The stench is strong in this one

Cycling to work this morning, I was assailed by a waft of urine so strong and sudden that I was almost knocked off my bike. I glanced in the direction of the reek and spotted the culprit: an iron street pissoir. These stalls are a fairly common sight on the streets of Amsterdam; public urination has a long and distinguished tradition. Originally, the sides of houses were the WC of choice, but this caused the brickwork to start crumbling, so metal plates started being afixed to house fronts. Presumably, there then followed lobbying of the city authorities to introduce stalls away from the houses, and intricately carved shelters sprung up. While keeping the act out of sight, they don't hide the effects -- particularly as the weather heats up, bringing the stale urine up to boiling point.

And it's not just the human toilets. The local councils have installed different methods of dealing with dog waste in the form of bins, giant sandpits, or hedgerows, but at this time of year, it's extremely unpleasant to cycle past them. Shortly after the urine experience, I was hit by the reek of fermenting turds, trapped within one of the metal disposal boxes I photographed and blogged about some weeks ago. It's clearly not enough to provide the boxes; you also have to empty them at some point.

Still, it's not as bad as the extremely hot week last summer when the binmen went on strike. No refuse collections for a full week, right at the height of the sailing festival in Amsterdam and the influx of visitors that went with it. We had gone to Sweden for a long weekend, and returned to a city that was decidedly high -- and not in the usual way associated with Amsterdam. The streets were piled high with domestic and commercial refuse, head-high in places, as most people have no outdoor space and thus nowhere to store rubbish when their bins are full; the sun was beating down and everyone was having to breathe through their mouths while avoiding swarms of flies. It was a real shocker after the gloriously clean streets of Stockholm.

To sum up: Amsterdam can be very smelly in the summer. Be warned.