Underbelly

Following up on the rentier class (cf. link ), Geert Mak in his history of Amsterdam offers some fascinating insight into the long traject...

I'm savoring an anomaly about social capital.  The subject is the Dutch, again, and their notable reputation for probity: strong social ...

Kudos to Anonymous for urging me to visit the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam , which I probably would have ignored without his advice...

Last orders:  The Dutch will reclassify high-potency cannabis as a hard drug, thereby putting the skids under every "coffee shop" ...

Back when I felt entitled to have an opinion about this sort of thing, I thought Frans Brüggen to be the best recorder player in the world ....

Queen Wilhelmina has a trick (has a trick) Of eating oysters off a stick (off a stick); Her gown is low but not too ti-i-ight And them...

I'd never been to Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum until yesterday. I't say it's worth the trip, though perhaps not for reasons...

A couple of days ago here in Amsterdam, we came through one those medical Euromoments that American tourists love to tell about back  home. ...

We've committed a predictable number of rookie traveller errors in Holland over the past few days. No surprise there; the interesting pa...

I'm still in Amsterdam, still in the shadow of the Westerkerk .  And earshot: they've got a carillon, and it plays night and day: th...

You remember the Provos?  I always liked the Provos.  They were the Dutch anarchists who anticipated the Yippies: they made protest fun.  Th...

I suppose you knew, but I just found it out.  Anyway, do you know what the "dam" stands for in "Amsterdam"?  Stands for...

Having spent most of Saturday knocking about the neighborhood of Amsterdam's sex shops and weed joints, we thought it only fair that we ...

I come from bicycle country so there shouldn't be anything new about a community that moves on two wheels, but it seems that there are...

Happily, the baggage has arrived.  And compliments to my friend Nancy who says she can't bear to believe that her underwear is having mo...

Rambling through the old sex bazaar in Amsterdam makes me remember a doctor I knew who treated young people in those days: he it was who tol...

I'm not here any more, did  I say?  I'm in Amsterdam, although my clean underwear is in Heathrow.   And here's a puzzle for you,...