I spent a lot of time in Amsterdam in the early 1990s, looking for office space and staff for a start-up with which I was involved in those days.  I got to know the city quite well at that time and grew to love it, and my affection has only increased.  I returned recently on a sunny, crisp autumn day after a gap of two or three years and found that I fell into a familiar and soothing groove that I must have dug twenty years ago: buying my newspaper at the Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum, reading it over breakfast at Koffiehuis de Hoek, strolling aimlessly along the canals towards Jordaan, followed by a browse in the market around the Noorderkerk and lunch in one of the city’s unique “brown cafés”.

Nothing important has changed.  The people of Amsterdam are as warm and welcoming as ever, eager to stop and talk (in flawless English, of course).  Ambling along the narrow canal side streets is as hazardous as it always was, thanks to the hordes of cyclists that weave carelessly and silently just inches from your shoulder.  Best of all, Amsterdam still has that gentle counter-culture, that wafer-thin layer of conformity, beneath which the uniquely Dutch “take us or leave us” attitude persists and thrives, and that combination of proud independence and openness to the world that seems to me to represent the best of the European ideal.  It was wonderful to be back.