Amsterdam Underground

There are so many walking tours in Amsterdam so it’s always a highlight when you get the chance to attend a different one. Last Wednesday it was time again. Together with a group I joined the Amsterdam Underground City Walks, organized by stichting De Regenboog, an organization that takes care of Amsterdam’s unprivileged like people with social problems or drug addicts and homeless.
The tour start is in front of Dwaze Zaken. The concept is that every group gets a guide who used to live in the streets of Amsterdam and tells his/​her individual story and shows the according sites.
Our guide Glenn, originally from Suriname, used to work as a drug dealer for 33 years. Nowadays he’s employed at one of the 8 homes of De Regenboog where he cooks for 30 to 40 people 5 days per week.
Taking the tour with Glenn was fun, he’s a bouncy, streetwise guy who ends every sentence with «you know?». You can tell he’s proud that he could get along for 33 years, has even been rich, always knowing where to make business without robbing people. This however doesn’t include tricking customers by selling heroine mixed with stones. But he needed the money at that point because he was ill.
After a while Glenn suddenly stopped and asked whether all participants were still there. They were. «Because last time I lost a guy, you know? Haha. But he went to one of the cabines in the red light, you know?». Sure.
During the tour we learned a lot of interesting facts. About chinese house owners in Zeedijk who rented out spots to drug dealers in the 70ies to hide their drugs, for 500 gulden per day. That blue lights in the red light district signal that the respective woman was born as a boy. How homeless get into private houses to sleep for some hours in the staircases and escape before the residents would wake up. About the former police station in Warmoesstraat where the drug dealers placed a chain of watchdog to warn each other in times before mobile phones existed.
Taking this tour you’ll get to know Amsterdam from a very different aspect and moreover you support a good cause. The tour is € 10 (I guess that goes to the organizators) and in the end you can tip the guide if you like.