All of which is legal in Amsterdam, for now.

Amsterdam is known for many freedoms that are illegal elsewhere. However after visiting the town and taking a tour it seems like that a lot of these freedoms are slowly being taken away one by one. The red light district especially has had heavy rallying for it to be shutdown. As a result the Red Light district is being shutdown.



In the ways of the Dutch, no more is allowed and what's there already will only become more scarce. For example, two of the big sex theaters in the district will be shutdown for relations with the mafia. Also, no more red light windows will be added; they will only be taken away. The windows that are removed are changed into fashion windows showcasing fashion artists' works.



Magic mushrooms will soon be illegal as well. This movement came from two incidents where the user of magic mushrooms died, one of which was from jumping off a rooftop. The nations around the Netherlands have been pushing for stricter drug control.



Speaking of drugs there is much misconception about the legality of marijuana. It is actually illegal in the Netherlands, however it is no punishable. In the words of our guides many of the drugs are tolerated versus shunned upon. The term out of sight out of mind comes into play for much of the soft drugs of Amsterdam. The reason soft drugs are tolerated is that before Amsterdam has a heavy for junkies and now after banning hard drugs and tolerating soft drugs Amsterdam has dramatically lowered the number of addicts and also cleaned up the red light district.



I took a tour of Amsterdam and found out that much of its history is from the days when Amsterdam was a significant port town. The xxx symbol is found throughout the town and is believed to have stemmed from that fact that sailors used three x's to signify the port Amsterdam. The city literally means division of Amstel (the river), which is precisely how the town was founded. Amsterdam sits on top of a marsh and so all the buildings are slowly moving in every which direction. Long metal rods are inserted into the building to keep its structural integrity. They can be seen everywhere as a little rectangular studs on the sides of buildings. Each building also has a hook at the top which is used loop a rope around and attach a pulley. This is used for moving larger furniture. Canals run throughout the city and gates actually circulate fresh water into the canal system so the water is not stagnate and does not stink.

I Am Amsterdam

Mark and I arrived in Amsterdam around 7pm and the streets are decorated in bright orange. The Netherlands has a match against Italy in the Euro 2008 tonight; national pride is high. Pubs are crowded full of patrons wearing orange and shouting at the big screen playing the game. Even sex shops have their tvs in the front of the store televising the match.



Amsterdam is a bike friendly town. In fact the preferred way of travel is by bike and bikes are literally everywhere. One of the first structures we see while exiting the train station is three level parking garage full of bikes. Along all the bridges, sidewalks and railing are piles of bikes. There are so many bikes that people don't even lock their bikes up to the railing. Instead they just lock the wheels to the frame. As I walk around the street, bicycle bells echo throughout the crowds.



Our hostel is located a street over from the red lights on the edge of the actual district. The first night, we decided to walk around to try to find a place to eat. It is pretty weird seeing restaurants between "The Dildo World", "The Magic Mushroom Shop". We grabbed a cheap kebab place which made me miss the good kebabs of London all that much more. All the food in the area is overpriced and lacking in quality, but that's ok because people don't come here for food.



Amsterdam is full of canals and they quickly help us navigate and become landmarks when we get lost. The streets of Amsterdam are narrow and walking through them you undoubtedly run into some shady people shooting off their inventory at you: "charlie, coke, extacy". Red lights windows litter this area. Ladies of the night wearing nothing more than their underwear pose infront of these windows. They look bored most of the time and I started to notice some of them were texting on their phones. The funny thing is that it seems like only guys are out the first night.

There is an unwritten law that pictures should not be taken in the red light district. There is one bridge where people can get touristy pictures taken, but everywhere is strictly off limits. The ladies of the night all have eagle eyes for tourists taking pictures of them. While walking through one of the alleys, we ran into a situation where a wife sneakily took a picture of the red light windows. Immediately four prostitutes ran out of their windows and one of them grabbed the woman by the hair. They all shout profanities in perfect English at the woman and it takes her husband to push them all back.

Dell Fixed!

Our train ride to Amsterdam was long and had several stops. As our ride came close to the city I saw lots of skyscrapers with interesting architecture. And to my surprise I also a large building with the DELL logo on the top. I immediately saw this as an opportunity to get my laptop fixed. I had run into problems in Paris since even though I could get an XPS service tech to come out and swap my motherboard and video card, the language barrier and lack of time made it nearly impossible. I couldn't even get through the French menu's, I had to call the US to make sure that a foreign replacement policy on my laptop was even possible.

Google Maps was able to tell me that there was indeed a Dell office building in Amsterdam. During one of my free days in Amsterdam I took the metro over with my laptop in my backpack. I bought 2 tickets on the metro and used the first one to get to the stop. I noticed that no one really checked tickets and there was no validation for the ticket I used. Basically I just swiped the ticket when I walk into the station and it lights up green. All the gates are open so I was sure there was plenty of people that would just walk through without paying.

I was able to catch some people outside the building on smoking breaks and luckily most Dutch people speak perfect English. I found out that the center was the headquarters for Belgium and the Netherlands. The person that was able to help me was an sales and he was able to schedule a next day repair service for my laptop. So I left it overnight. On my way back I saw a station that was full of uniform officers and giving most people tickets.

I picked it up the laptop the very next day. My 1 year warranty covered all the repair costs and it turned out that it was a overheated video card which required a motherboard replacement since the card is soldered onto the motherboard. Now everything is back to normal. It'll take me a while to get everything back to up to date since I was without it for a while.