It is the first time Ryanair takes me where I need to be. The advert claims Amsterdam and the airport flown to is in Eindhoven. 
Underneath, the sandy beaches of the Dutch coast look empty to the eye and, overflying Rotterdam, green fields conquered from the North Sea provide food for one of the smallest nations in Europe.

I had wanted to visit the Netherlands for a while. Stories of eventful nights in Amsterdam overlapping cultural trips of cinnamon-sweetened stroopwaffles and marijuana. 
Shortly after landing at the small airport at Eindhoven, I place my bag strap around my shoulder and power walk by quaint streets of geometrically-designed houses of red brick and thin roof tiles. In their porches,  blonde children carelessly play with Legos and their parents, arriving on colourful bikes through perfectly maintained cycle tracks, bring the grocery shopping for the Saturday.  

‘I arrive at the swimming arena, named as one of the Netherland’s greatest swimmers: Pieter Van den Hoogenband.
Minutes pass with no time for a proper warm up. I walk to the call room and move through heats of swimmers. At the main pool, a big dome covers the fifty meters separating me from freedom in a boiling vault of adrenaline. Once again, there is silence, followed by a splash and twenty eight seconds of effort. I touch the wall and turn my head to the scoreboard and acknowledge and smile, because my swimming is done, and the holiday can begin.’

 

I walk to the hostel and nap inebriated by the distant smell of marijuana coming from the cafe beneath. Amsterdam might be the most famous Dutch city, but Eindhoven is the best glimpse of Dutch life. A quaint life in which tidiness is essential and modesty is a given. Extravaganza is not known in Eindhoven and the afternoon around the perfectly grid-organised city happens in bouts of cyclists minding their everyday business at fifteen miles per hour.
Beer gardens gather a few in a town centre lacking personality but overflowing with organisation. A small museum proudly showcases Phillips products through a tinted window, opposite a De Bijenkopf with few shoppers.

In the morning, I rush to the pool for a dreadful race of two hundred meters breaststroke and a sprint to the train station. On the way to Amsterdam, wheat fields abruptly crash against shallow canals of barges and yachts, becoming busier with cyclist and intricate train lines as we approach the main city.
As I get off the train at Amsterdam Centraal Station, the smell of marihuana strikes me in seconds. Outside, the busiest city in the country somehow resembles the exit of a busy train station in India: people fighting their corner with green and red traffic lights while negotiating with bicycles coming from every corner and slow trams heavily stomping along narrow red cobblestone streets as they weave through traffic. An interesting example of organised mess.

On main streets, the main language is English. I notice Amsterdam is not the classic Dutch getaway I had pictured in Eindhoven but a melting pot of multiculturalism. Here, Dutch East Indies fuse with Dutch Caribbean in a mesh of accents, skin colours and cuisine. Townhouses are built in rows of gambrel roofs and curved eaves. They stare at the canals and touch each other on the narrow streets. They share outer walls, yet keep their tenant’s secrets. 
Cafes serving ‘special muffins’ are the delight of foreigners, like a giant version of Temple Bar in Dublin: intense, exciting and touristically disappointing. A Dam was built over the Amstel, and the city was born, a hooker waves hello from a glass window at the Red Light District, and a dream was killed.

A mental contradiction follows as I make eye contact with a prostitute: ‘It is wrong, don’t look. It is legal, so do’.  Neon lights flash around the Museum of Sex in a bid to prove freedom, naked bosoms explode over a British stag party in a bid to provide a groom with the last of it. 

I meet one of the Polish girls I met in Zanzibar. She parks the car in the outskirts and walks through a city that discourages motor purchases and praises cycling. We share stories of our time in Africa a year ago and dip our frikandels on garlic mayo, we try on oversized Dutch clogs at a souvenir shop and eat ice cream by Anne Frank’s house.

Later, the night in Amsterdam buzzes with the debauchery prerogative exported to the world, my friend returns to the Dutch/German border and I return to my bed to sleep a weekend of contrasts in one of the tiniest countries I have been to. Belgium tomorrow.