Going Dutch

As I write this I'm sitting in a tenth floor hotel room in the middle of Eindhoven, Holland, about to join some work colleagues for a steak and a few beers in the bar.

I've been here half a dozen times in the last couple of years, and due to an upcoming change in jobs this may well be the last time I ever come here.

Eindhoven is best known as being the home of PSV Eindhoven, a football (or soccer for those of you outside the EU) team who I believe have been pretty successful over the years, but as a non-fan I'm only going on hearsay.

Were I Bill Bryson, and chance would indeed be a fine thing, I would regale you with tales of the quirky local establishments, of which there are a few that I know of, or with the fact that all of the buskers here seem to be of Eastern European origin, and play violins, or accordions. I actually got talking to one of them last time I was here, a young man called George if my memory serves, and he told me of how he had come from Estonia to pursue a better life, and that he wanted to come to London, where he had heard that life was good. I didn't have the heart to put him straight, but I did take a photograph of him and his friend, to add my growing visual catalogue of my life.

This weekend I am paying another visit to Amsterdam. This will be my fourth time, and while it will never steal my heart away as Paris did, and continues to do, there is something about the place that I truly find endearing. Once past the crowds of British stag boys, there are a couple of lovely gems tucked away.

I am looking forward to my third visit to a tiny bar that is run by a rotund, bearded Dutchman, who one day may appear in one of the many novels that I have constantly kicking around in my head. His bar is decorated with all manner of curious artifacts, including a gorilla hanging off a lamp post and wearing a top hat, scores of old bottles, their glass of many shapes and colours, a full size mannequin of an Indian Fakir who stands atop a staircase that goes only to the ceiling and no further, and a hundred and one other curiosities.

I know that once I step foot from the train, it will be one of those rare moments when the writer in me takes a sidestep to allow my other, more recent, passion to take centre stage for a few hours - the photgrapher.

A city like Amsterdam is a joy to capture through a lens, and thus far on my travels ranks only behind London and my beloved Paris as my favourite city to shoot. I long to return to Paris one day and once more drfit like a ghost through its streets and alleys, capturing her spirit once again, and drinking in her intoxicating essence.

For now, though, Amsterdam will be my mistress, my muse, and my subject once more.

In the meantime, there's a rare sirloin calling me, so I bid you farewell for now....