Liberal Amsterdam

I may have mentioned stumbling into two gay cafes whilst exploring Amsterdam. My UNE colleague, Neil, and I made a rapid exit from both establishments after discovering our error, but we were both dying for a coffee and found a third establishment where we ordered and took a seat at the window. My first picture shows the view out of the window in front of us. Neither of us smokes pot, but we wondered if we could smuggle a starter kit back through Australian customs. After due debate we decided it wasn't worth the risk and stuck with fridge magnets instead.



The flower and bulb shop concerned was part of Amsterdam's flower market (picture 2) which runs alongside one of the many canals (picture 3).





It's a fine institution, and the bulbs being sold were enormous. However, we rejected the idea of a purchase because of Australia's strong quarantine laws.


As

Cycling in Amsterdam

I've already mentioned that there are almost more bikes in Amsterdam than people. Everywhere one goes there are piles of bikes being ridden or stored (parked) in masses. Neil and I hired bikes for one afternoon last week and rode all over the city. At the interchange between the central station and the ferry terminal I saw my first ever two-tier bike park absolutely crammed with machines (pictured).



I also attach a picture of me on my bike in front of where we were staying. Psst.... That's not my hotel. It's another residence in Dam Square in the heart of the city ... something to do with the royal family.



AS

Bizarre Sights

Now that I'm safely back in Armidale, thoughts have turned to some of the more bizarre sights thrown up by Amsterdam (or Dutch?) life.

My colleague Neil and I were looking for a quiet cup of coffee when we blundered into a gay coffee house and beat a hasty retreat! Then we found another establishment next to the flower market alongside a canal. We ordered our drinks and sat a bench fronting the street. There in front of us, amidst masses of very large bulbs, were two sizes of cannabis starter kits. Despite looking at them for half an hour, there were no purchasers. However, the experience gave added meaning to a sight we saw two nights earlier in another cafe: a sign said "No tobacco smoking" in such a way to legitimise other forms of smoking.

Cycling is a mass activity, but it's done in such a way - often with great panache - that our domestic experiences are pale in comparison. We all have to wear cycle helmets in Australia (or else!), but we didn't see one helmet among tens of thousands of cyclists we saw on the streets of Amsterdam. Why, then, the disparity in laws? Like car drivers, Australian cyclists are not allowed to take mobile phone calls or text message while on the move, but every third Dutch cyclist seemed to be having fun with their phones. Why are we wowsers in this regard? We saw enough examples of cycling behaviour to give our police a heart attack. Imagine a young woman in high heels (and no helmet) text messaging with both hands as she rode along bolt upright! I might become a cycle liberationist and campaign, via civil disobedience, for similar rights to the Dutch rather than our mamby pamby approach to cycle regulation.

And then there are all those red lights! Lots of them all over the facades of some buildings. It was late at night when four of us saw one example on the other side of a canal. Some wanted to go for a closer look, but others (who had presumably sampled the wares) urged us to forget it. So we walked on in the gathering gloom, but I could swear that scantily clad women were standing motionless in the windows.

On another occasion, we blundered into a demo: something about the mistreatment of women in Somalia or somewhere like it. There was a massive din as some loud-mouth student blared through a microphone some rhythmic chant and his supporters screamed their head off. There were no fuzz anywhere in sight, a frequent occurrence in the city as a whole which has a high degree of tolerance to just about anything.

Am I showing my age and growing intolerance? Or do you think Amsterdam is my (or your) kind of place?

AS

Here We Are Again

Another week, another place. This time it's Amsterdam for a few days attending an important conference of regional economics at the prestigious Tinbergen Institute. I have a couple of days set aside to explore this city for about the fifth or sixth time, and it's a lovely place to wander, or cycle, around when the weather is nice as it is at the moment.

In fact, I'm just about to head out, so this message won't take long to post. The one problem with Amsterdam is that the street pattern is so irregular and interspersed with canals that it is easy to get lost. I did last Sunday trying to find my hotel and then yesterday morning attempting to jog to Vondelpark. Before I get lost again, have a look at the attatched pictures, which give you a flavour of the place.

AS

In The Outback

Australians romance the outback, but few get there on account of vast distances and often harsh climate. I have seen a lot of the real outback, which lies hundreds of km outside of the capital cities. Armidale is NOT outback territory, and is part of the agricultural heartlands stretching 4000km from coastal north Queensland to South Australia's Eyre Peninsula.

Longreach, where I have just been for a few days on research for the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), is true outback. Its region, Central West Queensland (CWQ), is the size of Germany and France together and accommodates the princely total of 15,000 people. It is largely flat grasslands, which support an extensive pastoral (cattle and sheep) industry. It is crossed by massive drainage channels which often have little or no water, although 2009 is different. This year, the creeks turned to raging torrents after much of Queensland went under water and there is still some water in them funnelling towards Lake Eyre (20m below sea level). Lake Eyre, which is normally a dry salt-pan, floods once in 6 to 10 years, and 2009 was one of those years kick-starting a massive rise in wold-life and a huge tourist industry. Because of all the rain, CWQ is currently a Garden of Eden, and we saw countless Kangaroos, Wild Pigs, Eagles and other birds of prey (e.g. Kites), Bustards (plains turkeys - pictured), Brolgas, and parrots.



The kangaroos seemed intent on committing suicide and it was fortunate that my colleague, Richard Stayner, had hired a massive 4WD Toyota Landcruiser. It was also useful for navigating water damaged unformed roads as we visited the odd rural property up to 60km from town. We were interviewing business, government and community leaders - mainly in the Blackall and Longreach districts.



Blackall lies on the Barcoo river (pictured), one of the heavily braided creeks flowing towards Lake Eyre, and that town has water reminding us of Rotorua. It is one of the few places where domestic water is never heated. It comes out of the ground from bores and is already over 100 degrees C at the time. So the problem is cooling water, not heating it. Alas, the water is heavily mineralised and smells just like the bubling mud-pools of NZ's Rotorua. Taking a shower is therefore a smell hazard, though the water itself is medically harmless.

Even though it is mid-winter, the daytime temperatures were high (up to 25 degrees C), but the starry nights were cool (about 4C). The clarity of the atmosphere (no pollution at all) and the brightness of the light were magical.

AS

HMS Pinafore

Armidale has an active music - theatre scene with groups like ADaMS (Armidale Drama & Musical Society) putting on musicals. We saw one last night - HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. The plot, if it can be called that, is absurd, but the work is great fun and the cast of local amateurs carried it off with great aplomb.

There were four of us in the audience - Dot and me and two of Dot's friends. Of course, we personally knew just about all the cast. For example, one of my doctors was the conductor of the orchestra and one of the women in the cast was the doctor wife of an academic colleague. Many of the cast and orchestra were young, including a teenager who played one of the sailors. Such recognition did not detract from the event.

They modified the script at the end when three women in Japanese attire wandered on to the stage! They were advertising the next extravaganza ... the Mikado. The crowd roared approval in response.

AS