Tuesday night our Dutch Society and Culture class took a guided tour of the Red Light District. The tour was given by a former prostitute who has since established the Prostitution Information Center in Amsterdam and is currently the leading prostitution advocate in the Netherlands. She entered the prostitution world at age 16 of her own free will in order to buy a dog, two days later she ended up buying a Mercedes. Among her many interesting stories and tidbits about prostitution in Amsterdam was a story about a woman who started working as a prostitute when she was 72 after husband died. She worked until she was in her mid to late 80s. Now that is a second career. In addition to showing us around the Red Light District and explaining the history of prostitution in the Netherlands, we got a chance to stand in a brothel window.
Wednesday I conducted my first interview for my research project on drug education in the Netherlands. I interviewed the Senior Health Education Officer at the Jellinek Institute (one of the main drug abuse prevention and treatment organizations is the Netherlands). My project is comparing drug education strategies in the Netherlands with drug education strategies in the US to determine which is more effective at preventing substance abuse.
Friday night a bunch of us went to Chupitas which is a shooters bar. Their specialty is crazy mixed shots (aka shooters). There is a list of nearly 100 different kinds of shooters; all with funny, bizarre, and often vulgar names. Some they light on fire, while others are served with slices of fruit, spices, or other garnishes. The catch is they don't tell you what is in the shot unless you specifically ask. Below is a movie of their Chemistry shot. It kind of tasted like liquid menthol. Kelly tried the Apple Pie which came with a topping of whipped cream and cinnamon.
Sunday a bunch of us put together an IES cookout on the balcony at the top of our building. Unfortunately we couldn't get the grill going so we had to cook the burgers in peoples' rooms. In the end everybody had a good time and we ended up with some delicious burgers.
Now for some notes on Dutch polotics. The political system here is quite unique and can be confusing to the foreign eye. It is a democratic society that has a somewhat powerless monarchy. There is a parliament with two chambers, the lower and upper houses. The lower house is voted for directly by the population, while the upper house is elected through a system of indirect elections based on the number of seats a party earns in the lower house. To make it even more confusing, as a voter you do not vote for a single person, but rather a whole list of people designated by a party. Once it is determined which party has the most votes, it is up to the party to choose who fills what positions. How it works exactly is still lost on me.
Political parties are another confusing aspect of the Dutch political system. There are LOTS of political parties, each of which is guaranteed at least one seat in parliament (including the party for animal rights). Because there are so many parties, no one party wins a majority of seats in any election. This means that the strongest (strongest meaning having the most seats) 2 or 3 parties in Parliament must create a coalition in order to have a functional government. This forces parties to compromise with one another, often at the expense of their campaign platforms. While there are many parties, there are only 3 or 4 that consistently have enough seats to be part of the ruling coalition.
In recent history the Dutch government has been made up of more or less liberal/center coalitions. Recently, however, there has been a trend towards more conservative coalitions mainly in response to the large influx of Muslim inhabitants.
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