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I have to admit, for my first hour in Amsterdam, I hated the place!!! London was easy, it was all English, and in preparation for the Olympics, they had printed out very convenient, small, pocket-sized brochures that detailed the underground tube system. In Amsterdam, there was no such luxury awaiting on my arrival. It took me a while to first get money transferred into Euros. Then, I had to figure out how to get to my hostel. I wandered around in Amsterdam Central for a while aimlessly, went outside, and tried my best to make sense of a very poorly drawn up map of public transportation of Amsterdam, and felt more lost than ever. All of the rail systems where the same color on this map, which was very different than how I navigated in Chicago, and London : by clear colors, and a clear map which showed precicely the stops and junctions of the routes.
With no one to turn to, I trusted on the power of the iPhone to find my way, and it was a wise decision. I was able to navigate between the subway, and jump on a rail service/bus, and walk to my destination. Once I wipped out the iPhone, and got used to it a bit, I stopped stressing, stopped hating, and started to enjoy. I have only been in Amsterdam for a couple of hours now, and I have to say that I really like the place.
Amsterdam overall is SUPER liberal. After all, this is the place with one of the best and safest red light districts in the world, and the first place to legalize gay marriage in 2001, and they legalized prostitution in 2000, and they turn the other way when it comes to soft drugs like marijuana/hemp and mushrooms/truffles. Such is the way of the Dutch; if there is a law, you can break it as long as (1) it is good for business, (2) you don't hurt anybody, and (3) you are discreet about it. Such was how prostitution worked for hundreds of years, even though on the books, it was illegal; however, it was tolerated because of the three precepts above. Now it is legalized, however, technically marijuana is still illegal, but tolerated. The place is called the Netherlands because it is just that, it is a land that is UNDER the water. The Dutch are proud to say that while God made the Earth, the Dutch made the Netherlands, which is partially true. This is why the windmills have become the unofficial symbol of the Netherlands = the wind power of the mill would power a screw mechanism that would drain water; also, with a system of dikes, they were able to keep water out and stop flooding.
My third day in Amsterdam I took a tour outside the city, a bus that went to Marken, where wooden clogs and cheese are commonly made and used, and then took a boat ferry to the fishing village of Volendam, and then finished up the ride to a windmill village. It was very beautiful to see the north of the Netherlands, as it was markedly different from the cramped city space of Amsterdam. It was very clean, and there were free running livestock; apparently, the Dutch, even though they have very limited space for farming, generate the third highest revenue in the world for farming exports, behind the USA and France. Quite impressive. Also, the orange carrot as we know it was bred by the Dutch in order to honor their royal family, who is the family of William of Orange, and thus their color is Orange, which is the color of all Dutch national teams. Normally, carrots naturally come in green, black, and purple colors, but the Dutch changed all that. Now orange carrots is the most common kind.
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