Amsterdam: Vice City. Good boys go to Heaven, bad boys go to Amsterdam. Or so it was written on one of the many tourist shirts around the place. But before we arrived in Amsterdam, we had to leave Berlin. Our train was planned for 12:30am (overnight sleeper train), due to arrive in Amsterdam at 10:00am. We arrived at the station at a quarter to twelve to ensure that there would be no holdups. We took our place on the freezing hauptbahnhof platform, with snow literally blizzarding in at the end of the platform. Twelve thirty came around, and here comes the train! Except that it wasn't the train. It was a different train - same destination, half the carriages. You guessed it - our carriage wasn't one of the included ones, which we learned from a monumentally energetic sprint from one end of the platform to the other. Twice. On overnight trains, reservations are a must - and I had reserved us seats weeks earlier. The krauts, however, had decided that they'd not sold enough seats on the regular train, and had thus cut off half of the train, without telling us before the train arrived. Filthy bastards. Needless to say, I was -fuming- at this point, as I was directed to the Customer Service desk five floors below the platforms. We waited in line for half an hour (Deutschbahn had obviously screwed over many more than just the two of us that night), and at 1:00am finally got to the desk to be officially informed by the attendant that "Zis train ist cancelled, ya?" He told us that the next train would be in five hours time. He said "Vill you require accommodations?" - I'm not going to write down exactly what my reply was, but suffice it to say that it involved at least one racial stereotype and a whole lot of sarcasm. Or maybe just sarcasm. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? We ended up staying in the hotel across the road for the few hours until our next train, which was surprisingly cosy for a two star European hotel. The bald man behind the desk looked a lot like Matt Lucas from Little Britain fame, and he happily announced that most of their hotel's business was from Deutschbahn failure.
Never again will I be convinced that the Germans are efficient.
Our next train at 6:30am was without incident and we arrived in Amsterdam in the early afternoon. We checked into our hotel and walked to Dam Square, one of the main public areas in the city centre.
It was there that we met up with Batesy, Tim and Michael for a few pints o' Amstel. It was good to swap travel stories with the guys, and drinks turned into Chinese at a restaurant located near the main train station. We ate quickly as we'd signed up to do a Red Light District walking tour later in the evening. The tour was pretty fascinating. Amsterdam is renowned for being a city of vice, and in the Red Light District, girls hire small glass rooms to show off their goods to eager males for a negotiable price.
We'd read earlier that taking pictures of the girls putting themselves on show is extremely taboo, and taking a picture can lead to attacks, both physical and verbal. We abided by this advice (the picture above is not ours and was sourced from Google), however, another girl on our tour decided it'd be a great idea to take pictures of a girl skimpily dressed as a policewoman. I don't know how she avoided attack, but the policewoman wasn't happy. In any case, it was easy to see that the girls were getting a lot of business - many of the glass booths had their curtains drawn, which meant that the girls were with clients. In older times, most of the girls were Dutch, however, as time went on, this became less appealing to Dutch girls and much more appealing to Eastern European girls who were looking to earn some serious coin in a hurry. After walking the streets for a while, the tour group went to the Prostitute Information Centre to have a Q&A with a former prostitute. Really interesting stuff.
I should mention: joining us on the tour were an aging British man, and his considerably younger but still highly unattractive Asian girlfriend. About fifteen seconds into the tour, the girlfriend sprained her ankle on a gutter, rendering them 80% slower than the rest of the group. So, when the time came for us to enter the PIC for the Q&A, the bizarre couple were about fifteen minutes late. The guide made a display of "Ohh, I was looking for you!" while throwing down a Heineken and finishing his cigarette. And the aging British man was very obviously quite irate that the guide had let them slip so far behind the rest of the group (I smell a bad Viator review from him!) He then proceeded to ask the former prostitute such questions as "So how much would I.. er.. somebody pay to visit one of these ladies" and "Is it okay if I.. er.. somebody brings their injured Asian girlfriend" and so on. Alright, he wasn't that specific, but he did inquire as to whether the girls accepted couples (they apparently do, by negotiation) and whether the few transvestite prostitutes only serviced males or females. Suss British men for the win.
Amsterdam's other main vice is cannabis. Now, cannabis isn't strictly speaking legal in the Netherlands, but the law isn't enforced - meaning that, as long as you're smoking your weed in one of the so-named "coffee shops" or not causing a great deal of trouble, the authorities will leave you alone to smoke your cones.
The result is that Amsterdam smells a lot like weed most of the places you go. Shannon and I aren't into drugs in any way, and decided to leave smoking and space cakes to other, braver tourists. Avoiding the shops themselves was not enough, however. The sheer number means that simply walking the streets, leaves one's clothes (and hair, in Shan's case) reeking of marijuana. We look forward to our next contact with airport drug detector dogs.
