Western Europe Day 1

◊ We left early in the morning from the Prague and took a short flight to Amsterdam. After making our way to the town center, Nathan and I quickly realized that our hostel was not merely near the red light district, but was actually on the biggest stretch in the city. We questioned whether we should actually be staying there but we had already put down a deposit and the place looked nice. Amsterdam is not a city tourists go to for it's beautiful architecture, grand art, or important history. People go there for two reasons, drugs and sex. Marijuana and prostitution are both legal and encouraged there if you did not know. Neither of us had much interest in indulging in the diversions of Amsterdam, but we felt it was important to see this side of Europe too.
◊ First we went to the Anne Frank house. If you never went to public school and therefore don't know who Anne Frank is, she was a little Jewish girl who, with here family, hid from the Nazis for years in secret rooms in that house. Eventually they were caught and she was killed but her diary was published into a very famous book. After that saddening sight, we walked down the block to the world's largest gay pride monument, Rembrant's grave, eventually heading to the old Heineken brewery museum. I find it to be tasty, but it needs salty snack foods with it to be good. Czech beer is still better. On the way we got lost several times. My opinion is that Amsterdam has to be the most difficult city to navigate I have been to. We spent a very long time attempting to locate a restaurant selling authentic Dutch cuisine. Eventually we found one but I began to wonder why there only seemed to be that one. Most European cities have dozens of restaurants serving their traditional cultural dishes.

The second one is Anne Frank's house. Ooooo.


An organ and Rembrant's Grave



A monument to Anne Frank and other holocaust victims.


The world's largest monument to homosexuality.
The tip of the pink triangle extending in the canal is only one tiny part a huge thing.
Someone once claimed that what sets gays apart is they have learned to let go of their egos.
Someone was wrong.


Yea Heineken!
(Good beer but I decided it requires salt or salty foods to make it great)





This white theatre was the place Amsterdam jews were rounded up before being sent to death camps.


This is the oldest church in Amsterdam. At night every glass door in the bulidings around it was lit up red and staffed with black prostitutes. Their race is noteworty because this little area was where I saw most of the black prostitues that night.


This is the only photo I took of the red light district at night. I was a little bit nervous to be snapping pictures of the women along the canal.


More night shots elsewhere.

◊ By that time evening was approaching. Nathan and I agreed to try out one of the "special" bakeries. We bought a couple of different pieces of hash cake then took them back to the hostel. If you are curious, they were very tasty. I guess they had a very slight herbal taste to them but, considering their ingredients, that does not surprise me. Nathan's guide book said that since it was being digested, the drugs would take a couple of hours to begin acting and that a person should not eat a second piece just because they don't feel anything.
◊ We took the time to walk through the most famous red light district in the world. I guess we reacted to what we saw there in quite a different way than most people. In the day, the area looks like many others in Amsterdam. There are signs, but the lights do not come on until night. Then the windows begin to light red and standing in every red window (usually a glass door) was a woman offering herself for rent. Men would walk up to the door, the prostitute would open it, and they would begin negotiations. Some of their 'offices' had a bed right there in the room with them and they would just shut the curtains and do their job. Nathan and I found this far more disturbing than either of us had anticipated. It was just troubling beyond words to see women put themselves under glass like a piece of meat for sale. It was also disturbing how men would just walk down the street browsing until they found one they wanted like a person shopping for groceries.
◊ For me, this odd mix of pity and disgust for the human race at large started early on our walk when I made the fateful mistake of making eye contact with a prostitute. When I see bums, drug dealers, or prostitutes on streets I simply never make eye contact. It is an easy task to ignore someone's plight and pretend they are not human when you don't look at them. But once I made eye contact this strategy came crashing down around my head. Suddenly I was confronted with the hard truth that these were real women living a lifestyle that many had chosen of their own free will. They even have their own union in Amsterdam. After that, despite my best effort not to, I found myself making eye contact with the woman in every red window we passed; it hurt every time.
◊ Oddly, at this point my mind wandered back to our troubles finding a Dutch restaurant earlier in the evening. That was when something dawned on me. Amsterdam had nothing Dutch about it. The only things left in the city of it heritage are wooden shoes and toy windmill sold in souvenir shops. It has always been famous for being accepting of anyone or anything and in being so accepting they have totally lost everything that made them Dutch once upon a time. Any philosophy carried out to the extreme will lead to a culture's downfall. It just so happens that in this case they were not invaded from the outside or rot from the inside. The Dutch in Amsterdam simply faded away and were replace by something totally new. I am not trying to argue that their new culture is totally without merit. Their ways of dealing with drug crime and prostitution are unique to say the least. Still I wonder, is this what the citizens of the Netherlands 100 years ago intended to happen?