Round the bend in Amsterdam

7^th September, 2026.

Continuing the tradition of willingly putting myself in compromising situations, I’m doing the thing I told myself a year ago I wouldn’t do again. Boredom can make a person do crazy things; like visiting a foreign city for 24 hours without any accommodation. I stepped out of Amsterdam Centraal at 11am - however my watch read 10, still tuned to London time because I couldn’t be bothered to change it only for a day. Under a cloudless sky the city was bathed in golden sunshine, the last breath of summer before the leaves go brown. The charming hotels, churches, and restaurants unfolded as if out of a pop-up card. There was a tune in my mouth and restless excitement in my legs. Spoilt for choice of direction, I was pulled by my eyes towards the Basilica of Saint Nicholas. Its blackened stone and jagged columns commanded a street of sweet European townhouses. An angry drill sergeant and his regiment of substitute teachers.

I walked round the corner and down the wide boulevard of Damrak, lined to my right with every tourist trap you can imagine. The shabby hotels, steakhouses, vlaamse frite joints, and plasticky souvenir shops were fattening themselves off the travellers who got ensnared right off the train. Actually, frites for breakfast sounds like a brilliant idea, but nowhere here… Escaping the hordes of suitcases and selfie sticks through a narrow alleyway, I found myself on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. Up this street is the Magna Plaza, fallen from grace; formerly the city’s Main Post Office, now an underwhelming shopping centre. Repulsed by what they’ve reduced such a brilliant building to, I sprinted away down the street. My feet came to a stop at a charming little square called Spui. People milled around the vintage book stores, a homeless man pensively smoked a cigarette on the steps of the Lutheran Church, a tram honked me out of the way. I got my breakfast from a frite place tucked away in Voetboogstraat. A large cone of chips drowned in a sweet curried mayonnaise called Joppie. I despise unadulterated mayo.

It was time to acquire supplies. I walked back towards Spui, down Spuistraat to arrive at The Magic Mushroom Gallery. Perhaps the most upmarket head-shop I’ve been to. Huge plastic toadstools sprouting out of a grass-green formica floor. A herbalist’s variety of weed strains and esoteric drug paraphernalia displayed around the place like candy. Forbidden Planet for stoners. Quite garish actually. What I need, they keep behind the counter.

Sclerotia are hardened masses of mycelium that many fungi species grow underground to survive harsh weather. Magic mushrooms grow sclerotia too. Otherwise known as truffles. Which also, like the mushroom, contains psylocibin and psilocin – the chemicals that make your mind melt. And while shrooms are illegal in the Netherlands, I’m about to purchase over-the-counter truffles. The Opium Act only designates the actual mushroom as a controlled substance, anything growing underground in the mycelium network is fair game.

“I hear you’ve got magic truffles?” I said with the meek confidence of a tourist to the shop assistant.

She escorted my attention to the list laminated to the counter. I pointed to the second strongest and she retrieved a 25-gram box. Her fingers still on the box, she questioned, “Do you know your do-s and don’t-s?”

“Yes!” I declared triumphantly.

“What are you not supposed to do?”

Goddamn, I wasn’t expecting her to actually ask, I thought and said, “Uuuuuuh fly an aircraft?”

“So, no drinking and no smoking weed,” she instructed, fingers still resting on the box.

“Well I’m planning on doing both today…”

“Are you crazy? Are you already drunk?” Strangely, I was kind of enjoying being told off by her. The stern blackness of her boxy glasses, blouse, and fringed bob only helped. “Don’t have these if you’re planning on drinking and smoking, have the magic drops instead.”

Magic drops?

She put a little pink 10ml bottle with a black dropper cap next to the truffles. “Yes it’s just extract of psylocibin. It doesn’t react as badly with alcohol and weed. Three drops under the tongue is all you’ll need.” 

I then headed towards Rembrandtplein. Around the corner from this stately square is a cannabis shop called Boerejongens. I bought five joints, each one housed in a smooth white cardboard tube. The sign pointing upstairs to the smoking lounge intrigued me.

“Is it open upstairs?”

“It is,” replied one of the formally attired staff, “but you don’t want to go up there. It’s only a little waiting room. Like sitting outside your dentist appointment. And the weather is so good outside.”

