amsterdam adventure <sup>(sm)</sup>: There goes the neighborhood

When I started to tell people last summer that I'd decided to move to Amsterdam, I got many a raised eyebrow. I knew what they were thinking, me packing it in for the pot smoking capital of the world. Ironically, I don't smoke. Not so good for an asthmatic and I happen to think it's rather boring. But I am certainly aware of it around me more here though it is not like everyone walks around smoking joints all the time. You smell it at concerts of course, and I do still startle when I see someone light up a joint in public. The neighbors downstairs smoke though so our entry hall smells like it quite often. Sometimes we can even smell it in the office, comes up the walls in what used to be a chimney.

But most of the people I know here don't smoke. I think it's mostly the tourists who keep the coffee shops in business. (yes, coffee shops are where you buy pot, and cafes are where you get coffee). And it must do a good business because there are coffee shops on practically every corner. But still, I just don't see it all that much.

The past week has been pretty quiet, after the pre-Christmas rush, we've spent most of the past 5 days at home. So after working all day yesterday, we wanted to get out for a bit and decided to walk over to a neighborhood cafe to have a drink before dinner. Just as we were leaving, the door buzzer rings and it's two police officers responding to an anonymous call about trouble at our address, they even had our apartment number. They were very nice, but we assured them there was no trouble, assumed it must have been some mistake and went on as planned scratching our heads about it.

After a few vicious rounds of canasta, we walked back home to make dinner to find a huge commotion. They had our side of the street blocked off, the same police officers were still there directing traffic around it, and there was a large container truck parked out front of our house next to some sort of communications van and a bunch of official looking people milling around in uniformed jumpsuits. It looked like the SWAT team had taken over, just without the assault rifles.

They were concerned not with us but with the ground floor apartment below us. They told us it was fine for us to go inside but of course we were curious about what was going on down there. We googled to find out what the acronym on their uniforms and trucks was for but found no reference to "SEON" anywhere online. Weird. So we called a friend who's lived here for 10 years and she didn't know but said she'd call her neighbor who should. Checking on the situation from our front windows, we saw them running some sort of cabling from the truck into the apartment. Then the lights for the entire building went off. It was starting to get really weird.

the mysterious action outside our window

Aaron went down to ask what was going on since we were being directly effected and they told him there was some sort of electrical hookup violation and they should have the lights back on soon. The cop actually told him to light some candles and make it romantic. They all seemed pretty relaxed, looking up at me watching from our kitchen and laughing about it. They turned on a bank of floodlights they had on top of the communications van so at least we then had plenty of light to cook dinner by.

Our friend finally called back and said her neighbor was stumped but had called her sister who is a police officer in The Hague. The sister didn't actually know what it was but thought it was some sort of special enforcement unit for firearms and narcotics. Then we saw what they were after. They proceeded to empty the place downstairs of their marijuana farming operation. They must have had hundreds of plants, grow lights, electronic equipment, fertilizer, etc. They just junked it all into the back of the container and then drove it off. But it must have taken them a good hour for them to get everything out. All in all, from the time our doorbell rang, it was maybe a 3-4 hour operation...