Paris:- Amsterdam

Amsterdam: A City in Three Colours

>
> Amsterdam is a colourful place. In both senses of that
> phrase. There is the seedy side, filled with stoned
> pommies still getting off on the idea that a
> government thinks that there are worse things in the
> world that a few people smoking a joint. There are the
> bag snatchers, the drug-dealing homeless people, the
> prostitutes wandering the streets because they can't
> afford to get into a window.
>
> But the other sense of that word; colourful, is
> perhaps the more stirring for me. Let me recount for
> you the way I understand Amsterdam.
>
> Grey: In as much as Amsterdam is a modern, liberal
> western european city, it is also and old, traditional
> trading hub of a empire long destroyed by its own
> greed and bloodshed. The buildings that the tourists
> don't go into a slowly falling into the canals for
> want of attention, the three old guys sitting on the
> bench outside the cafe swapping the same stories of
> the days when they travelled the seas, the sky that
> seems only to radiate a greyscale palette of 8
> colours. Gloom. And not even in that charming Parisian
> way. Gloom, as in the "death is coming, but we always
> knew that anyway" reservation that one must feel when
> the world has moved on and no-one else seems to
> notice. Grey.
>
> Red: The Red Light district of Amsterdam is a pretty
> funny place. Walking past the entrance to a live sex
> show, the bloke with the pommie accent shouts "Hey
> mate, you want to come in here. The most perverted
> shit you will see tonite, in the most comfortable
> environment on the strip." Funny. Really very amusing.
>
> And it is a visceral place - it has to be. The sights
> and smells and sounds have to be experienced to be
> understood. The women standing in the windows, trying
> to look alluring under the bright red lights, and
> looking really bored when they think you're not
> looking (or at least not buying). The hawkers trying
> to get you into their clubs - the Irish guy speaking
> (what was to my ear) perfect Cantonese with a group of
> Chinese business men, persuading them to go into his
> establishment. The smell of split beer and vomit on
> the footpath - trying to dodge the dogshit that seems
> to be everywhere. It's all very mush fun, and its only
> fun because you WILL end up stepping in dogshit at
> least once.
>
> So what then are the people who drive through the
> district in their air conditioned buses, safely inside
> away from the hawkers, dogshit and vomit, getting out
> of driving past at 10kms/hr? Eight minibus loads of
> people, one bus after the other, file through the
> district every hour or so. And the people inside sit
> there are stare: varying expressions of horror,
> intruige and disappointment arrayed over their faces.
> Is it possible for these people to gain something from
> this experience? Are they better people, because they
> merely look-on, rather than descending into the
> cesspit? Or are they worse; the voyuers, getting off
> on other peoples discomfiture?
>
> Green: Most reading this would automatically assume
> that when I say green and Amsterdam, I am talking
> about pot. But this is not the case - it is an effect
> of the mentality that is the "green" of which I speak.
> And that "green" is the proverbial green-light. I
> don't think I have been to another city in which the
> "whose permission are you going to get? Just do it"
> attitude is so pervasive. Nike executives must live in
> Amsterdam. The pot, the prositution, the dogshit, the
> homeless; it's all just a symptom of a city infected
> with a "as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, who
> cares" attitude. And that is cool - to a point.
>
> Who decides what that point is? If you don't know, get
> on the minibus and take the tour - there will be no
> smells for you tonite.
>
> The End.
>
> Paris next.
>
> G
>

Bloody hell Geoff, would you just get to Paris! Part 3 ->