Amsterdam

Amsterdam is another busy capital city but completely different to Paris. Whereas Paris got to feel a bit frantic and very commercial at times, Amsterdam is altogether much more laid back and relaxed. The whole city exudes an air of tolerance and tranquillity. Apart from the cyclists – they will run you down if you get in their way. Away from the cycle lanes a heady mix of cheese, tulips, legal prostitutes and cannabis seems to keep most people cheerful and good humoured.

The city was built on a swamp. Amsterdam’s history is all about ships and commerce so Amsterdam is all about canals and dams. The whole city is criss-crossed with canals. Rather surprisingly, to me, it does not smell swampy and there are very few mosquitos. I don’t know how this is done but it is very impressive. The canals are lined with houseboats and packed with a wide variety of vessels, many of which are carrying tourists. The possibilities span a full gamut from a private tour in a smart, flashy boat with a bar to bumbling around on your own in a pedalo. We chose a middle route with a company called “Those Dam Boat Guys”. I liked their sense of humour and found their website especially irresistible when I noticed that the language options included “Swashbuckler”. We turned up to find a smallish boat with a dozen fellow tourists. Our guide did indeed have sense of humour and the whole tour turned out to be great fun and very informative. In his introduction concerning eating, drinking, smoking or whatever he explained “Do what ever you want just don’t be a dick about it”. This seemed like good guidelines and I suspect much of Amsterdam runs along similar lines.

Diane and I are vegetarian. We enjoy eating out but sometimes this can be a bit tricky. The situation is generally improving with each year but even so we occasionally get treated as if we have a disease. Once place we visited last year simply said “No”. More precisely they said “Non” and explained that this was because everyone ate meat. Another place helpfully offered to pick the pieces out meat out at no extra cost. We are regularly offered fish and once got told that it was ok for vegetarians to each chicken. I tried to explain that there are no rules, just personal preference but the notion of voluntarily not eating meat was well beyond the waiter’s experience. So a genuine vegetarian restaurant where we can relax and enjoy the food without worrying about what we are eating is like a breath of fresh air sometimes. Amsterdam has loads of vegetarian and vegan restaurants. We only had enough time to choose a handful and some of the food was terrific. Punjabi Crème Brulé – a very well executed Brulé with Indian spices, flame grilled whole aubergine with a creamy sauce, roasted cauliflower with fried polenta. Some of the street food was really good too. I particularly liked a soft tortilla filled with mixed forest mushrooms and onion.

We walked the streets, looked at the buildings, explored the red light district, meandered through street markets and sat out in the pavement cafes. We also visited a couple of coffee shops. In Amsterdam “coffee shop” is a euphemism for cannabis seller. But only when the sign outside the shop states exactly that “coffee shop”, no more or less. There are many cafes and other establishments that sell coffee so signs like “fresh coffee”, “finest coffee to go” or simply just “coffee” abound but you will not find the weed here. To confuse matters further, coffee shops often sell coffee along with the finest bud. Back in the 70s the Dutch government chose to differentiate between ‘hard’ drugs, those which were clearly harmful and ‘soft’ drugs, like cannabis that are far less of a problem. The authorities decriminalised soft drugs so that they could concentrate resources on solving the anti-social impact of hard drugs. This was, for the most part, very successful and since then over 200 coffee shops have opened in Amsterdam. A whole cannabis culture has developed around the city attracting many tourists each year. The coffee shops cannot advertise but inside you will find racks of hashish, weed, oils, ready-rolled joints and so on. Also, many people happily sitting around blowing smoke and looking comfortably relaxed. We did indulge. It was fun, like a flashback to my student days when, of course, I never inhaled. Realistically, I did not like the actual smoking part so maybe, if we ever go back, I’ll try a cookie.

After a week in Amsterdam and good dose of relaxed tolerance we headed for the UK. Time to start thinking about a new kind of life without a truck.