Off-beat Netherlands | Jasper Winn | Netherlands, Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Doe maar gewoan, dan doe je gek genoeg, The Dutch like to tell themselves, "Be normal, that's crazy enough"

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Drinking in Amsterdam | Jasper Winn | Netherlands, Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Those poor old Amsterdamers have had alcohol forced on them. If it weren’t for their laudable interest in hygiene the Dutch would all be sober, teetotal H²O tipplers. Or so they claim.

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Shopping in Amsterdam | Jasper Winn | Netherlands, Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Department stores and commercial chains hardly hold the Netherlands in thrall; you don’t find many Netherlanders clamouring to spend their Saturday mornings trolley-piloting…

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The New Amsterdam | Norman Miller | Netherlands, Amsterdam, Amsterdam

......the rush comes not just from the caffeine but from feeling like you’re the master of some new Amsterdam universe

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Cycling with Rembrandt | Philip Sen | Netherlands, Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Pedal on through comatose villages like De Rijp and Schermerhorn, which look like they've been undisturbed since the Peace of Westphalia. Look closely and you can still imagine the subjects of Rembrandt's rural sketches

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Amsterdam Hashville | Justine Hardy | Netherlands, Amsterdam, Amsterdam

There is no value to being a narcotic virgin in Amsterdam. The point of decades of ‘no thank-you’, and passing the joint right along, is utterly wasted on the free bicycling and bell-tringing residents

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Amsterdam | Vitali Vitaliev | Netherlands, Amsterdam, Amsterdam

I committed a common boo-boo of a first-time visitor to Amsterdam by asking for a cup of espresso (and nothing else!) in a seedy coffee shop next to my hotel, and the barman eyed me with scornful disbelief, as if I had ordered a cup of sulphuric acid

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To Holland To Skate | Jasper Winn | Netherlands, other areas of the Netherlands, Friesland

For ten days of ice the country was transformed into a landscape from a Dutch master. Small villages, hayricks, gloomy barns, steaming dung-heaps and frost blasted trees poked from the snow in black detail

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Wheelie Good or Cyclo-Babble? | Yvonne Van Dongen | Netherlands, other areas of the Netherlands, Friesland

Not just a bicycle but a Dutch bicycle. A big up-right, smooth-geared, basketted honey of a thing. Like an elegant draught horse, only faster.

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Friesland Ice Sleighs | Jasper Winn | Netherlands, other areas of the Netherlands, Friesland

Skating for the Dutch is the equivalent of Guinness and traditional music for the Irish - a symbol of who they are and where they've come from

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