European cities are generally the same. They were all built at the same time with the same fashions (apart from London, which is a city built into a city with each monarch making their mark). 'Dam unsurprisingly defies everything.
It's Van Gogh's city, a place where Vermeer lived and whose pacifist reputation is shot to piece by Anne Frank's diary. However, it's none of these cultural phenomena that you come to Amsterdam for and they are a long way from leaving any kind of mark on you.
The distinctly Dutch narrow buildings that sit on a framework of canals fed by the Amstel make you wonder how modern life fits into them. Unlike other towns, they embrace it by littering them with brothels and ganja cafes.
Narrow restaurants and bars overlook ladies sitting in windows, waiting for the next customer to take into their clinical boudoir. Although being fully aware of how the sex industry works in Amsterdam, it still shocks you when it's literally in your face. Watching tourists nervously walking passed unsure of what to do is quite the experience. It gives you an insight into the seedier side of tourism and human nature.
Their relaxed attitude to drugs means that you get genuinely excited about openly smoking weed in pubs and buying magic mushrooms in shops (especially when tripping during a visit to the Amsterdam Dungeons).
The best pub was an old sailor haunt from the 1800s where they traded monkeys for beer. Tiny and bizarre, the wooden cladded pub looked like it hadn't been touched since it opened and everywhere you looked was a monkey... of the stuffed variety. On the other side of the city was Sound Garden, a metaller pub which reminded me of the Reading/Camden/Oxford landmark Purple Turtle.
We also had tickets to see the mighty Kasabian at Paradiso. It is an incredible venue. A converted church lends itself acoustically and atmospherically, so made perfectly for loud rock music.
The highlight was Juanita tripping in the basement bar of Paradiso, thinking everyone was a monkey (probably hangover from our trip to the monkey pub) apart from us who were mermaids (don't know where this came from) and had stretchy hands so had to be fed her beer. This by far overshadowed anything the city had to offer, which came about because of the city.
First published February 2007.
