We flew to Amsterdam specifically on November 6th for a reason — on this date they host the Museum Night, also known as n8 (read as "night" in Dutch). Here in Europe people don't sweat it — they named an official event slightly informally, and it's totally fine.
By the way, just in case. The English word for "Dutch" is "Dutch", and nothing else. Many people confuse it with Danish — "Danish".
Museum Night in Amsterdam isn't free, a ticket cost 13 lats. This price, however, includes all sorts of different events and installations across 50 venues, plus free transport (any kind), plus one visit to any participating museum after the night. Overall, it's a good deal if you hit up at least a couple of events on the night itself, because a separate museum trip will already run you half that amount, and transport isn't cheap either.
Amsterdam is called Amsterdam because it stands on the river Amstel, which you can see in the photo. Dam means dam. They say there are over 1,000 bridges in Amsterdam.
As for transport, the Netherlands has a unified travel pass (an e-ticket, as we'd probably call it). It's a plastic card that costs 7.5 euros, which you can top up with money at a machine or online. You can buy the card at the central station or in the subway (at a machine). It's called the OV-chipcard, and it lets you ride trams, buses, the subway, and trains (maybe something else too). To use it, you simply tap the card against a turnstile/reader. Obviously, it uses RFID technology. It's important to tap the card on the way out too, so the system can calculate how far you've traveled, otherwise you'll pay a lot.
Trip prices are calculated like this: a fixed base fare + price per kilometer of distance. The fixed base fare is charged for boarding, but if you transfer within 35 minutes, it's not charged a second time. Curiously, the card calculates kilometers not based on the time you tapped it at the scanner, but by stops, which makes a lot of sense since you can't get out before the doors open anyway.
For city transport (a tram, for example) the fixed base fare right now is 0.78 euros. Per kilometer - 0.104 euros.
There are other types of tickets where trips are unlimited, but I don't think they're much more cost-effective, even if you ride a lot, since they cost too much. For example, a one-day ticket costs 7.50 euros. You'd have to travel more than 60 km in a day — a tourist usually has no need for that.
Another important point: you need to enter and exit the tram doors according to the pictograms — there are doors exclusively for exit or entry. Sometimes a door on the outside of the tram can be opened by swiping your card near it (or pushing a button? I don't remember).
Who's lost? Am I lost?
This is us walking in the wrong direction. Punk insisted that we go on foot to "see Amsterdam," which resulted in us getting tired preemptively by walking an extra 5 km. Fortunately, we did get to see things. On Woustraat street there are lots of fruit and vegetable shops, which just makes the heart of a veggie-eater like me rejoice. Prices vary, often better than ours back home. Bananas for 1 euro, for instance. We even chatted with a cute shop assistant, of Eastern origin by the looks of it, but she spoke English briskly.
It also turned out that we weren't far from the best döner (kebab) in Amsterdam, according to the guidebooks, so we dropped by. It's called Lehman Döner, located at Woustraat 160. Funny enough, it was super tasty and really cheap, exactly as written. 2 euros for any kind with any meat. Usually, a kebab in Amsterdam costs 3-5 euros and tastes pretty average.
Some kind of monument in the shape of rings. A bit boring.
A strange fruit supermarket in a basement. You can only pay by card — my first time seeing something like that outside of gas stations.
"Three Sisters"
This is a smartshop. Unlike a coffeeshop, you can't buy marijuana here, let alone smoke it. But they do sell other soft drugs and stimulants. Drugs like hallucinogenic mushrooms, kratom, and salvia are almost entirely banned back home. Stimulants like guarana, on the other hand, are popular in our country, though usually as ingredients in "energy" drinks. Consuming drugs inside the smartshop or on the street is not recommended, but typically the police won't say anything, they'll just make sure you don't harm yourself or others. I rarely saw police in Amsterdam at all, and they definitely weren't busy with stoned tourists, so you don't need to worry about that issue.
If you get the urge to munch on some substances, be careful and cautious — ask the seller how to do it right and what the effect is, don't mix different drugs and alcohol, and don't go wandering the streets after consuming. People who haven't tried drugs other than alcohol and tobacco before often have a very wrong idea about their effects, which sometimes leads to unpleasant outcomes.
