Amsterdam is one strange place. Despite being the smallest of the major cities I traveled to this term– an hour and a half should cover most of the city proper– it’s by far the most confusing. Most European cities have vibes; even their contradictory elements seems to add together, like the elegance of Madrid’s architecture and the sleaziness of its nightlife, or the seriousness of ancient Rome and the joy for living that many locals possess. I could never get my head around Amsterdam. It’s a carnival of lights and sounds that assault rather than sooth the senses. That’s not necessarily a bad thing– it’s certainly an exciting thing– but it will leave you a little disoriented.

In the daytime the city makes a reasonable amount of sense: it’s one of your classic, cultured old European centers, only seemingly more cultured and more old. Charm overflows from the waters in the day. The houses, particularly in December, look like cutouts from a Christmas village, squeezed together long and narrow with their curled roofs. With an colonial Empire of relatively early prosperity, the seventeenth century houses are remarkably well-built and maintained, them leaning being the extent of damage (I loved how many of the most historic houses proudly displayed their dates on their entrance). The addition of three beautiful cobbled market squares make Amsterdam the city where I most felt like I lived in the middle ages. Then, there are far more bikers than cars, so that no canal bridge was complete without the shine of wheels or the choir of bike bells in the air. You can walk with your parents along those quiet canals and think “well gee, what a beautiful little city!”

And then the night. Like a character in an Oscar Wilde play, Amsterdam seems to drop its good-guy disguise the moment the sun goes down.

Then the rings of the bells are drowned out by the Reggae music from coffeshops, the yells of the drunks, and the banging of the windows from bored prostitutes. Suddenly nothing is as it seems: coffeeshop is a byword for weed den (making real coffee shops impossible to find), clubs are disguised as bars while bars are disguised as clubs, and those jolly looking red windows (from afar could be those windows in a Christmas calendar) are anything but jolly. Seriously, I’ve always thought of myself as a very liberal guy, but there was something very unsettling about the city’s red light district. Occupying the most central and oldest area of the city, the prostitutes take a more central stage here than in any other city in the world. The walls close in around those red alleys, and you leave the section– take a deep breath– feeling grimy without ever touching a thing. I always thought those beautiful girls would be the objects of envy; somehow it never dawned on me how desperately they want me or anyone as a customer (at least that’s how their rapid banging and calling at me implied), or how badly a guy might treat them as he asks one how much for her body. Of course I get the type of customer they’d bring in: who’d want to pick up a girl through a glass window, buy her like they’d buy bread, and sleep with her behind a curtain– all while the rest of the world watches?

It’s just another night in Amsterdam. At night, the city takes on the contours of a surrealist painting: a mismatch of elements taken beyond their proportion in a way that’s both unsettling and enchanting; the starry lamposts sucked into the canals, the crooked houses that lean in to hear you speak (no wonder Van Gogh was born here, and was a favorite hang-out for both Dali and Picasso). Then fitting into the city center is the global chain of franchises– the Japanese Bubble Tea stores, the Indian curry restaurants, the Arabian smokerooms, the Argentinean steakhouses, the Burger Kings McDonalds and Starbuckses. With the lights and hanging videos it could almost be times square if there weren’t for the peddling music boxes or ancient crosses imprinted in buildings. It’s that added global aspect that makes it a perfect post-modern city: so many collections of contradictory elements that I got more confused the more I tried to understand.

I think I truly started to grasp Amsterdam a week and a half after I’d left it.  Near the back of the Louvre is a wide collection of Dutch masterpieces from between the sixteenth and eighteenth century. We’d just come from the French Spanish and Italian rooms, which was so chockerblock-full of Mary and Jesus paintings I swear I could still see Mary’s banal smile when I closed my eyes. I was amazed, walking through the Dutch gallery meanwhile, to see the near-lack of religious paintings. Instead the Dutch masters had paintings full of food and beer or lively scenes full of drunk and happy relatives or peasants eagerly selling foal in the market. The Dutch had what many others in the Renaissance were missing: life, the essence of and the joy of it.

So hedonism in Amsterdam isn’t a new thing: a zest for life and the joy found in trade and commerce is ingrained in Dutch culture. For the longest time Amsterdam was the only major city that allowed, and in some ways encouraged, religious freedom, so its new openness to gays and potsmokers might not be all that crazy. Meanwhile the seeming lack of care with which the city allows foreign business to take over the city center might be seen in a different light: as a bartender told me, “Amsterdam is the global village. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of everyone.” This city isn’t necessarily the place to take cute postcard-worthy pictures or see museums; it’s the place to watch your expectations and preconceived notions flipped. Amsterdam: you might not make much sense, but you sure are one fun city.