Field trip suggestions

I thought I'd comment on the suggestions for field trips. In particular, on why Amsterdam seems to be such an attractive option, even though a day-trip to London eventually topped the poll.

Undoubtedly a great city (the richest in the world in the 17th century), Amsterdam attracts nearly four million visitors every year. What are they coming for? It has some world-class museums, of course. The Rijksmuseum has an excellent collection of Rembrandts, the Van Gogh museum does exactly what is says on the tin, and the Anne Frank House is Western Europe's oldest Holocaust museum.

But I suspect the reasons why the city was nominated for a Being Bad field trip might be different. I presume that it's the twin factors of the red light area and the coffee shops.

Remarkably, Amsterdam manages to maintain a large sex industry without seeming seedy. It is, of course, a misapprehension. Despite the apparent civility in the Amsterdam prostitution scene, it's as ridden with corruption, criminality, and exploitation as the rest of the sex industry - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5400641.ece

The coffeeshops are similarly contradictory. Cannabis isn't exactly legal in the Netherlands; it's just tolerated. And although the coffeeshops can sell you drugs, they themselves are not permitted to buy them. Importation of cannabis into the Netherlands is illegal, as is growing it. And because of the prohibitions against smoking tobacco in public places, if you want to smoke a joint mixed with tobacco you'll have to use a separate room.

So, Amsterdam isn't some kind of libertarian (or liberal) utopia. Its public policy is hypocritical, as is the rest of Europe's. Whether it's more or less hypocritical depends, I think, on your political viewpoint.

All information above taken from Wikipedia, so it must be right.