Over the years and the hundred plus cities, I’ve done dozens and dozens of free walking tours.

It’s one of the first things I like to do when I first visit a city.   It not only allows to get your bearings figuring out the layout of the city, but is a great way to learn about the history of the city and country.

There’s a free walking tour in almost every city and the tour guides who solely on tips (5€ is the norm) are usually young guys with a great way of story telling.

It’s not a static by-the-numbers information tour but a fun story telling tour which is so much better.

Anyway, today’s was no different.   My guide was Max from freewalkingtours.com.

Here are some of the stories he told…

The stock exchange

Amsterdam has staked claim that they were they invented the stock exchange.

In fact, today I learned that “stock” is actually derived from “stick”.

Back in the day settlers would opt for ownership in the future and would make a deal with a “stick breaker” (now known as a stock broker) who would literally break a fancy stick in half.   Half for him, half for you.   In a years time you could claim your futures investment by bringing the stick back and matching it with its’ other half.

The coat of arms

Did you know that Amsterdam’s coat of arms in a flag with 3 black x’s on it?

Why there are 3 x’s on it is up for debate.   There are stories of them meaning the 3 plagues that wiped out the city, or the 3 main surrounding cities or countless other ideas.

No matter why the coat of arms is the way it is, you can find it in different places all over the city.

What’s interesting though is that in the mid 70’s, because of Amsterdam’s openness on prostitution, many American adult film producers would come here to shoot their movies.   You know, when porn was taboo.

The producers saw these coat of arms around the city and ended up using the “xxx” to indicate what kind of films they were producing.

Yup, the Amsterdam coat of arms was stolen by by porn and used for XXX rated movies.

So many bikes

Bikes outnumber cars by such a margin here in Amsterdam and it’s the preferred mode of transport for people in the city.   In fact, for the 1 million residents, there are 1.5 million bikes.

Yup, more bikes than people.

Max himself says he has 3 bikes – one kind of old, his regular one, and a backup one.

Why a backup one?   Well, bike theft is the biggest crime in Amsterdam and he says he’s personally had 9 bikes stolen over the years.

Dig baby dig

Ever wonder how Amsterdam became the way it is with so much water and canals?

Well, salt water was the blame.

Each season crops would grow and then salt water would come in and kill all the vegetation.   That vegetation would layer on top of each other year after year creating a peaty, mossy bog.

Back in the day when, you know electric heaters weren’t a thing, people used to stay warm by lighting peat moss to start a fire.

Problem was they had to keep digging for moss.   And digging.   And digging.

Well, all those dug holes eventually became the canals we know now.

The Ape House

There’s a building in Amsterdam called the Ape House.   Back in the day visiting sailors could lodge for the night in exchange for bringing a monkey to the innkeeper.

Why a monkey for a night’s sleep?   I have no idea.   Maybe the innkeeper liked monkeys?

Anyway, if you walking down the street with an itch everyone knew you must be staying at the Ape House.

Risky sex

When people staying at the inn wanted to partake in a little hanky panky they only had a couple of options.   Sex at the inn amongst all the monkeys or in the alleyway outside.

There was a third option though that some people took.

Down the street from the Ape House is the city morgue.   Yeah, this story is heading that way…

It’s clean and quiet with nobody to bother you.

People who got caught, however, were made to pay a price.   A plastered severed ear is still embedded in the wall of the morgue to this day as a warning to others.

The holocaust

Alot of Jews from the Netherlands died in the holocaust.   Out of 140,000 Jewish residents, 107,000 were shipped off to the death camps and only a scant 6000 returned.

Spices

The spice trade was actually the first drug trade.   The traders got rich on the back of slaves and had some nasty practices along the way.

I never knew this but now that I’ve heard it, it makes perfect sense.   Spices primarily come from hot climates near the equator as there’s no cold winter to kill the plants from releasing their toxins that allow them to become the coveted spices.

In fact, the spice trade was actually the original drug trade.

Spice traders would send slaves down to the spice islands (now known as Indonesia) to harvest spices to bring back.   The spice trade was so lucrative that there were soon a dozen different traders all fighting amongst themselves for a piece of the pie.

It got so bad that the rulers stepped in and commanded that they all come together as one and that ended up being the creation of the East India Spice Company.

This Company had brutal practices.   Along with the whole slave trade which you can read about in the next section, they would steamroll everyone and anyone who got in their way.

There’s the story of forcing a “deal” on the natives of an island that they would trade with them and them only.   Of course they agreed to the deal cause, well, then really didn’t have any choice.

Once the Dutch ships set off for back home, however, they went and dealt with other traders.   Word got back to the Dutch and they were not happy.   On their next visit they slaughtered almost everyone on the island at retribution.

The slave trade

The spice trade and the slave trade go hand in hand.

Slave traders would get slaves from West Africa, ship them off to America in exchange for things like arms and rum.   They’d then sell those things, get richer and be able to buy more slaves to keep the cycle continuing.

They would have a ship moored of the coast of Africa until they had enough slaves to fill it.   This would take time – sometimes up to 2 years and, of course, over that time they’d lose slaves who would die from the horrendous conditions.   Imagine being shackled in a ship filled with scurvy and vermin for over a year.

No worries though because the slave traders had a plan.   Just overcrowd the ships to make up for the ones who would die along the way.

So, yeah, the spice traders and the slave traders were just plain awful.   A perfect example of the rich getting richer on the backs of the less fortunate.

And there ya go, some stories I heard along the way on my free walking tour today.   Now you see why I had to do a separate blog just for this part.

Anyway, tomorrow, like I said, is the big day.   A day trip to The Hague followed by a Depeche Mode concert later tomorrow night.

It’s time to have some fun…