You put a dam on a river and suddenly you have a city.

Ahh, Amsterdam. Technically this was the second time I'd been to the Netherlands. The first was a stopover on my flight to Prague nearly 15 months ago. It was a nice two hours. But this visit was better.

Obviously, people get messy in Amsterdam, so I was surprised to see that most the canals no guardrails, just beckoning the many wandering tourists to certain doom. Apparently, the bigger problem is bikes falling in. I assume occasionally with people riding on them. Bicycles line the bottom of the canals. In the past so many bikes piled up that a person was able to stand on top of them and appear to be floating on the canal. Unfortunately I have no evidence of this, you'll just have to take the word of my Free New Europe Tour-guide.

The Dutch are an interesting people. First of all the language: there's one area of the city called Spui, which as tempting as it is to think rhymes with gooey, some how or another rhymes with cow. And maybe there's some Viking heritage, I'm not sure, but Dutch people are some of the tallest people I've ever seen. This is reflected in the way the buildings (pictured below) are constructed, tall and skinny. Even the urinals are set so high a shorter person such as my self has to worry about angle and trajectory. You may have noticed in the photo the hooks coming out of the sides of the houses. This is because the stairways are so narrow (often spiral) that you could never hope to move furniture in and out. The hook lets you pulley your stuff up and in through the window.

One of the more cultural things to do in the city is the Van Gogh Museum. Even for someone like me who is not overwhelming concerned with such things, it was a beautiful experience. Although now I feel weird every time I eat a potato. Think about it.

Oh, there's plenty more to tell, but it'll cost you 50€ for another five minutes...

No? Well then get lost.