Like all great cities, Amsterdam brims with contradiction. Maps of the Red Light District are dominated by a church, Swans swim up the canal while on the banks of that canal, a woman stands half naked in front of a glass door waiting for customers. Amsterdam is both the city that hid Anne Frank and the city that gave her up. An ancient city perpetually experiencing new construction, A city full of boats that separate you from water and contain water. These same contradictions are in all of us; they’re in me, at least. And so I forgot that I had been awake for 30 hours and kept walking. Grateful to be a little boat, full of water, still floating.
—From I’m Not Going Down: Thoughts from Amsterdam; a video from John Green from the Vlogbrothers.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
