I'll Be Dammed

Rajmé hash falls hook, line and sinker for the charms of Amsterdam. But then so does every traveller to the city of canals.

They don’t make cities like Amsterdam anymore. Like a moth to the flame, an addict in search of his fix, a lemming jumping helplessly off a cliff, I return again and again to this beloved city of mine. And it never disappoints.

I travelled in autumn, a season peppered with delicious uncertainty, forever on the cusp of something. The streets did not have the quietness of winter yet, but the clamour of summer had definitely died down.

As a great maritime culture, the Dutch have been open to influences and ideas from around the world, but what they create out of them is uniquely theirs. Which is probably why Amsterdam manages to dig its claws just a tad deeper into me with each visit. There are very few European cities that can compete with Amsterdam when it comes to museums, and I’m not talking about the state-owned Rijksmuseum, although it is quite possibly the greatest museum in the world. There are scores of quirky museums all over this city, some of them bordering on the bizarre. I managed to squeeze in a few of them during my—oh, too short—Amsterdam trip. These included the Amsterdam Sex Museum, the very first of its kind in the world and the Hash, Marijuana and Hemp Museum. I also visited the Torture Museum which, I must confess, put a damper on my spirits.