The next day, we set off for Anne Frank's house. The house is set up as a permanent exhibition for people to see where the Frank family hid during World War II, and documents the tragic end of most of the family members throughout the war. It is a beautiful tribute, and far more interesting than we had imagined. Shan and I both couldn't believe they had been able to hide for so long. Especially given how creaky (and steep!) the stair cases were. I'm sure the workers below probably heard them fall many times. The most touching aspect was an interview with Anne's dad Otto, in which he reflected on the loss of his entire family, and how little he really knew about the depth of Anne's thoughts, even though they were quite close. We spent an hour at the house, before moving on to the Flower Markets.
Here, lots of growers come to sell bulbs for tulips and the flowers themselves. I would have brought some to take home, but you know… customs wouldn't have really liked it. That, plus with our clothes smelling of weed, it probably wasn't the best idea.
After this, we headed towards the Heineken Factory, and then the outside of the Rijksmuseum so we could take some photos with the giant "IAMSTERDAM" letters.
All in all, Amsterdam was a nice place to visit. Or, nicer than we expected it to be!
Next stop, Paris!
 |
| Most of our bissness is from Deutschbahn failure, yah! Vee luff Deutschbahn! |
Our next train at 6:30am was without incident and we arrived in Amsterdam in the early afternoon. We checked into our hotel and walked to Dam Square, one of the main public areas in the city centre.
It was there that we met up with Batesy, Tim and Michael for a few pints o' Amstel. It was good to swap travel stories with the guys, and drinks turned into Chinese at a restaurant located near the main train station. We ate quickly as we'd signed up to do a Red Light District walking tour later in the evening. The tour was pretty fascinating. Amsterdam is renowned for being a city of vice, and in the Red Light District, girls hire small glass rooms to show off their goods to eager males for a negotiable price.
We'd read earlier that taking pictures of the girls putting themselves on show is extremely taboo, and taking a picture can lead to attacks, both physical and verbal. We abided by this advice (the picture above is not ours and was sourced from Google), however, another girl on our tour decided it'd be a great idea to take pictures of a girl skimpily dressed as a policewoman. I don't know how she avoided attack, but the policewoman wasn't happy. In any case, it was easy to see that the girls were getting a lot of business - many of the glass booths had their curtains drawn, which meant that the girls were with clients. In older times, most of the girls were Dutch, however, as time went on, this became less appealing to Dutch girls and much more appealing to Eastern European girls who were looking to earn some serious coin in a hurry. After walking the streets for a while, the tour group went to the Prostitute Information Centre to have a Q&A with a former prostitute. Really interesting stuff.
I should mention: joining us on the tour were an aging British man, and his considerably younger but still highly unattractive Asian girlfriend. About fifteen seconds into the tour, the girlfriend sprained her ankle on a gutter, rendering them 80% slower than the rest of the group. So, when the time came for us to enter the PIC for the Q&A, the bizarre couple were about fifteen minutes late. The guide made a display of "Ohh, I was looking for you!" while throwing down a Heineken and finishing his cigarette. And the aging British man was very obviously quite irate that the guide had let them slip so far behind the rest of the group (I smell a bad Viator review from him!) He then proceeded to ask the former prostitute such questions as "So how much would I.. er.. somebody pay to visit one of these ladies" and "Is it okay if I.. er.. somebody brings their injured Asian girlfriend" and so on. Alright, he wasn't that specific, but he did inquire as to whether the girls accepted couples (they apparently do, by negotiation) and whether the few transvestite prostitutes only serviced males or females. Suss British men for the win.
Amsterdam's other main vice is cannabis. Now, cannabis isn't strictly speaking legal in the Netherlands, but the law isn't enforced - meaning that, as long as you're smoking your weed in one of the so-named "coffee shops" or not causing a great deal of trouble, the authorities will leave you alone to smoke your cones.
The result is that Amsterdam smells a lot like weed most of the places you go. Shannon and I aren't into drugs in any way, and decided to leave smoking and space cakes to other, braver tourists. Avoiding the shops themselves was not enough, however. The sheer number means that simply walking the streets, leaves one's clothes (and hair, in Shan's case) reeking of marijuana. We look forward to our next contact with airport drug detector dogs.
The next day, we set off for Anne Frank's house. The house is set up as a permanent exhibition for people to see where the Frank family hid during World War II, and documents the tragic end of most of the family members throughout the war. It is a beautiful tribute, and far more interesting than we had imagined. Shan and I both couldn't believe they had been able to hide for so long. Especially given how creaky (and steep!) the stair cases were. I'm sure the workers below probably heard them fall many times. The most touching aspect was an interview with Anne's dad Otto, in which he reflected on the loss of his entire family, and how little he really knew about the depth of Anne's thoughts, even though they were quite close. We spent an hour at the house, before moving on to the Flower Markets.
Here, lots of growers come to sell bulbs for tulips and the flowers themselves. I would have brought some to take home, but you know… customs wouldn't have really liked it. That, plus with our clothes smelling of weed, it probably wasn't the best idea.
After this, we headed towards the Heineken Factory, and then the outside of the Rijksmuseum so we could take some photos with the giant "IAMSTERDAM" letters.
All in all, Amsterdam was a nice place to visit. Or, nicer than we expected it to be!
Next stop, Paris!
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