Amsterdam

Flat outings weren’t too common, but sitting in our kitchen one day we all just decided it would be charming to spend the weekend in Amsterdam. We leave early on Saturday morning, I forget exactly why I was incredibly hung-over….but I was. I told Madeline, Rickard, and Lillian that I would catch a later train and meet them there, but I managed to clean myself up and haul ass down and meet them on the train platform.
In the evening we wandered down to the red light district, its interesting how the regular patterns of the free market manifest themselves in any industry. In the red light district, a woman sits in her lingerie in a window, a man passes by and inquires the rate, if they come to an arrangement then the curtains are closed and so on. Now in a regular shopping district, one will notice that some properties are more desirable for stores than others, such as a main avenue. The rents on those properties are probably higher, and the type of store usually sells more profitable goods and services. In the red light district, there are girls on the main street by the canal, and the side streets. The side street girls are considerably “down market”. One eventually comes to the niche area, the specialty interest shop (aka one woman was about 300 pounds sitting in her lingerie….)

Amsterdam feels like a city turned into a hostel. There are so many Americans, all with dreadlocks and sandals, lots of old hippies, and lots of buskers. Its still quite beautiful with all the canals, but there’s a certain seediness to the city that even all the pretty art galleries can’t take away.

We stay at the Hans Brinker hostel, a poster proudly adorns one wall, it reads “Attention neat freaks: you are endangering your immune system by denying your body the opportunity to encounter dangerous bacteria. Luckily the Hans Brinker hostel has every bacteria known to man. Reservations: etc etc”