Gareth O'Callaghan: The changing face of Amsterdam — why locals are pushing back against sex and drug tourism

It will be 80 years in May since thousands of the city’s residents celebrated in this square to the news that the Netherlands had been liberated from German occupation.

On that sunny afternoon in 1945, as the accordions and barrel organ played and locals stepped out to their traditional Dutch folk dance, there was a sudden crack of gunfire, then came a volley of non-stop heavy-duty shots. 

The party was under attack from German soldiers who were firing into the crowd from the balcony of a building next to the Royal Palace, called ‘de Groote Club’. There was nowhere to hide in the vast open square. When the shooting ended, 32 people lay dead, while almost 200 were injured.

A reason for the attack was never established, with most people down through the years seeing it as a final act of desperation by the occupying forces. Questions were asked as to why Dutch authorities weren’t better prepared for the possibility of such a final revenge attack.

Perhaps it was because the Dutch, by their very nature, are a peaceful and welcoming bunch of people, and, like Ireland, the principle of Dutch foreign policy was neutrality. So while the war essentially by-passed the Netherlands, it could do little about German occupation.

It's my first visit to the city that real tourists call the Venice of the North, which probably makes me sound as though I’ve led a very insular life. Trust me, I haven’t. 

I refer to them as ‘real’, because there is another form of tourism here that the locals have finally had enough of, and they’re refusing to be peaceful about their views any longer

The Dutch capital decriminalised cannabis in 1976. However, marijuana tourism has now become a blight on the city, according to Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema, who has proposed banning foreigners from its cannabis cafés. 

For almost 50 years, the city has been a wander-wish-list destination for weed smokers. It’s difficult to see how Amsterdam’s economy wouldn’t suffer from such a move. She also wants to move the red light district to a purpose-built adult theme park on the city’s outskirts, but the sex workers are objecting. They have no intention of moving to the suburbs.

Amsterdam is the city of contradictions. If ever a 220-square-kilometre metropolis could crown itself the capital of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, then I’m sitting in it — just not quite at the heart of it all; that part of town is a 15-minute walk away from my cosy café

De Wallen, as the red light district is known, is anything but cosy. In daylight hours, it’s difficult to know where the district starts and finishes. It’s a different story once night falls and the streets light up like the Odyssey Disco Club dancefloor in that dance-off scene in Saturday Night Fever.

There’s something bizarre — contradictory, even — about visiting Anne Frank’s house, with its soul-destroying story of how three families bravely survived in a burrow of tiny back rooms, hiding for two years from the Gestapo, only to be later arrested and taken to the concentration camps; and then to visit later that evening — a mere 20 minute walk away — Amsterdam’s oldest district, where as far back as the 1400s prostitutes walked the streets carrying red lanterns.

A warren of narrow pedestrian side streets connect strip clubs, low-profile entrances through black doors into men-only leather bars, and S&M shops selling products that require physical manoeuvring that even Houdini would have found difficult

Another contradiction is how the city’s oldest church, De Oude Kerk, is the holy spindle around which the city’s unholy sex industry spins. And then there are the 200-or-so tall windows under red neon lights, which are at the heart of what men of all ages come here for: to buy sex.

I’m not prudish, but there’s something pathetic about watching a group of grubby young lads vying for the best position at one of these windows, like a herd of grunting buffalo feasting at a small watering hole, while inside a tall woman less than barely-dressed in what looks like elastic bandaging — just enough to cover her dignity — wearing enough lipstick to keep a small Montessori school stocked in crayons for weeks, winks to the ringleader of the stag party.

His friends urge him to take her up on her invitation, which he does — to the roars of his wedding squadron. They pat him on the back, and hug him as he steadies himself for whatever the madame has in store.

As the curtain closes, silence falls over the drunken party, and a few other stragglers who you wouldn’t allow near your children, as though they’re all waiting for an epiphany moment when their friend will emerge enlightened.

“I think he’s the groom,” my wife whispers, appalled by what she’s watching.

“Why are we standing here?” I reply, in a nervous state of disbelief at what’s playing out before us. Less than a minute passes when the door opens and he emerges. His friends laugh so hard, two of them collapse — so stoned they can’t stand up.

The Dutch have always adopted a principle known as ‘pragmatic harm reduction’, which is an approach aimed at reducing harm that stems from risky health-related behaviours, such as substance abuse and dangerous sexual habits. They control their sex and drugs trades, maintaining heavily-policed legality within a tightly contained number of laws, all too aware of the dangerous effects it would have if the markets were criminalised and driven underground.

However, the winds of time have changed direction. Amsterdam’s locals are sick of the drugs and sex tourism which is damaging real tourism — think of people who come here to visit the history of the city, as distinct from the ‘weekenders’ who arrive already drunk with enough condoms to fill an overhead-locker bag, who lurk around bars and coffee shops waiting for it to get dark.

Do city dwellers here continue to tolerate the sex-and-drug tourist choices, or do they force their government to ban the undesirables? Poverty, drug addiction, abusive violent men, and immigration scams exist here also. Many of the women here are not choosing prostitution as a profession, they are being forced into it.

Just because sex-for-sale is legal here doesn’t make it right. Men who come here to buy sex are not tourists, they are missing a major link in the chain of maturity. They are chauvinist pigs who resort to the laws of the jungle when they travel abroad.

God help their wives and children; and as for the stag parties, I feel sorry for the woman that groom-to-be is about to marry. As Michael Palin once said: “The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute".