” And how was Amsterdam without tourists? Ahhhhh It was ……..heaven, ohhhhh it was …..” 

Amsterdam doesn’t need Irish pubs. Amsterdam needs no help in its crepuscular shenanigans. Amsterdam’s wonderful Brown Cafes can stand for themselves, albeit at a jaunty angle. They are of course called  brown not after big  loads of hash , but for their distinct cosy wooden interiors. Take t’Aepjen, for example, with its cozy ,bent over,almost breathing wooden beams, where the sailors would pay for their rounds with apes they had purloined whilst at sea. Alas, they no longer except apes in lieu of payment- (political correctness gone mad !) but they take Monzo , so that’s fine. The barman , on receiving each order,  plunges each specific beer chalice into a full sink of water like a baptismal font , in that way they do in the Low Countries that I don’t understand but given their dedication to the craft I am all in.

The Amsterdam nightlife veers between classy candlelit continental sophistication like this to neon superbars and coffeeshops plastered in emojis where pale youths sup chocolate milk bleary eyed, with little in between around the centre .Just around the corner,  I come across one of Amsterdams numerous Irish pubs, the unmistakably authentic ‘Hoopman Irish pub‘ where they couldn’t even paint a shamrock right. It is in Leidseplein which is like Leicester Square so I safely assume its a shitty tourist trap. Speaking of tourists, Amsterdam in 2019 had over 19 million in a city of 900,000 inhabitants , so fair enough if they couldn’t be bothered with all this. 

Brouwerji IJ , by contrast, lies in East Amsterdam, far from all the tourists . It’s a shame , as it’s probably the Dutchest thing ever ; a brewery in a windmill overlooking a canal ; but as it is outside the 250m radius of the city centre it is filled with proper locals. Its like there are 3 Amsterdams ; De Wallen– or the red light district by the centre; next, the slicked-back-hair-old -money-opulence of the Jordaan and Museumplein districts , and then all the parts outside. Sitting beside us in Brouwerji IJ is a old withered Dutch man , smelling worse for wear,  drinking a potent 9% glass of stout. His hair too is slicked back, not in an ode to Wall Street but because he is very greasy ” Don’t order the stout “ he cheerfully suggests, drinking a 3/4 glass of what looks like fizzy bovril and as a seasoned pint man, I follow his sage advice. All in all, a brilliant pub, where the preferred accompaniment to the beers is a massive load of cheese. Just to Dutch it up a notch.

Amsterdam is a drinking town , and always has been – Amstel, Heineken, Grolsch and some actually drinkable beers all hail from here. Amstel I hear is made from the local canal water which makes sense when you consider the amount of people who have pissed into them over an average weekend . In order to reduce the levels of this secret ingredient, the authorities years back installed classy outdoor urinals or Peecurls. Enternally classy, the Dutch. As classy as an outdoor urinal can get. The authorities all round the Red light district fight an unending battle against Wild Passen, or pissing in the street to you and me, so there are over 75 curls  dating back to 1870. A veritable pee-ce of history .But recent controversy in the unbridled historization of urinination in the Netherlands occured in 2017  with a metaphorical storm-in-a-pee-curl when a local woman, fined for peeing in the street, pointed to the innate hypocrisy of the peecurl  .The issue trickles on unsolved to this day.

The Dutch invented the stock market, gained mastery over the tides, survived the Nazis but may have finally met their match against the most perncious of foes: tourists . Dutch liberal social policy in the 60’s and 70’s aimed to demistify sex work and the sale of soft drugs , which it did to an extent for  generations of Dutch , but it has struggled to cope with ‘orny travellers bouyed by cheap transport of the late 90’s. On my first night , I venture around the human zoo that is De Wallen Red light District in Amsterdam centre.  Far be it for me to judge , but I will now judge : you’d have to be fairly basic to go on holiday primarily to smoke a joint or fiddle with yourself peeping through a hole at a live sex show. Have these people not seen the world wide web? Amsterdam , post-Internet should have calmed right down, but conversely, its busier than ever . What is interesting is all this end-of- the-pier vice is shoehorned into a couple of streets , allowing the remainder of the city to function in relative normality.  During the covid lockdowns , Amsterdammers however got used to not seeing their city filled with vomit , piss and people ogling prostitutes , and strangely enough decided it was quite nice. Just before lockdown , the mayor proposed moving the whole Red light district to an external sex-filled suburban megastore , like the Dundrum Shopping Centre but less sexy -the shittest sounding hotel ever dreamt of since Heartbreak and California.  Thankfully, they also got rid of the god awful “ I Am-sterdam ” giant letters thing , where the queue for selfies was longer than that to the Rembrandt exhibit just behind it.  They could move them to in front of the new sex shopping centre. In fact , I propose they should make a sex-and-drugs –I-Am-sterdam Selfie-Disney world somewhere on the  outskirts of the city so anyone who wants can go and fill their boots . I’d go to that to be fair.  In the interim, local authorities created the Enjoy and Respect programme, which as noble as it sounds contains some comically naive insights, bless them. Aimed primarily at the number 1 nuisance group- young Brits , it aimed to show them the error of their ways through responsible awareness and self reflection. You can imagine how that went.