I required no further convincing. Walking down a shimmering canal, sunglasses on, a joint balanced on my lips – splendid. The joints I usually roll are like Vogues, dainty little skinny things compared to these blunt weapons. The smoke filled my lungs like fine glitter and went straight to my head. My legs felt like phantom limbs, my torso floating along unaided. On Vijzelstraat I encountered the De Bazel building and couldn’t move. This titanic arrangement of bricks is the home of the Amsterdam City Archives. A fortress for the storing of history. The place appears indestructible but we all know that’s not true. Regardless, I was sure the knowledge kept in there will be safe for quite some time behind those imposingly magnificent walls. Posterity need not worry for now. 

Finally able to tear myself away from the building’s trance, I wandered down Spiegelgracht. This boulevard wears the Rijksmuseum as a crown which I could see in the distant sunny haze. I followed my nose down a cobbled side street which felt like the merchant’s quarter of some medieval town. Tailors, cobblers, and travel agents all the way down. An old woman in a red dress was rifling through a bin.

“Lost something?” I asked upon approach.

She looked up at me through black shades. The years had been kind to her graceful face.

“Ooooooh no, not lost, I am looking for bottles, cans, glass, batteries…”

It was then that I noticed the huge tote bag full of recyclables under her arm. And the huge red crystal around her neck on a gold chain.

“You’re personally digging through rubbish to find them – that’s actually so selfless!”

She blushed the colour of her outfit. “I’m trying to be helpful to the future. It feels like no one is doing anything.”

“No one who’s in a position to make a difference,” I corrected.

“I hate that the planet we’ll give to the future is worse than we found it. I won’t be around for long but knowing that I’m helping in a small way is enough,” she said serenely.

“Well, if we don’t get our act together then the planet will simply wipe us out like a disease in its system. A huge fire or a huge flood, take your pick. Unless we nuke each other dust first… anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that Nature always wins.”

“Errrr…  you’re not wrong. After long enough without us, the world recovers.”

I told her my name, she told me hers. Wilhelmina. I bid her farewell but not before dropping in her tote bag the cardboard tube the joint between my lips came in. She waved me off with a smile.

I was starting to feel a bit bloated from my incredibly healthy breakfast earlier, but that didn’t bother me – I’m on holiday, I can have chips for breakfast if I want. Marching through the streets of Amsterdam with loud music in my ears, I was enamoured by the architecture. So obviously European while being distinctly Dutch. Terraced buildings repetitively punctuate the boulevards like symbols on sheet music. Tall, narrow, and colourful canal houses stare out of huge windows at their own reflections below. Waterways radiate out from the centre of the city, their source being the IJ which separates Amsterdam Noord from Centraal and Zuid. I was surrounded by a body of water almost everywhere I went which was having tranquil effects on my state of mind. Countless bicycles of all shapes and sizes whizzed past me. I’m almost convinced that the Dutch leave the womb in a pedalling motion. I spotted something else in the bike lanes which made me question whether I hadn’t smoked too much. Small, rinky-dink cars big enough only for two passengers sputtered past every now and again. The Canta – as it’s called – is decidedly not a bike, but it’s barely a car either. It exudes the aura of grocery shopping in old age. I want one so bad. Imagine I pick you up in one of these, wouldn’t you want to get in? Or imagine calling an Uber and one of these pulls up beside you…

Towering over me was the spectacularly palatial façade of the Rijksmuseum. The building swallowed up pedestrians and bicycles through two wide passages, spitting them out onto Museumplein on the other side. Walking through this grand, frescoed arcade brought back memories of when I was here a few years ago. My soul was contained in a completely different person back then. Museumplein was looking vibrantly verdant, the grass shining like emeralds under the sun. Unlike the charred tinderbox parks of London after multiple consecutive heatwaves. I chose a choice bit of Nature’s carpet, finished my second joint and practiced doing my cartwheels.

Back on my feet, I went down Van Baerlestraat until I reached Vondelpark. My mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. Water was of desperate need. Just when I was seconds away from plunging my head into the lake coursing through the park, I spotted a water fountain! Four bronze fish spat forth cool nectar into a marble basin. I quenched my thirst straight from one of their mouths. A stranger gave me strange looks. Walking half the length of the park, I traded grass for pavement at Gerard Brandstraat. I found the sun eclipsed by a church, the star’s corona bursting through the building’s silhouette. The trees reflected in its tall, mirrored windows made the edifice seem flat, as if there was just more park on the other side.

