A few nights ago, I got back from my trip to Amsterdam and Brussels, which are very different cities despite being so close. I’ll talk about my experience in Amsterdam today then give Brussels its own post sometime soon.
By coincidence, it turned out that we decided to visit Amsterdam during its busiest week of the year. Queen’s Day, a holiday celebrating the former Queen’s birthday, is now a massive street party that occurred the day we left. The actual day of the holiday consisted of a bunch of people drinking in the streets, but the buildup to it was noticeable from the time we got there. The color orange, which represents the House of Orange dynasty of the Netherlands, was all over the city and the city’s main square (Dam Square) was overtaken by a carnival that lasted our entire visit.
The first thing we noticed upon arriving in the city was how busy the streets were. We thought it was because of tourists coming in for Queen’s Day but later learned it was just because of the nice weather (Dublin is the same way). The canals are beautiful and nicely break up the whole “city” atmosphere, since you can peacefully sit by the water in the middle of the city.
Now to what you really care about: the sex and drugs. I consider myself a pretty liberal person who is not easily shocked or bothered by a lot of things. I don’t do drugs, but don’t really mind if other people do them on their own time as long as it doesn’t affect me. But when it comes to Amsterdam, they really took the “turn the other cheek” motto too far, in my opinion. The city center, which is supposed to be a representation of the city, is overrun by sex/pornography shops and a “coffee houses”, which sell marijuana. I wouldn’t mind walking by those places if they had a discreet sign and blacked out windows or something, but the smell of weed is noticeable when you walk by the store and windows of sex shops are filled with obscene videos. Interestingly, the places where they sell mushrooms (which I’ll get to later) are the nicest. Coffee shops tend to be dark, seedy, and invariably blasting Bob Marley. No thanks.
All this wasn’t even necessarily in the Red Light District, where it is much worse. Walking by prostitutes in their places of work was extremely depressing–I literally felt dirty after. The outer part of the city is lovely and peaceful–I’ve never seen so many bicyclists in a city–but if I had a family, I would not bring my family to Amsterdam. To me, that’s a shame.
Judging by a recent de-liberalization movement, it seems like I’m not the only one. The law banning mushrooms in the Netherlands will soon be enforced and an “extinction” policy on coffee shops has been in place for a few years. A recent law banned the sale of alcohol and marijuana in the same store and if a coffee shop breaks the rules, it will be immediately shut down and never allowed to open again. In addition, no new coffee shop can open up. Prostitution, which was only made officially legal in 2000, seems to be here to stay.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind if people smoke marijuana or do mushrooms. But there reaches a point where enough is enough. There is no need for the center of a major European city to be overrun with prostitutes, dildos, and blunts. If there is a demand for that stuff and the Dutch want to maintain parts of their liberal culture, a limited number of licenses should be granted in a specific area outside of the city center. That way, the drug-addicts and sketch-balls are away from the places genuine tourists want to visit. I think the citizens of Amsterdam would agree with me.
