Through the looking glass

Coming from a country that for centuries boogied to the beat of Hail Glorious St Patrick, was it any wonder that I regretted not bringing my rosary beads when I first set eyes on Amsterdam, last Thursday?

Fresh off the back of a lifetime of unconscious conditioning that dogmatically decried sex as shameful and drugs as worse, last week, I naively boarded a reasonably-priced Ryanair flight bound for modern day Gomorrah.

And, by Jesus, did I have my eyes opened.

Now, ask anybody who has just returned from a long weekend in the Dutch capital how their holiday was and half of them will tell you about the eeriness of Anne Frank’s house and the reckless abandon with which the local cyclists bomb up and down the canals.

These people either (A) have no grasp of what constitutes interesting conversation, (B) are extremely boring travellers, or (C) are afraid that revealing the truth of their trip will change your opinion of them forever.

And, yes, you can be sure that 99 per-cent of them fall into Category C.

Now, before your hopes rise too high, this column does not promise to be a tell-all tale about my wayward wayfaring through the rouge-soaked streets of the dark temptress that is the City of Amsterdam.

The truth is that, though my escapades did include a fair bit of wide-minded wandering around her labyrinthine lanes and alleyways, my meanderings have not put me in a position to offer the seedy and sordid stories which others have denied you.

So, in lieu of any salacious confessions, let me present you with a hastily painted portrait of a city with a habit of summoning the stranger, lesser-seen sides of so-called ‘normal’ people.

Getting off the plane, we dropped the bags off and took a dander into the heart of the city. I was immediately destabilised by the lop-sided, asymmetric majesty of the buildings and canals. Though the sunken foundations and lazily-leaning houses are just a product of the marshy ground upon which they were built, you’d nearly think some clairvoyant architect designed them that way just to mess with trippers of the future.

However, the picture of perfect, pristine urban harmony was soon splashed with the vomit of reality when some young passerby spontaneously boked over the feet of his friend.

“Too much of something,” we vaguely adjudicated.

Soon after, the salience of my Irish sensibility was revealed to me. Soon after that, it was shook to its foundations.

Of course everyone knows about the Red-light district and the ladies who famously stand coquettishly in the windows. But knowing is one thing; seeing is another.

Long streets, aglow with the tinge of red neon, presented woman after woman, usually in some kind of alluring lingerie, attempting to seduce prospective customers through the window.

This to me seemed odd, but I reasoned that sex work is a human universal, that few societies have ever been without it, and that legalising prostitution at least gives the girls all the security afforded by conventional workers’ rights.

However, the following day, when the ladies of the night were made to work the day shift, you could see them standing in their depressing-looking enclosures, some eating Kitkats and drinking cans of Fanta, as people with no inclination to avail of their service walked passed and stared.

In some ways, those who glared with judgment and contempt seemed worse than the people who the night before decided to offer their custom.

One fella told me that he thought of it like a zoo.

Though the analogy seemed wrong in that it compared the women to animals, it did seem to capture the way the public peered at them with impunity.

Strange sights manifested with the same regularity as drunks yell ‘yeo’ in Belfast.

An over-indulgent English pensioner lying face-down on a coffee-shop floor.

A demented local growling ‘dun-dun-dun-dun’ (Jaws) into the ear of a stranger who appeared to be in the midst of a psychological meltdown.

And, my holiday highlight, a Belfast woman offering a waitress a smoke of something, prompting the young Dutch lady to enquire what fantastical chemical she was about inhale, only to be told in a thick, tobacco-torn Shankill accent, “Winston Dark Blue!”

The waitress, with not a notion what she was on about, took one drag, made a face that thinly concealed her disgust, and politely returned the soggy fag to its rightful owner.

I could go on, but I will only end up incriminating somebody.

Anyway, it is a city like no other, but don’t take my word for it, go have a look for yourself. Just make sure to take it easy on the Winstons.