I had a big shock when I arrived yesterday. Because you get out of the Central Station and in front of you is the city buzzing with people, cars, trams and of course bikes.
Now, bikes in Amsterdan are a big thing. They ride fast and furiously here and you need to be very carefull not to be killed by one of them. In fact, Dutch bikers have a point system for turists that they can mown:
- 5 points for people with a confused look
- 10 points for someone with a map
- 20 points for someone in a guided tour
The higest point in Amsterdam is 1,3 metres above sea, so riding a bike here is perfect. And everyone has one, and they are all crap. Most of them don't even have gears or brakes, with explains a lot about the way they ride. And why do they have such crap bikes? Because every 37s a bike is stollen and sold in the black market. It's said that if you live in Amsterdam for 16 years you'll have own the same bike twice.
Aklso there's a very popular "sport" here, sponsored by the beer Heineken: get drunk, find an unattached bike and trow it to the canals. Every year there's 25 thousand of bikes removed from the canals.
Ok, enough of bikes, let go to the good stuff: Red light district.
Well, it all started because the cheeky priests wanted to have their mistresses close, so they put them in houses just by the Old Church.
So a neighbourhood of prostituition began. Also, this was very handy for the sailors, that after spending months in the sea surrounded my men, wanted some "relief". And after the physical relief, they just needed to cross the street and pray (and pay) for forgiveness. Now, priests are not stupid and they saw a golden business oportunity here: imagine you're a sailor set to depart tomorrow at 4am but you want a big party before and the church only opens att 9h. There were this "vouchers" you could buy to cleanse your soul for sins you were thinking in doing. Well, lets just say that the little "Old Church" went from a wooden hut to a freaking big building in a few years.
As you know, nowadays everything is legal, secure, etc. The ladies in the street are self employed and stuff. And the oldest lady working there has 83 years old. She's so good, that she doesn't need to show herself in a window (thank god), there's a very big waiting list. Apparently experience does count.
All the girls I've seen here are pretty bad, they make Linda Reis look like Miss Playboy (inside joke for the portuguese people). But they told me there's an elite street with top notch girls - haven't found it.
Weed. You can feel the smell in loads of places. But it's not as straightforward as you think. It's forbiden to own, sell or smoke weed. Only licenced coffee shops can sell it, and only 5g at a time. Advertising is forbiding as also selling it in the streets. You basically have to smoke it in the coffee shops. Magic mushrooms were forbiben in 2008 after a girl with psycological issues commited suicide after being high. But they allow selling of the stuff that they already had before the incident. Since no-one know how much mushrooms there was, it's still being sold with a 2007 date.
There's a lot more of cool stuff about the city, like there's public urinols and piss deflectors to prevent people from pissing in the walls...
How do I know so much stuff?: no, I haven't been studying, I went on a tour.
I'm in love with the Dutch attitude, the city, and all. It's such a great place. You real need to soak the spirit in you. You come out much more tolerant.
P.S. When I come back i'll do a proper blog with pics. I'm just doing this as a diary and for a certain someone don't think I'm dead. In fact I'm not expecting that anyone appart from let's say...2 people read it.
