Postcard from Amsterdam

Early one morning in Amsterdam, I watched a boy leave for school.

A canal. Dark brown, still water, curved into combed wakes as boats pass, flags at their sterns as brave as happy dogs' tails. How can a city be so quiet? Trams slip by, bicycles wheel almost silently. You walk down the brick-lined, tree-enfolded canalsides, up over the slightly humped bridges, pushing through the stream of air; it curves into combed wakes as you pass. We all create a wind as we walk. Is this, then, a wind story, an air story?

The boy pulls his bike down the stoop, its tire bouncing on the pavement. He props it against the railing as he shrugs on his backpack, then mounts and is off in one continuous, dancelike movement. The wind ruffles his hair as he rides, pushing it off his forehead, mild May wind, roiling behind him in the wake of his passing.

The winds of all our passings are roiling memories. Where there are many automobiles, the winds become a hurricane, too fast, screaming by, scouring out our thoughts instead of nourishing them. The winds of our passing when we are not involved in it, when we are not walking or pumping pedals or pulling oars, those winds blow too furiously for us to keep up. But, silly humans, we think we can.

Babes, weed and clouds of cigarette smoke

(Attitudes about Amsterdam that may not be particularly true)

Mention you are visiting Amsterdam, and you may get a wink and a nudge. It's true the city has a certain reputation for sexual freedom and drug use. But the city we found on a recent visit didn't fit the hedonistic mold. The guidebooks we studied were almost as bad as our insinuating friends. They had us steeled for situations we never encountered. Among them:

• Sex everywhere. Yes, prostitution is legal -- and regulated. There's a red light district. You can visit it if you are so inclined, but the trade doesn't spill out into the rest of the city, where people seem to go earnestly about their business. And we didn't see public displays of affection of the sort you often encounter at the local shopping mall.
• Aggressive bicyclists. Bike riders would probably prefer that you stay off the designated bike lanes, but they aren't rude about it. They also stop for pedestrians at intersections.
• Cigarette smoke everywhere. Many, if not most, restaurants are smoke-free. Folks tend to go outside if they want to light up. With typical tolerance, the Dutch don't prohibit smoking -- it was allowed in our hotel room, for instance -- but most people are too polite to smoke where it could bother others.
• Marijuana. Possessing weed is illegal, but smoking it is tolerated. Part of the reason it's tolerated is that it isn't in your face. We didn't have time to check out the "coffee houses" where various types of grass were on the menu, but neither did we encounter (or smell) anyone smoking it on the street.
• Dirty streets and smelly canals. The writer of the National Geographic guidebook to Amsterdam in particular seemed dismayed by the "often squalid state of the city's streets." That wasn't the experience we had in our forays from our Konigsplein hotel. There was some graffiti; there was the occasional dog dropping. There is in American cities, too.