The extent of Amsterdam’s tourist tussles become apparent as I notice the struggle for accommodation beforehand; there are a number of restrictive anti-airbnb measures to stop houses being left idle purely for tourists. In the end we decide to stay in a canal bridge operators hut , a monument  to Amsterdam’s  ingenuity:  an excellent use of space ,  a classy wooden finish and eye-wateringly expensive. 

As a modern cosmopolitan nation , let us now  take a moment to applaud the range of delightful beer snacks the Netherlands offers : for example , the awfully named Bitterballen ; nationalistic balls of delight , topped with little flags, and filled with some sort of molten sauce and speculative animal chunks. The Dutch version of the late night post piss-up takeaway ( or Supermacs for my Irish brethern ) is the cultural legend FEBO, a fast food hub  akin to a fantastical savoury red light district . Here, you can peruse the cavalcade of crunchy coated meat tubes from within their seductive  ,neon lit cabins, eventually choosing that which has caught thine eye. Once you put forward the cash, the little door opens and you are free to indulge. What this says about Dutch carnal desires I will leave to you, dear reader. Final shout goes out to the pickled herring with gherkins and onion. Alongside resisting the Nazis, their most impressive feat is making pickled raw herring with gherkin and onion taste sexy. Congrats.

To the South , we go to the ‘working class neighbourhood’ of the Pijp , which still looks nicer than 90% of all London. Following some banging pancakes in the Albert Cyup Market , we come across O’ Donnells, a corner pub with a pleasing terrace to enjoy the unseasonal warmth. O’ Donnells has a load of posters proudly stating that their Guinness has been inspected for excellence but it appears that the last cert expired 3 years ago , worryingly (see head on pint below).  Across from us on the terrace , a woman with a bleached crop-cut ,  in her sixties maybe,  asks the waiter if he is Irish. Interestingly , although both are Dutch , they speak to each other in English. ” None of us are Irish here ” says the waiter. The woman seems disappointed , so it’s my time to shine ”He’s from Ireland,” says Bella,  pointing at me , pimping my Irishness which  prompts  the woman to come and sit with us. ‘‘I thought you were Dutch!’ she says. The Netherlands is the only place in the world where people cannot tell a million miles away that I am a gaijin/gringo/ foreigner, but alas this is more of an irritant as people speak to me in Dutch until they realise they have to yet again speak in English.

The woman has the look of an ex-punk from the 80s and is wearing those shoes that have built in toes like feet gloves.  As a local , we have a real good chat about Ireland , England, the English language and of course Amsterdam- tourists and all. She’s articulate and engaging , a bit odd but asks some perceptive questions , never leading with her opinions but testing the waters.  I want to hear about how locals feel about the glut of tourists ( we had previously been talking about Ireland beung the home of fairies and ghosts so I am keen to change the subject.) so I ask how Amsterdam was without all the tourists during covid. She beams, then drinks a glug of wine, then with a flourish goes ‘oh it was heaven, it was …..uggggghh.’ trailling off for effect. Rather than any xenophobia , it’s simply a case of how much can one place stand.  She counters to us, saying she saw an article about how most of London was being bought up by speculators and no one can afford there either , and says the same has taken a grip in Amsterdam …and Berlin …Prague …Budapest.

‘I like the Scottish accent,’ she declares out of nowhere. ‘‘Many years ago , I dated a Scottish woman . I am a lesbian you see , ( I saw) …she was amazing……. she trails off. ‘Ok, i am going home to smoke some hashish . It was lovely to meet you ”. And she goes , in her shoes that have toes. O Donnells is really busy , teeming with after work drinkers in the terrace at this point. All in all, O’Donnells is a good spot – I give it 8 toes out of 10.

Finally after 3 days waiting , we have the pub that was top of my list -the wonderful ‘Mulligans Irish Music Bar’ , a jewel of an Irish pub located as everything is, by a canal and is a wonderful fusion of Dutch-Irishness . (When researching this article, the only thing that came up when searching for ‘Dutch- Irish’ was a reference to  ‘Double- Irish -with- a Dutch-Sandwich’ ; which sounds like the kind of thing you’d pay good money for in one of the streets nearby but is in fact reference to a complex corporate tax evasion scheme beloved by multinationals).

Mulligans is located in an old Dutch Townhouse , has Republican Taytos behind the bar and has Irish music softly lilting in the background . Their music sessions are things of legend, and throughout the bar are pictures of heroes of the Irish folk music scene, ( none of Ronan Keating though!?!?!) As I gaze around in admiration, alas, having spent the day in the lesser spotted North Amsterdam , my sunburnt self  spills a half glass of beer all over the bloody bar  table and  adjacent stools. A local looks over and tuts , -just another tourist , carelessly pissing all over Amsterdam’s beauty and splendour. Next stop, the giant  I-Am-sterdam.