The sun began dimming as cloudy fortresses approached on strong winds. I picked my way through random side streets away from Centraal, the cityscape shifting strangely into the residential. Pavements become thinner and the vegetation wilder. The slender townhouses begin tilting forward, hooks used to haul furniture up the floors protruding ominously from their roofs. Bikes were chained against every railing, dozens stacked atop each other. Wheels, chains, and handlebars tangled together like the roots of some ancient mechanical tree. I was enamoured by a dying breed of beauty which we rarely see in modern cities. Wrought iron balconies twisted into marvellous shapes; street lamps like sceptres; benches with sultry curves; simple lines and patterns in the brickwork; ostentatious ornamentation!

Ornamented in a very different manner was a tree I stumbled across down one of the countless canals. Children’s shoes were nailed into the bark, some of them holding shiny festive baubles. A plushy stag, blackened and moist, adorned the tree like a trophy. Straddling on its antlers was a doll, missing its right arm and everything else from the chest down. The angel atop this grotesque Christmas tree. A look of derangement in its bug-like eyes and matted blond hair. My stoned mind could compute this no more so I turned and walked away. This was the first of many effigies I would stumble across throughout the day. What’s compelling the locals to leave these? Who, what, when, where and why are they commemorating?

My watch tells me it’s just past 2pm, but it isn’t. It’s 3. With one foot in another time zone, I aimlessly wandered a whole loop and found myself before Magna Plaza again, the post-office-turned-shopping-mall. Across the street was the western façade of the Royal Palace, masked in scaffolding and veiled in tarp. The clock tower of Westerkerk, burial site of Rembrandt, stretched to the sky behind me. And in the middle of it all was a vortex intersection; tram tracks cutting through invisible motor and cycle lanes. A phalanx of cars, bikes, and the occasional tram thundered past regularly. When an opening presented itself, I sprinted across this wasteland junction until I found myself in Dam Square. The black stone of the Royal Palace looked as if it had survived a burning. So many selfie sticks waved about that I thought the tourists were fencing.

With another joint lit, I skipped down a street called Nes on the other end of the square. The buildings on both sides of this narrow street rose as high as I felt. Mid-century hotels and offices checked their reflection in the glassy faces of designer shops. Cooled and shaded by the embrace of this charming avenue, my heart felt light. I stumbled across an alleyway - it’s other end couldn’t be seen through the dense foliage growing up walls and hanging low overhead. The street sign read Gebed Zonder End. A huge green clock with musical notes instead of numbers ticked away over a neon sign: Kapitein Zeppos Café.

“Hallo” I said confidently to the pretty waitress, attempting to practice my Duolingo Dutch.

With a blank face she quickly chirped, “Een tafel voor hoeveel personen?”

What? Wind totally gone from my sails, I awkwardly replied in English, “Could I have a table for just me?”

She led me into a brilliantly illuminated indoor terrace. The soft pale light of the day poured through the glass above, glistening off the blue tiled tabletops. A curtain of leaves from the alley outside hung over the exit. This is so delightfully charming, I thought.

“You can sit wherever you like,” she instructed.

“Do you have a table with a plug socket?”

She looked at me with a hint of concern and said, “Then the only table we have is inside.” I followed her inside, towards a forgotten corner of the restaurant. Leaving a menu on an ordinary wooden table, she disappeared. I was in awe. This is without a doubt the worst seat in the house. The red leather seat glowed unpleasantly under the sickly yellow light. I don’t know why I didn’t just leave. Plugging my phone in, I took a seat and immediately lost my breath. The restaurant’s ventilation refused to reach this stuffy corner. I had to take slow and shallow breaths to compose myself. Colour entirely gone from my skin, I leaned by head against a wall and hid behind a menu. Which was entirely in Dutch.

The waitress returned to find my face buried in the menu and said, “We have an English menu, if you want one.”

