I combined an apartment price heatmap from maps.amsterdam.nl and crowdsourced neighborhood content from Hoodmaps.

Please don’t take it too seriously :) I just like to make these weird mashups with maps.

I need to vent and get some perspective. I go to Club Sportive in Zuidas. Beautiful facilities, solid equipment, great vibe… most of the time. But there’s one guy who’s turned the place into what can only be described as a one-man… let me set the scene.

I’m just your average gym-goer, trying to get through my sets and maybe live to tell the tale. But now I realise I’m also a survivor of what feels like a testosterone-fuelled fever dream.

Enter: The Main Character. This guy radiates such unhinged energy, he makes Loki look like a librarian. If you want to know what he looks like, just ask. I’m too afraid to say.

Episode 1: The Preacher Curl Showdown

I watched a fellow gym member (mid-set on the preacher curl) get interrupted by this guy charging over, demanding he “hurry up” because he needed it for supersets. I assume this routine is part of his training regimen for the 2032 Loserville Olympics.

When the lifter calmly asked him not to shout, the man …

With all the complaints and negativity regularly posted in this sub (of which I’m also guilty), I figured I’d not some of the things I really like about living here since I was recently discussing this topic with my spouse and what keeps us here for the long term. In no particular order:

• Easy accessibility to restaurants and pubs. I need only walk a few minutes in any direction to find something good.
• My doctor and my dentist are walking and cycling distance away respectively.
• I feel very safe being out at any time of the day or night, especially in my neighborhood which is fairly quiet and less touristy despite being pretty much right in the centrum.
• No need for a car, pretty much anything I need I can walk, cycle, or take safe and modern public transportation.
• Proximity to international railway stations and airport means travel is super easy.
• There is so much beauty in the city from the canals to the houses, art, etc. that I sometimes feel I take it for granted that …

So, where I live was a heavy fought frontline in the final days of the second world war, where german and allied troups battled. In some parts of this region it is forbidden to go around with a metal detector to this day. However, in the garden of the house we bought 5 years ago, some war relics are still to be found. On the photo are two (hollow) shells. My question is, is this safe?

I bought a pasta salad (Pasta Tonün) from AH Johannes Verhulststraat on the 19th of May during my lunchtime at work. As I got to half of the meal I noticed a small, dark brown pellet like thing in the salad, which I had never seen before although I eat this exact salad almost every day at work. As I grabbed it I noticed it looked a lot like mouse feces. I am 100 percent sure this is a piece of poop in the salad. The salad was in front of me the whole time after it was opened and there is no chance of a random piece of mouse poop to have fallen in there. I called AH and they told me to file a complaint in the shop I bought it but they said there is no complaint forms there and that I have to do it online. The online complaint requires me to register an account and even after that does not allow me to file a complaint since “I did not use my bonus card” while buying the salad. What can I do about this?

At least that’s what they mention here (around 17 minutes). Pretty crazy that it’s far worse than most people would expect, I assume. Does anyone know where the ‘safe’ spots are in Amsterdam, the ones the city checks? I swam here a couple of times last summer but I might reconsider now lol

I have lived in the Netherlands for many years now and I come from a country which is considered by many to be a third-world European country. What still surprizes me a lot is how frugal Dutch people are, always looking for discounts, always sharing the bill, finding everything too expensive.

The reason it surprizes me is because the standard of living, and the wages are much higher than the average European country, and there have been good living conditions and opportunities since the second world war. To my eyes it seems like fear of survival rooted deep within the nation’s identity. But is it really?

Where does this conditioning come from? I don’t mean to be offensive, I just want to better understand the mindset of the people living in a country that I choose to call my home.

If the US decides to turn off Microsoft for Europe, how screwed are we?