Recently, I spent the evening at a restaurant located in the middle of Amsterdam’s red light district, where we had window seats with a beautiful view of the Old Church lying on the opposite of the canal. Surrounded by coffeeshops and red lights that signal the presence of window prostitution, the church has always seemed out of place in its surroundings. As a child I sometimes passed through this part of town on the back of parents’ bicycle on our way to one of the Chinese restaurants and I remember the lingering smell of marihuana, the junkies shuffling around and the male visitors who furtively walked by, looking away in order not to be recognized. Growing up in the canal belt in the early eighties, which was then quite run down, the sight of window prostitution was not unfamiliar to me, but the red light district was far more shady and clearly represented the shadowside of the city.