I Amsterdam

Amsterdam is not a love-at-first-sight city like Paris or Cape Town. As a matter of fact, the first time I visited Amsterdam as a tourist, I even hated it. It’s gray and it’s dirty and loud and smelly, and the people ... Well, the people are weird! Not everyone, of course, but there’s always just enough purple-haired, pierced, leather-clad stoners walking around to make you wonder just what planet you’ve landed on.

But after a few subsequent trips to Amsterdam, I decided that this diversity of people—young and old, rich and poor, straight and homosexual, stoners and prostitutes and business-people—combined with Amsterdam’s ‘live and let live’ attitude, is its greatest charm. Feel like singing at the top your lungs as you bike down the street? Go for it! Wanna stand on a corner and yell about the war in Iraq? Or in the middle of a city square and scream frantically to your backpack on the ground? (And if you’re wondering, I have actually seen all of these things ... ) Be my guest! A real Amsterdammer will smile politely and walk on by.

Things that would shock me in any other place are just everyday occurrences in Amsterdam. One recent Saturday, I made a mental list: people (too many to count; it’s Saturday after all) so stoned they could hardly walk, what you and I would define as porn displayed openly in store windows along the shopping streets, penis paraphernalia (soap, chocolates, candles, statues, even penis-shaped pasta, (do you think the kids would even notice?) in every shape, color, and size imaginable.

But the funny thing is, I wasn’t shocked, not even the least bit. I Amsterdam, so I just smile politely and walk on by. Live and let live!