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I was sat in the bar of the Greenhouse Effect Hotel drinking a large glass of Amstel beer. They didn’t serve pints in mainland Europe. It was seven-thirty, a beautiful sunny June evening. The small bar was half full as people were coming out after their evening meals. I’d just come from a busy little Chinese restaurant on Zeedijk. I had a delicious supper of sweet and sour pork, boiled rice and spring rolls. My names John Sturdy and I was in the city of Amsterdam.

This was my second day. I arrived yesterday on a fifty minute flight into Schipol Airport. I couldn’t believe how easy the journey had been. Schipol was massive compared to the northern UK airport I’d flown out of earlier. Once I was through passport control and collected my luggage I bought a train ticket on the main concourse, went down a set of escalators to the train platforms under the airport and boarded a yellow double-decker train for a twenty minute journey to Amsterdam Centraal Station.

I’d never been to Amsterdam before so I spent my first evening finding my bearings. I stayed close to Leidseplein Square, where my hotel was situated. I had an evening meal at a steakhouse and a few drinks around the busy square full of tourists. Both the meal and the following drinks were very expensive. If my money was to last the planned month I would have to find somewhere cheaper to spend my evenings.

I’d woken at one this afternoon, to the sounds of the hotel cleaner vacuuming the hall outside my room.

I spent the afternoon wandering around the picturesque canals, taking in the beautiful early summer scenery. If I’d had a pretty woman on my arm the Prinsengracht canal could easily have equalled Paris for romance. I did some window shopping, browsed the floating flower market on the Singel, and bought a postcard to send back to my folks in England. The rest of the afternoon was spent nursing a pint outside a canal side bar whilst reading an English red top newspaper I found in a newsagent opposite the flower market.  The headline was about corrupt politicians, when would they ever learn? Another Premier League footballer having an affair, did anyone care? And a swine flu/avian flu type virus originating from a former Soviet Union country. Get ready for the media fuelled mass hysteria.

I sat admiring the fascinating Amsterdam architecture. The tall, thin brick fronted buildings with their oriental-like skyline. The stairs in my hotel were as steep as ladders. There was no room for lifts. Some of the buildings tilted to one side, some seeming to prop up the ones next door, whilst others almost teetered over the canals out front.

Now I found myself sat here at the bar in the Greenhouse Effect Hotel, on Warmoesstraat, situated in the Old Centre, supposedly the oldest street in the city. This area of Amsterdam had been recommended to me by a couple of English lads I’d briefly met sat outside the bar earlier in the afternoon. I was only a couple of streets over from the notorious Red Light District. I’d mentioned how expensive it was to drink out, five euro’s a drink. They told me it was nearer 3 euro’s in and around the Red Light District. I’d had a lager in a bar on the Nieuwmarkt, like Leidseplein, it was another popular square lined with bars and restaurants, dominated by the castle-like De Wagg, reportedly the location for the cities many executions in the distant past. Again the square was expensive. I followed the road around a sort of mini-Chinatown. Roast duck hung in many of the restaurant windows and standing out was the newish-looking Chinese Fo Guang Shan He Hua Buddist Temple. After my sweet and sour pork across the narrow street at Nam Kee, I passed more Chinese restaurants, bars, a gift shop - its window full of bongs - and small hotels clearly aimed at the backpacker. Here I found a quaint hotel. I stepped up from the cobbled street, out of the bright sunshine, into the dark interior of the Greenhouse Effect and found a place at the bar.

Sitting on a stool and waiting for a young woman in her early twenties to serve me I absorbed the clientele. There was a young couple sat at a pair of stools away to my right, both drinking at the bar. To my left, at the front, were two tables. One in the window was unoccupied. The other, a larger table was taken by four young black men. They were in hysterics, all drinking lager and smoking large joints. On the wall was a cigarette machine, even though tobacco smoking was banned in public places. Behind me was what seemed to be a door leading to the rooms above, next to that were the toilets, to my right, beyond the bar another group of maybe four tables at the back of the room. About half of these were taken by youngish kids barely out of their teens.

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