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 of this city –as-movie-set.

To do the dope-scoop is about as hardcore corny as writing about the tulip bulb markets, or which is the best Van Gogh in the eponymous museum. But people who do not live in a drug-legal society often seem to approach the whole thing of free and public dope-smoking with either a touch of Miss Jean Brodie (‘Violetta did not expire for love of Alfredo. Violetta was a thoroughly silly woman who managed to destroy her life and thinking skills by smoking terrible narcotics’— apologies to Muriel Spark), or the late teen snigger-snigger school of ‘ mummy-thinks-I’m-on-democracy-course-in-The-Hague’.

So, as the narco-virgin I get to come at it from a different viewpoint, that of total stupidity. I thought a coffee shop would be a sort of slightly better lit version of a Dutch Master serving cappuccinos and interesting pastries in the shape of clogs or tulips, or at least tulip bulbs. I did not realise that this was where you went to buy and smoke either marijuana or hashish. I went in there with someone who knew the ropes. She leant gracefully across the counter to get her Haze (a softer smoke, low chance of coughing, spicy and sweet smell, full and sweet taste, very strong clear high), as against anything else on the long menu that offers up such wonders for the mind-in-search-of-sponge-state as Water Works Kushage ( Dutch Hashish, rich and spicy smell, full and strong taste, psychedelic high) and Tbizla Grand Cru (Moroccan Hashish, strong and sweet smell, full and spicy taste, verry [sic] strong stoned).

There was a beautifully put together bouquet of arum lilies on the main table. Around it sat hollow faces with sucking cheeks. There was not much conversation beyond the sound of inhalation, and the low burr of transaction from the counter. Arum lilies are funeral flowers. This made me nervous and  I retreated, scampering to a stool by the window because just breathing the air was giving me, at a pathetically advanced age, my first dose of life-as-experienced-through-soggy-newspaper, one that was quickly followed by an over-whelming sense that I was going to be sick unless I got some non-Hazey air in my lungs very soon. So we sat outside, looking down a cobbled street that ran over a canal. Between narrow shuttered houses that curved and curliqued the skyline, a slice of fish belly sky rose up between, spreading out, pouring over our heads. And then it stopped sounding as though the elegant smoker was talking to me through cotton wool, I stopped seeing the seeds of creation in the late afternoon sky, and the waves of nausea subsided.

That was Hit One. It doesn’t take long to realise that Amsterdam divides fairly cleanly down the middle: those who smoke and those who don’t. Added to this is an expression that I heard second hand from a pumped-up American gym trainer— ‘carbo-face’, as in the features of those who consume too many carbohydrates. They eat a lot of bread in Holland, possibly because it is the safest option in a place not exactly rich in great food. Though into this doughy mix is thrown the wild card of the West Indian and Indonesian Dutch colony tradition, apparently the best food in town.

Hit Two was with Van Gogh. Or, at least as close as we can probably get to his sense of longing. Tree Trunks with Ivy was painted before he went to Paris and began to be influenced by other artists. During the year that he spent in the lunatic asylum in Saint-Rémy in Provence he painted 142 pictures, and this is one of them, painted in July 1889. You can look at the painting from across an open balcony, the distance smoothing Van Gogh’s agitation into this beautiful image of light through trees. It is as though, for a moment, he was given a glimpse of what it might mean to feel balanced, to be earthed.

Hit Three was sitting outside a bona fide café, genuine coffee in hand, utterly enchanted by the traffic of cyclists, this stream of Holland’s perhaps unintentional bid to preserve fossil fuel reserves, or indeed maybe just their way of keeping the air fume free. But then this could all just be about keeping the air clean in order the allow the smoke drift: passive dope-smoking for all. When you are amid the mind-as-sponge set, particularly when you are beyond the cool of youth, anything worth saying about smoking will be ignored. When with the sponge-like, best to make like a sponge. This is by no means a criticism, just a tip.

Back on Hit Three and the world of bicycles. They spin past, baskets decorated with flowers, or with a wheelbarrow effect up front, variously for children, dogs, shopping, or all three. Couples cycle side-by-side, hand-in-hand. Girls ride side-saddle behind boys, and some boys ride the same way behind girls with pronounced calf muscles. Some ride in front, perched on the handlebars. A girl in sky blue looked back from the handlebars to the man cycling. He kissed her, and went on kissing her. That would surely not happen in cynical New York or cyclist-ramming London? There is a naivety to it all, a sweetness that softens the visitor. But a young Dutchman of Asian extraction in one of the coffee-hash bars did not feel the same.
‘Sure it all looks very lovely to you,’ he said, his English perfect and slightly American accented. ‘And yes, it is in many ways, but there is a lot wrong. Anything and everything goes here so you can smoke and watch the days pass. Or you spend your days wondering how you are going to get out before you get brain dead, or get blown up by some fundamentalist who’s been living on National Assistance (social security).’

The whole question of where the west went west tripped across the room, and outside the cyclists whirled past tringing their bells as the smoke circled around us.

Vital info
One of the loveliest places to stay is Ambassade Hotel, pretty much in the centre of town, and right on Heren Gracht (canal). It has a spa with the delicious Koan Float, a private float tank that tackles most things from jet to dopelag. Herengracht 341. 1016 AZ Amsterdam. Tel: + 31 20 555 02 22 www.ambassade-hotel.nl single rooms start from €185. The Van Gogh Museum is in Museumplein at Paulus Potterstraat 7. Tel: + 31 20 570 52 00 www.vangoghmuseum.nl. Open 10.00-18.00 everyday and until 22.00 on Fridays. The ticket queue is usually pretty long so it is best to either get the €10 tickets through your hotel or on-line. I was assured that one of the best non-coffee shops in town was Coffee Shop 2e Kamer, Heistig 6, The Centre of Amsterdam (as it says on the diner-style menu). Tel: + 31 20 422 22 36. Another goodie is supposedly Coffee Shop Dampkring (Halo Coffee Shop, of course), Handboog Straat 29. www.dampkring.nl. For the guide to Amsterdam’s coffee shops www.coffeeshop.freeuk.com

Originally published on Travel Intelligence