“No thank you,” I said for some reason, “I just need a little longer.” Stoned, over-stimulated, and suffocated, I was losing my grip. Gebend Zonder End translates to prayer without an end; fitting considering my discomfort had no end and I was praying to get the hell out of here. I continued reading through the menu, pretending that it made complete sense. I eventually admitted defeat and used my phone to translate it. When she returned, I ordered a plate of edam, bread, and cornichons with a bottle of coke. From my pathetic vantage I sadly stared at the bright terrace that was denied me. I bet the air is fucking breathable out there. I ate my sad repast and wondered what the hell I was even doing here on a Monday. I took time off work for this! When paying the bill, I stunned myself one more time by leaving a tip for an awful time. The food and service are fine, that one seat is entirely to blame.

With my phone and earbuds all juiced up, I was back on the streets again with fresh air in my lungs and my good spirits restored. I knew I’d have to find another place to charge my phone later tonight because my battery is so useless that I can see the percentage dropping before my very eyes. But that’s a future-me problem.

Before my arrival today, I was told some guy called Jeffery puts on these DIY film screenings around the city, always in different location. Films forgotten by the canon of cinema, obscure and undistributed. There was one scheduled for 8:30pm at a place called De Nieuwe Anita. Still a couple of hours away, so I continued my directionless walk.

The sun had been upstaged by clouds when I found myself on Tweede Hugo de Grootstraat. Why does this stretch of road remind me of Dalston High Street? Might be the Eastern European grocery store or the bike repair place or the film developer or the decades-old kebab shop or artisanal bakery or the overpriced sandwiches or the upmarket burger joints or the…. I looked at my watch; it’s 6:27pm in East London right now and I feel like I’m right there. I remembered that I had to stock up for tonight. The last time I tried to evade sleep in a foreign city without a place to stay, I was falling asleep at a café table watching the Eiffel Tower disappear. Having a couple of Red Bulls in my bag will be helpful during the small hours. I stopped in front of a building, its huge, red, Impact-font sign read Dirk van den Broek. Unmistakably a supermarket.

Down Nassaukade, along a stately canal, I found a discarded bike leaning against a wall. A piece of paper taped to its frame invited me to take it. It was in pretty good condition except for the warped and misshapen front wheel. It was awful to ride and I didn’t have time to go get the wheel replaced only to dump it somewhere near Amsterdam Centraal when I leave in the morning. But the poor sight of it left a lasting impression on me, calling to mind all the other wasted bikes I’ve seen out in the world. Chained to fences, dismembered and forgotten. Stripped for parts by those who couldn’t cut through the locks. In the motherland of bikes where they’re more populous than people, this fallen comrade deserves a resurrection or a proper burial. So if someone spots a slightly rusted, duck-egg-blue bike on Nassaukade, please give it a home.

I killed time until the screening along a quiet canal bank watching a windmill. Molen De Otter, like most of the windmills in Amsterdam, is in retirement and resting motionless after almost three centuries of work. Finishing off my third joint over a book, I shuffled back to De Nieuwe Anita for the film. The place had the warm ambience of a cool crowd. Fashionable folk drank and laughed over Brazilian jazz blaring from the speakers. Past the bar was a rickety wrought-iron spiral staircase which I tried not to fall down on my way to the seating area. Almost a full house. I took a seat in the back row, watching more and more people come down the stairs, some of them with additional chairs they stole from the bar upstairs. By the time Jeffery came on stage, the room was obscenely full. Long hair the colour of his starched white shirt bounced along to his movements. As he introduced the film – Oedipus Rex by Pierre Paolo Pasolini – something in his manner reminded me of my undergrad Film Studies lecturer. What a character! Full of silly catchphrases. A bit dishevelled. Endearingly erratic. And completely spell-binding. I hope you’re well, wherever you are Daryl Perrins.

But there was a problem. I was seeing two Jeffery’s prancing about on stage. The whole room warped around the edges. I just couldn’t focus. The air felt hollow in my lungs. It suddenly dawned on me just how high I was, and exhausted. My brain was being pulled apart – medieval torture style – by these two huge and opposing forces. I was afraid I might make a fool of myself. How would it happen, I pondered. Am I freaking out? When the lights went out, so did my strength to keep my eyes open. In my current state, the film’s dialogue sound like soporific babbling. For a time, I tried to resist the onset of sleep as I actually wanted to watch the film. But resistance was futile. The moment I surrendered, however, my captors no longer wanted me. I suddenly became aware of how uncomfortable these wooden chairs were. There was no place to rest my arms, let alone my head which kept falling this way and that only to be jerked violently back awake. The chair felt about as comfortable as hanging onto a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean, hopelessly awaiting rescue. Tired of this agony, I got out of my seat, sat in the back corner of the room underneath the spiral staircase and leaned by head against the wall. Sleep took me instantly.