Overall, it's a pretty harmless affair — walking into a coffeeshop, smoking a joint, and hanging out there for an hour. Anyone can try it without much risk or consequence.
By the way, I'm not urging you to do this at all — Amsterdam is pretty great as is. It depends on the person, of course — some people just get bored walking around like that. You can always get traditionally wasted, seeing as Amsterdam has plenty of watering holes.
Eventually, we made it to the center and started looking for what to see for Museum Night. First we went to the Old Church (Oude Kerk). It was a bit tedious there — just a couple of moderately silly installations. The more interesting action was supposed to start later.
They sprinkled petals under the lamp, such is modern art
Not particularly thrilled with what we saw, we set off to find something more interesting. We found the Optofonica contemporary art center with a long line, the New Church (Nieuwe Kerk) featuring performances by some Afro-Asian ethno-band, and some club where the music was supposed to start, but for now there was a live installation. We were doing all this slowly, since it's hard to navigate at night in a city you've never been to before, and without a map to boot, which we didn't have time to buy (and didn't know where to).
This is a human installation in the club. They sit like this for a very long time without changing poses. Amusing.
This is me sitting in a coffeeshop and, as weird as it may seem to you, drinking coffee
Of course, there is more than enough information about coffeeshops on the internet, but since I brought it up, I'll tell you about it. I don't really know much about it myself, just passing on the facts I've read and noticed too.
There are a lot of coffeeshops in Amsterdam — from 150 to 300 of them, only the mayor's office knows for sure. For a while now, opening new coffeeshops has been banned, as well as transferring licenses. So if one closes down, it's for good (or until they change the rules). Coffeeshops on the outskirts are usually unpresentable, but you can buy small amounts of weed — from 0.6 grams. In the center the minimum is 1.5, usually 2. They cost 12-15 euros, which will last you a very long time.
The weed is of varying quality, so if you want something specific, find out which coffeeshop is famous for it in advance. There are many strains, but it's mostly marketing. In reality, of course, they differ, but only really in two directions. In English they're called stoned and high. If you lack experience, or you're not a fan of being numb and lost in yourself (stoned), then ask for high or more sativa-like.
You can smoke by rolling a joint. The paper is given for free. Since mixing weed with tobacco is now forbidden, they also provide or sell a filler — a harmless plant that you can stuff in to make the joint bigger and burn longer. From my perspective, this is dumb — more harmful smoke in the lungs, less effect.
You can also smoke from a pipe, which costs 4-10 euros in a souvenir shop or at a flea market.
Coffeeshop sellers often smoke tobacco, even though it's forbidden. They smoke weed less often. The crowd in coffeeshops varies, but everything is quite civilized, nothing to worry about. Nobody is rowdy, and nobody really guffaws, they just quietly sit there and puff away unhurriedly.
Coffeeshops are especially concentrated around the Red Light District, which I'll talk about later, but they're common elsewhere anyway. You could buy a map of coffeeshops, though there's not much point to it. What does make sense is to look for a cozy coffeeshop with soft armchairs/sofas and a nice vibe, like with parrots nearby, as there were in one we visited. If there are patrons there — that's even better, in my opinion, because it's pleasant, ends up feeling like a European café, very atmospheric.
Besides weed, coffeeshops sell hash. While "weed," i.e. marijuana, is the flowers or leaves of the plants, hash is the resin or pollen. There is no major difference, except maybe hash burns better and the high is supposed to be milder, though other sources say it's actually stronger.
If you're not a fan of inhaling smoke into your lungs, but still want to try the effect of weed, buy an edible with tetrahydrocannabinol (the very substance that gets you high). Usually it's a space cake or a space cookie, meaning a muffin/brownie or a cookie. You can also buy tea (space tea). Be careful, they kick in slowly and it's easy to overdose, so don't eat the next one until at least 2 hours after the first. If you have a large body mass, you can eat a piece and a half at once, but no more.
You shouldn't feel shy about walking into a coffeeshop and buying weed if you feel like it. To the staff and patrons of a coffeeshop, it's hardly any different from a bar where you pop in for a beer, so they'll treat you like a regular customer, and not at all like an addict or an annoying/scared tourist, as you might imagine.