AMSTERDAM

Hi friends, Let me begin with talking about Amsterdam –one of the most beautiful cities of Europe.Instead of narration, it would be a good idea to highlight some of the interesting facts about the city.

     Amsterdam was a 13th-century fishing village on a river bed.

    The name Amsterdam comes from the combination of the river Amstel and the Dam that was built on it in order to found the original village know today as Amsterdam.

 Amsterdam's airport (Schiphol), is 4 meters below sea level. Actually, if there weren't any dikes, about a quarter of the Netherlands would disappear into the North Sea

    Much of the Netherlands is formed by the estuary of three important European rivers, which together with their distributaries form the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta

    Amsterdam's soil is so swampy that the city had to be built on long wooden poles that were driven into the ground. One of the Amsterdam facts that every Dutch school child had to learn by heart, is that the Royal Palace at the Dam Square was built on over 13,569 poles.

    'Holland' refers to the old Dutch province 'Holland' (now divided into North-Holland and South-Holland).

    “Dutch “is derived from the language that was spoken in the area, called 'Diets'.

    Amsterdam has the highest number of nationalities of any city in the world(about 180).

    The Dutch people are the tallest in all Europe and second tallest inthe world.

    Even thought Amsterdam is the largest city in the Netherlands and is officially the capital it does not hold the parliament as all of the government functions take place at the Hague.

    Holland always has a coalition government, so it’s a country of compromise and tolerance.

    Holland was one of the six founding members of the European Union.

    The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are both in The Hague.

    There are more bikes in Amsterdam than permanent residents. There are  over 1 million bikes but only 700.000 residents .

    It has more canals than Venice. Amsterdam's grachten (canals) not only lend tranquility to the bustling city, they also define local culture here.

    Amsterdam has over 300 coffee shops which can legally sell up to 5 grams of soft drugs to each person.

    The world famous Koh-I-Noor diamond was cut in Amsterdam.

    75% of the entire worlds flower bulb production comes from Netherlands.

    Holland has around a thousand original still working windmills.

    Amsterdam has one of the most famous Red Light Districts in the world with window prostitution. There are almost 500 such windows in Amsterdam, next to brothels etc. Daily, about 1,000 prostitutes are working in Amsterdam and in a given year, the city sees about 8,000 different prostitutes.

    Amsterdam was the first capital to allow gay marriage (the Netherlands allow this since 2001). Regular marriages, with all rights and obligations, are now possible for gay and lesbian couples as well.

Hope , the above facts did arise some curiousity and the desire to visit the city.

 

Ajay