I awoke to the sound of applause which I thought was for me, but opening my eyes revealed that it was for the end of the film. Without making eye contact with anyone, I left. The bar upstairs was spinning to the DJ’s tunes. It was just past 11pm when I left De Nieuwe Anita under a black sky. I felt like a new man after that nap. However, almost every establishment in the city would be closing within the hour – it’s a Monday, what did I expect? Anticipating this, I looked up some places that stayed open till late. Café P96 which stayed open till 3am was my best bet. I’d be out on the streets for only three more hours after closing until my train.

It was time to break into the something stronger. I had almost forgotten about the little vial of psilocybin extract at the bottom of my bag. But I still had a whole joint left. The last and only time I mixed cannabis and psychedelics together I gave myself god-fearing psychosis. Awful thought loops accompanied by the worst self-consciousness I’ve felt in my life. Not a risk worth taking in a foreign land. That last joint has someone else’s name on it now. Upon retrieving the vial I remembered the lady’s instructions from this morning, “Three drops under the tongue…” I failed. Administering a wet compound on a wet surface I can’t see, how the hell am I supposed to know how much I’ve taken? I took anywhere between three and eight drops, who knows? Well, no point splitting hairs about it, I thought and set off towards P96.

So rubbish is my phone that my battery was already down to single digits when I arrived. I immediately asked for a table with a plug socket and all they could offer was a corner table with an extension cord dangling halfway down the wall behind me. When ordering a drink, I remembered the two Red Bull in my bag so I asked for a double shot of rum in a very tall glass. Not wanting to attract the bartender’s ire, I mixed the drink behind my back.

An hour passed and I still felt nothing. So I did the only reasonable thing and took some more. Squirting a whole pipette full, I must’ve taken another ten drops. No more than five minutes later I began feeling funny. My nerve endings were zapping like live wires and I could focus on my book no more. Out the corner of my eye I noticed a small candle at the end of the bar. Why was its flickering as intense as stage lights at a rave? My trance turned to panic as I realised the first dose was only just hitting me now. Fuck. I closed my eyes and tried to steady myself with a deep breath but was immediately overwhelmed by a shapeshifting kaleidoscopic carnival. No rhythm or rhyme to the imagery my brain was throwing at me. Stripes turned into zig-zags into candy canes into a marching band of polar bears into seagulls flying in glorious formation into… I opened my eyes. This wasn’t going to work. So I grounded myself by singing along to the music playing down my ears. After a couple of tunes I was ready to accept that I was now simply a passenger in this trip. There was nothing I could do to remove the extra dosage from my system. So just strap in and enjoy the ride, wherever it takes you.

It was almost 2am and the place was packed. For some time I sat there scribbling in my notebook, noting down every odd sensation that emerged from the steady decline of my senses. The slightest disturbance of light sent the whole room dancing around my eyes. My insides tickled. My hands had no outline anymore and the world poured in through my fingertips. A man with a kind face and short blond hair approached me. I took my earphones out to hear him say something in Dutch. Alerting him of my linguistic handicap he then said, “Want to see a magical trick?” Always. He pulled out a beat-up deck of cards and asked me to pick one. After a shuffle and some clumsy sleight of hand he pulled out a 7 of diamonds. “Your card is this?” he asked. It wasn’t. He then disappeared into the crowd, never to be seen again. My confusion was astronomical. That must’ve been a hallucination. 

I craved a cigarette but had none. All I had was my last joint, which would rob me of my sanity in my current state. When the bartender came to collect my glass, I made her a proposition; my mint condition joint for a cigarette? She was so shocked by the offer that she also threw in another drink on the house. “Same again please,” I requested.

