I visited Rotterdam, The Hague, and Amsterdam in 2022, and Amsterdam again for the 2023 Network States Conference.

Dutch Cities

• Amsterdam – 8/10 (2022, 2023)
• The Hague – 7/10 (2022)
• Rotterdam – 4/10 (2022)

I was positively surprised by this, but Amsterdam has quickly became one of my favorite European cities. It is to my sensibilities perhaps the most beautiful and fluently integrated one – more so than Paris or London – and without the haunting post-imperial blues of Vienna and Saint-Petersburg. The Rijksmuseum is one of the great national museums, the National Maritime Museum might have the greatest collection of Age of Exploration ship models anywhere in the world, and the Royal Coster Diamonds tour is entirely free and incredibly informative, and not at all the tourist trap I half-suspected.

Dutch food is… specific, but personally, I like the pickles and raw beef sausage washed down with copious beer. Everybody speaks English. Amsterdam is a city defined by its queerness and its prestige, with every street festooned in rainbow flags in a riotous display worthy of its status as a premier Elite Human Capital magnet throughout history – playing a central role in incubating progressive institutions from stock markets in the 17th century to network states in the 21st. Everybody knows that there is legal marijuana, with reports of its demise for foreigners greatly overestimated. I am not at all a weed person, but it’s liberating being able to buy a joint and smoke it on an overcast day by the canals.

The Hague is also a very beautiful city, and hosts a museum dedicated to one of my favorite artists, Maurits Escher. It is also one of Putin’s possible retirement destinations. Conversely, as I expected, Rotterdam is somewhat of a dump and can be productively avoided.