Amsterdam

Amsterdam - A city build somewhere in 16^th or 17^th century when the Dutch society was in the prime of its glory after winning the 80 years war with Spain. The city gets its name from the dam built across the river named Amstel. To commemorate the victory of 80 years war there is a tower built in the city which is named in the typical Dutch style “80 years war Tower”. Dutch name things as it is!

From here as one walk towards the oldest church, one would be astonished to see some very antithetical things. A church, a cannabis shop and bawdy house – all residing at the same place! Well the reason for this strange cohabitation is something very interesting. In the 14^th 15^th century close to Amsterdam there was and still is a sea port where in sailors from different place would land up. Sailors are known in all of the English literature – as very shoukeen kind of people. All sharab, shabab, kabaab kind. So there sprung up flourishing prostitution business. The rising numbers of Catholics hated this; and to stop this, perceived perversion they decided to build a small church. Interestingly the sailors would come to the city, visit the prostitutes and kneel down in the church to absolve themselves of all the sins! Soon the business minded priests came up with a brilliant idea. They would listen to the confessions of sins of these sailors and make a list of them and would finally charge them some X amount for each sin. This became a usual practice and in times to come the small church grew to become a beautiful monument with all this money.

The Dutch also protest in interesting ways. To protest against the Church's initiatives to ban prostitution one fellow anonymous artists had left this work of art(voila!) on street and since it was cast in iron and welded well to the floor no one could remove it from there, and it still remains :)

Amsterdam is a very business minded city. Anything that will fetch money, help business is always encouraged. There is no moralistic jingoism – only money honey! So when the drug dealers started selling cannabis, again there were protests from the moralists’ lot. So these drug dealers came up with a cool idea of naming these shops as “Coffee Shops”. So in this way Netherlands should be the only country in the world where you do not get Coffee in Coffee shops but – cannabis. And when these moralist pundits would complain to the government that “look there is a drugs shop here”, the government would politely reply “Oh no! You are mistaken; it is just a Coffee shop!”First of its kind city also has a museum dedicated to Cannabis. This shown in the picture above

Netherlands has interesting rules with respect to cannabis. They have divided them into two - hard drugs and soft drugs. The hard drugs are still banned. But the soft drugs like marijuana and all are easily available in the coffee shops. But one is not allowed to carry more than 30 mg of drugs. But when in the coffee shops you can smoke to your wallets limitJ. Much against the widely held perception that banning things bring down the usage – the reverse has happened - since the last 30 years when this rule has come into existence the number of soft drug users has still remained the same. So even with this open policy they could control the cannabis usage.

Many of the buildings on the sides of canals on lean towards one side. So if you observe the orange colored building there is a slight tilt to the left. There are many theories of why is it so, of course, this is not a place to discuss that.

Ever wondered why the sign XXX is associated with adult movies??? Yes it has its roots in Amsterdam. The sign XXX was originally attributed to the Sailors, but because of their affectionate association with the prostitutes here, it got somehow linked with them too. So in the late 60s and 70s when blue films were banned in most of the developed nations like US, UK, Australia et al, there used to be illegal export of these films from Amsterdam. And the postage stamps on these consignments had this symbol XXX and hence it got associated with the adult film industry :)

Everywhere in Europe it is very difficult when your bladder fills up as there are hardly any public toilets for free as in India (because if there are none, people gladly make use of the public space for the private work!). Every Indian would come to know how precious is their urine when they have to pay one euro for using the toilets!

But in Amsterdam one would find crudest form of open toilets for men and it is free! So it hardly matters if it is crude or anything when you get to do your job for free:). These are called “piss walls”. As the name suggest there is an enclosed wall, and you know what you should be doing when standing against it.

Interestingly there was nothing of this kind for women. So again way back in the 70’s (when the feminist movement was at its peak!) the women in Amsterdam started complaining. But in vain! So they protested in a very unique way. 300 women gathered near bridge. Lifted their skirts and spread their legs and you know what they did – yes they peed! They threatened the local administration that they would continue doing this on all the bridges until they build such free “piss-walls” for them:). And these you can still see here.

Any guesses what is this? These things you see at most places in Amsterdam where there are many houses around. In the earlier times any Tom, Dick and Harry who had a good drink and wanted to empty his bladders would make use of corners of the buildings. So to detract people from using it the residents came up with novel idea of "Piss-Reflector", so guys when you pee at it, it will come on to your pants !!! Later on the drunkards became smart to aim not at the corners, so the residents of the buildings would electrify the area like the 3 - idiot way

Amsterdam used to have large number of Jewish population before the war. There were some 60000 odd Jewish people in the city, which came from Portugal after they were expelled from there. As usual Amsterdam was there with arms open for the Jewish community. Because as mentioned earlier - Amsterdam is a money minded city. Jewish community was very competent in diamond business and it could fetch city lot of money. The Jewish families were given a place to live in Amsterdam and it is still known as Jewish colony.Shown above

Apart from these trivial and interesting facts (?), the point I would like to emphasize is the open spirit of Amsterdam. An attitude of tolerance! Where tolerance is not just a religious jingoism which needs to be touted at every world religious congress. When in world war II Nazis were after Jewish blood, there were many organizations within Amsterdam and mostly consisting of non-Jewish origins who risked their lives and families for protecting these Jewish families. Only because they considered Jews as a fellow Amsterdamer and not as a Jew.

The photo seen above is of Anne Frank house, the museum dedicated to a little Jewish girl named Anne Frank