Smoke from my cigarette curled up into the night air like a snake preparing for sleep, its scales bristling each time I moved my hand. A bearded German man asked me for a light and we fell into conversation I barely remember. We were then joined by his wife. Then his daughter. Then his daughter’s friend. Then another one. And another. Then by a woman with blazing red hair who was making me weak in the knees. Then a couple of other people whose relation to the group I was unsure about. The daughter, who studied here with her friends, was being visited by her parents. I spotted the red-head when she came in earlier and couldn’t find a place to sit and this lively group offered her a spot at their table. Guess I was being similarly subsumed. The next hour is a blur of chain-smoking and laughter.

When P96 closed at 3am, everyone was stranded out on the pavement, unsure of what to do and where to go. When most of the city closes at midnight, only a couple of bars pick up the overflow – but what then when they too close? Under the wing of this unlikely group, I followed them through the streets of Amsterdam as we desperately (especially the Germans) looked for a boozer. Or any place that would sell us some.

“Can either of you do a cartwheel?” I flagrantly asked the group.

“What is that?” they asked.

“Let me demonstrate. I’ve been practicing them,” I said proudly.

They all cheered at my somewhat decent cartwheel and the Dutch speakers went, “You mean radslag!” A short woman with curly hair and gleaming eyes upstaged me by landing a cartwheel none wanted to follow. She had an Olympian’s poise. With nowhere to go and only gymnastics to entertain us, we cut our losses and decided to all go home. Except I couldn’t for another two hours… We said our goodbyes, feeling humbled that we’ll never see each other again.

I was left standing alone under the spire of Westerkerk, the hands of its clock illuminated by bright orange LEDs that buzzed into the night. It was 4:30am and not a single soul was around. There must’ve been a vanishingly brief moment of time where I was the only person in the streets in the whole city. Maybe not. But still. As the psilocybin was wearing off, my appetite was returning with a vengeance. I hadn’t eaten a morsel since my suffocating snack at Kapitein Zeppos, so I turned on my heels and walked towards the only kebab shop open anywhere. My footsteps echoed uncomfortably down the nocturnal and deserted boulevards. Suddenly a second pair of feet joined in, making the rhythm more insistent. I whipped around to find no one following me so the sound must be coming towards me. Is this how I go? my mind entertained the thought before going into hyper alert. The thing came into view before the person; a gigantic plastic bag, over a metre in diameter full of god-knows-what, balanced over her head. With its uneven mass distribution and the way it bobbed along to her steps, I have no idea how it didn’t topple over. Under the dim streetlamps, the bag resembled some crappy animation devoid of textures. The woman didn’t even notice me staring dumbly at her as she passed me by. There was no one around whose reaction I could gauge her reality by. So that must’ve been a hallucination too.

Unsure about the nature of things, I walked into the kebab shop and the harsh glare of fluorescent light sobered me up like a cold splash to the face. A big man in a faded red hoodie waited at the counter while a bearded chef busied himself on the other side.

“I’ve ordered, you go,” said the customer as he noticed me awkwardly waiting behind him. I don’t quite recall how but we ended up falling into conversation. The man from Morocco has a girlfriend in Scotland. I could tell he was beyond drunk because he offered me a cigarette and attempted to light it indoors before he noticed his surroundings. I stashed the unlit cigarette behind my ear. Two young women walked in from the tail-end of a night out, looking for sustenance.

“Ladies!” bawled the Moroccan, “What do you want? I’ll pay.”

“Are you sure? If you say so,” one of them said and began ordering with the chef.

The man then turned to me, “You too, I’ll pay.”

Touched by his intoxicated generosity, I ordered a falafel wrap.  On the streets once more, I devoured this free meal like I hadn’t known food for days. As I had to be at the station an hour before my 6:30am train, I slowly wandered towards Centraal. Dam Square was completely deserted, the difference was, well… night and day. Lonely streetlights kept each other company. I sat on the cobblestones and smoked the cigarette the Moroccan had given me. A man walked past me who would half an hour later stamp my passport at border security. Stumbling down Damrak, I followed Centraal’s façade like a mirage. Though I felt weightless I was floating only inches above the ground, tethered to cinder blocks. There was a vacuum between my ears. It was taking me all my composure not to curl up on the floor and fall asleep. Turning round for a final glance, the city I waved goodbye to was different than the one I greeted this morning. Or was it me that had changed? I’ll need 16 hours of sleep to reflect on that one…