Amsterdam: Where Everything is Legal?

Stories Faces Places

Do you ever dream of a land with no rules? Where anything goes? Where Rastafari meet prostitutes, meet religious priests, meet alternative genders meet heteros, and if I missed any specimen, any one or anything else with two legs and no wings? Although, the winged type are probably coming soon. "That's the way we do things here in Amsterdam", said the twenty-something narrator on the booze cruise we were taking through the canals here in Amsterdam. "That's the way we deal with issues, here," she concluded. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, a very reasonable time to start drinking, even though most aboard had commenced that program a few hours earlier. Then there were those who had just stumbled out of the famous Amsterdam "Coffee Houses", bringing aboard a different aromatic experience to all the other passengers. "Yes," I commented in my usual Irish whisper so most on board probably heard, as Laura braced for the rest of that statement, "you don't. You just make everything legal, that way you don't have to deal with anything." It wasn't a judgement on my part. It was an observation and a reaction to the proud narrator's statement. I'm not saying it's good or bad, I am just stating that it is. Pause for a moment. Here's the joke, legal that is. All of this and more on this episode of Stories Faces Places.