BOh

What a wonderful way to start the year and step-off a tough December, surrounded by old friends and fireworks smoke, hailing a new moon and necking 1 euro red wine stubbies as torn red firecracker paper gathered in cracks all across the city but mostly right there, right there in Nieuwenmarkt.

Coming back to Amsterdam 4 and a half years after leaving it behind was like stumbling on an old time capsule box full of memories and tucked under the stairs and away until you could get a spade to dig a hole to put the thing in except you never did and there it was all along under the stairs and discovered by you some years later and not, as you had hoped, by alien excavateurs after the demise of Man.

There were so many things I had forgotten, little things behind streets, tagged onto bars and cafes, memories frozen in the canals as they ice over and stolen from the bottom of a bulb-ended Kwak beer glass. Each memory unwound another and another part of the city leapt out from the corner of that little Tardis time capsule and another and another 'til you couldn't believe such a tiny thing could hold so much.

I love Dutch people and Belgian beer, that pre-prepared stamppot in the Albert Heijn and riding two to a bike on the back or the frame for a gammy wheel all wobbly on the back, flat round Turkish bread, nights at the Bimhuis and the simple pleasure of riding a bicycle at leisure through a beautiful city. I'd forgotten how beautiful it is and I want to go back.