May 2, 2012
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Amsterdam, Netherlands
On Monday evening, the evening after Queen’s Night and Queen’s Day, the city was an absolute mess. I can imagine that, if you are a tourist arriving in Amsterdam in the evening of 30 April and not knowing what went on during the day, the city must seem like an absolute shock. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in that case, you’d feel the urge to immediately return to the airport and fly as far away from the Low Countries as possible.
But, the city cleaners start doing their work as soon as most party-goers are on their way to their home towns again, and they clean throughout the night. Yesterday, the day after, there was still a lot of rubbish left in some streets, but today, as I cycled to the pool in the early morning, the streets were cleaner still and the city started to look like its old self again. Even the rubbish that floats in the canals gets removed when the canals are flushed out every night. There was one exception to that though, because the canal in front of my place is blocked because of reconstruction work. That means that, even though the rest of the canals get flushed through, the one close to me, Oudezijds Achterburgwal doesn’t. And the rubbish in it is going nowhere fast. As you can see in the picture above, which I took as I was nearly home after work. The canal, by the way, is much older than the date on this wall. It’s Amsterdam’s second oldest canal and was constructed in 1367.
