Amsterdam at Midnight

Amsterdam has at least two, often three entirely different cities sharing each place on any given day. Some places that are full of hardware stores and elementary schools suddenly spring restaurants in the evening. Bars dominate some of these same areas at night. The never-empty streets are later occupied by people you'd never want near your neighbourhood school. Until the light of morning when the last of the misanthropes move out and giggling children again return to school.

And midnight is the most dramatic of all the shifts. The trams and buses take their last rides to the edges of town as the (respectable) night clubs are opening their doors. (Sure some might have been open at 10pm. But no one shows up until 1:00.) Restaurants close their kitchens by 10:30 and by 11:30 the well fed customers are grabbing their aforementioned last bus. So midnight is a brief, brilliant mix of two portions of the city. A moment of chaos transitioning from the respectable to the unspoken.

There isn't a specific time in the morning when the last partier goes home. There is no time such as 5:15pm when the all the office workers become cafe sitters. The various stages of the city transition slowly. But at midnight... ah midnight in Amsterdam.