Amsterdam 20 Years Later — It Wasn’t Quite Where I Left It
Amsterdam

Amsterdam 20 Years Later — It Wasn’t Quite Where I Left It

Sep 5, 2026 25 min read

Amsterdam 20 Years Later: Same Tracks, Tired Windows, Stronger Weed — and the Suspicion That the Party Moved to BerlinIn 2004, Amsterdam ended for me with a daytime train to Cologne. Twenty years later, Cologne was where Amsterdam began again. I was returning along the same railway corridor to a city I remembered well enough to miss, but perhaps no