its benefactors. People got mad, funny sounding Dutch voices were raised and they passed a law. Now the street side of every house in Amsterdam must remain architecturally as is, save for necessary repairs.

            Ok, I know you are reading this because you are enthralled by sinful topics like Dutch Architecture however I must move on to more mundane topics like legalized prostitution and drug dealing.

            Amount of time I was in Amsterdam before I saw people smoking marajuana: 3 hours. Amount of time before I saw a prostitute: 6 hours. Amount of time before I had a prostitute ask me to “come talk to her”: also 6 hours. Amount of time before I saw an attractive prostitute: 8 hours. Number of times I had to put my head down and act like I was some sort of seminar student: a lot.

It's a strange feeling walking through the Red Light district. For one, all the girls are simply standing in a window with a red light on. If it sounds like some strange Barby doll shopping experience then you are following me pretty well. It is advertising boiled down to it most, eh hum, bare components. Really the most disappointing aspects were you couldn't take pictures and there were no pimps. Apparently they ran all the pimps out of town in 2000 when they fully legalized the world’s oldest profession. At least that's what they say. Or maybe they all just got rid of the pimp hats. You know, disguised themselves. As far as pictures, I'd love to show you some of the girls in the windows just so you can get a sense of the strange normal that they have here. Alas that can't happen. I was warned by everyone I talked to that taking pictures of girls in windows would be met with a fate so disgusting I don't feel like typing it here. If you'd like to know you can message me but its really quite revolting.

            Another thing, not revolting but mildly frustrating, was trying to get directions in this town. Everyone here speaks English very well. That is to say they know the language very well. They SPEAK our language quite poorly on account of the most ridiculous sounding accent in the western world. A typical conversation started like this, on account of I speak almost no Dutch,

“Hello, sprechts du English (do you speak English)”

“Osh, Yesh Ish speaksh Engshlichsh.”

And they don't just speak our language like that, they speak their own language in a similarly maddening way. Example: the place I was staying was on Spiur Strasse. Don't ask me what that means. In any case, Spriur in Dutch is pronounces Sproo. So I would ask someone if they knew where Sproo Strasse was because you inevitably get lost in this maze of a city. They would respond, “Sproo Strasse? Oh you mean Sproo Strasse! Yesh, Thatsh eashy....” Ok, maybe that isn't a perfect Dutch accent, but what they said sounded similarly ridiculous.

            And just so we're clear, the most risque things my money went to was a tour of the Red Light district where I learned most of the things I told you here and a pub crawl. Sorry to disappoint. By the way, just looked out the window at the French country side. I am the luckiest man alive. Till later friends.