Ámsterdam

Ámsterdam is probably the most famous city of The Netherlands, specially by the tourists. However, Dutch people don't find it so good, one of the reasons are tourists, who make the city busy and crowded. What attract those loads of people? Cannabis and prostitutes (at least in most of the cases). If you only know that, then you should know there is much more than drugs and sex.

As most of you know, The Netherlands has a tolerance stance to the use of soft drugs. It means that cannabis (and also hash) is sold in coffee shops. Only they can sell them and no more than 5 grs per person. To be able to enter inside  a coffee shop and buy you must be above 18. You may think that smoke cannabis is legal, but it's not nor its use on the street. Ironically, cannabis plantations aren't allowed, so the source where the coffee shops get their product is unknown, for this reason, no quality controls are done.

About the red light district, it is in the centre of the city and there are no big banners or whatever anouncing you're in. Actually, you can stay in a ice cream shop and get into the district just crossing the street. Once you're in, you'll see a lot of coffee shops, cannabis museums and big windows with prostitutes waiting for clients. It's a crowded place mainly by tourists (both guys and girls) and some local people. Also, it can be found "theatres" offering live sex performances. The district is composed of three islands, so it's not very big. While prostitution is legal (the girls have their insurance, taxes...) it can only be done inside the rooms, prostitution on streets is illegal. Besides, not all girls are doing that voluntarily, so the system isn't perfect.

Once the most famous issues have been described let's talk about the cultural activities. There are 75 musuems in Amsterdam (via http://www.amsterdam.info/es/museos/). Some of the most famous are Anne Frank Huis (the house of Anne Frank), Rijkmuseum, Van Gogh's museum and Museum Het Rembrandthuis. There are also other not so well-known museums, such as the one about torture, cannabis... If you want to visiti one of the great museums be ready to wait queue of more than two hours, I'd recommend you to book the tickets if possible, and if you're planning to visit several of them, think about the museumkaart. It is a card which costs 50 euro, it can be bought in any museum and let you enter for free in almost all the museums (not only in Amsterdam but among The Netherlands). It is valuable because of two main reasons, Dutch museum are usually around 20 euro, so if you're going to visit some of them you'll save money. Besides, having the card let you go into the museum in a very much shorter queue (maybe 45 mins instead of the 3-4 hours one) so you'll save time.

Also, if you like cinema, you must have a look at Pathé Tuschinski Bioscoop. It's a cinema which looks like a theatre, so the experience of watching a movie there it's impressive. In The Netherkands all the movies are in original version with Dutch subtitles, so as lon as you can understan English you'll enjoy the film. The inside of the cinema is amazing and worth at least a visit to the hall.

To finish, here are some photos from Amsterdam.

 

Fieldwork

Last wednesday (woensdag) I join to my supervisor, the other student of him and another guy from the naturalis to do fieldwork. We went to the dunes, a sand region near Katwijk, by bike. It took about 20-30 mins but it wasn't as easy as I expected. In contrast with the rest of the country I've seen and the trip to Keukenhof, it was plenty of slopes. Besides, it was a quite windy day, making more difficult to pedal.

Once we got there, we stop at one of the ponds of the park to collect material, in this case beetles, larvae and bugs. The method is quite simple. First, soil and the things present in it and the water are collected using kicknets. Then, it is pour into a tray to sort the mud and the plants from the bugs, and take them. They were collected in alcohol if they were larvae or in tubes if bigger. We didn't have to take everything, so the supervisor and the other guy told us what they wanted to collect and how much individuals, more or less.

After spending some hours there layed in the ground looking at all kind of live beings of the water ( i must say that the amount of them present in the water, not very much water, is astonoshing and countless) we moved to another site in the park. Because there were no trees nor nothing, basically, the effect of the wind while riding was more effective on us. In this point I was already tired and slower than the rest.

This place was sloped, so it wasn't very confortable for laying/sitting down in the ground. We had to do exactly the same as the other place. However, in this case a surprise took place. A wild fox appeared and started to move closer to us.

After spend another couple of hours in this pond, we went back to Leiden. As you can imagine, if I was tired before, in the return I was exahusted and the slowest of the group. It was harder than I expected, but it was nice to see how the fieldwork is and have a better idea of how the whole process of the research is.

My legs were hurting for the next two days! So if planning to move to Then Netherland train your bike skills as much as possible ( or at least get used to do sport).

Fijne Dag!