So I've been in Amsterdam for a while now. I've met loads of good people, was adopted by an icelandic and a latvian woman who have been filling me with icelandic shark meat and ukrainian pepper-vodka (ouch on both counts). I've befriended the staff of an aussie bar here, and have become a de facto tenant of a student building at the Amsterdam University. I've spent much of the uncharacteristically good weather here on the beach in Zandfoort - it's not a nudist beach, but the dutch seem to think nothing of going around topless, even the pretty ones (doing my best not to stare)! I've also made the requisite trip to the red light district for some culture shock. What was most shocking was not the women in the windows but the drunken tourists in the streeets. A drunken pack of englishmen welcome their friend back from a romp with a girl inside one of the private rooms with hoots and hollers. He responds, "I fucked her brains out! I really fucked her brains out!" Hmf. I'm sure he rocked her world. Very strange place - weird dynamics. There were only men in the street, only women in the windows. The sexes seperated by glass - and by money, I guess.