Amsterdam is just odd. Enjoyable...
but odd
When the plane lands, no matter how much you prepare for it, like the
humidity in Houston, the Dutch will find a way to surpass expectations.
Take these examples: a 70-year old man wearing nothing but big white
diapers dancing on a small wooden stage to "Like a Virgin" in the
airport, or giant screens in the subway stations playing a 15 minute loop of a
man taking his morning shower. Can you imagine the meetings where
these were proposed, reviewed, discussed and agreed?
We spent a few rainy and cold days drinking warm tea and eating
pancakes in the hip little cafes of Amsterdam while waiting for it to
clear up enough to walk the streets and see what the city had to offer amid the
upright sitting Dutch scurrying along in an endless stream of raincoats and bicycles.
If you took everything we humans do, put it in a bag and shook it up and
then dumped it out to create a city you would have what we found in Amsterdam. On one street, not especially unique, we
passed, in this order - a specialty cheese store, a brothel with prostitutes “displayed”
in the windows, an appliance store with washing machines in their windows, a
bike repair store, a place selling “magic mushrooms”, a cozy little Indian
restaurant and a souvenir store with an equally bizarre mix of things for sale.
More than once we found this expression on our faces…
and we sometimes had to remind ourselves that we had not just entered a
coffee shop and therefore, what we were seeing was very probably
not caused by any here legal substances.
It is also important to note that Amsterdam also has very good restaurants,
nice parks, breath taking museums and their unique and beautiful architecture
lining many many scenic canals;
Odd yet Enjoyable…
PS - we asked about the man showering and the answer was that psychological studies (the Dutch also love their psychological studies) had shown that showering and watching people showering was... calming.
