I met my friends Chris and Alice at Amsterdam central station after a day of smoking, unsuccessful bargain hunting and transport dodging in the Dutch capital. We caught the metro to the east of the city centre where our first host Nicole lived, a student they had met on some Mediterranean journeys a year before. In a city full of old, traditional pretty buildings our first stop stood out like a sore thumb. A dirty white tower block with a political painting masking its one face, and concrete steps we were instructed to climb to a lift door with reinforced glass window. Spray painted pictures of Stuwie Griffin and other cartoons greeted us inside on the flat walls, football trading cards decorating the toilet cubical, 6 or 7 different sized speakers littered the living room and a balcony looking over the entire city centre protruded ungracefully from the outside wall. Our first place to stay was nothing if not cool. To top it off on the bottom floor there was a club restricted for block residents only and for the cherry on top our host had already got the beers in. After much drinking, conversing, smoking and even more drinking with Nicole and her 14 other student housemates we had a few drinks in the club before passing out for the night on our sofa bed, located right in the middle of this busy student flat.
