Overheard: Amsterdam tourist season

As the sun sets on an Amsterdam summer tourist season, here are 17 random things I overheard tourists saying in Amsterdam in summer 2025.

• It was presented as a democratic process, but it was not!
  
  
• The best thing about wearing this skirt is my phone doesn't pull it down.
  
  
• No, no, no, we will just buy the juice!
  
  
• When you're in love, you're in the bubble, like, all the time.
  
  
• Don't get me wrong, I love a good sunset, but I'm not gonna Instagram it! 
  
  
• I could live here. This is the best weather we've had, this is all I fucking care about!
  
  
• He used to be an addict, like a big addict. Did he tell you that?
  
  
• You look stunning! If you'd have come to dinner dressed like that, we'd be wowed.
  
  
• I don't wanna, like, work hard as fuck for that. So I'm not gonna go.
  
  
• You haven't seen it yet, but I can get pretty fiery.
  
  
• Small little boats with little or no entertainment? Ann and Steve did one and they said it was HORRIBLE, and I'll be taking their recommendation!
  
  
• I don't fuck with mixing sweet and savoury.
  
  
• That's like a firecracker, went right off in my throat!
  
  
• She's an actress, a dancer AND an educator.
  
  
• They didn't think about mental illness... that is literally insane! No pun intended.
  
  
• Is that in New York?! Mo-Maaaa?! We'll look it up!
  
  
• You're a troubled lady, aren't you?

Amongst Tourists

I recently entered a Guardian Witness Been There photo competition - its subject was street life.

I don't often take photographs of people, so my street life is more likely to be a nice building or architectural feature.

One picture did come to mind: a photograph I took of tourists in Prague's Old Town.

In it, throngs of tourists await their chance to photograph the moment that figures appear on the Astronomical Clock on the Old Town City Hall. During summer, thousands of tourists and tour groups fill the Old Town Square.

Though I'm a tourist myself, I get great enjoyment listening and overhearing the observations of other tourists - such as:

• "Switzerland is SICK!!!" a woman exclaimed to her friend.
  
  
• "I'm going to have some serious CzechSlovak meat tonight!" said an Australian man on a train to Prague to his travelling companion.
  
  
• "Oh, I really like it here, it's so quaint!" said a young American woman wandering into a square in Budapest.
  
  
• "What's in Bratislava?" asked a Canadian man to his wife.
  "Well... there's a beautiful cathedral," she replied.
  "What? Another one?! There's a surprise..." said he wearily
  
  
• "Well, now, look at all this art!" said a woman as she wandered into the Prado Museum in Madrid.
  
  
• "I want to go where we belong!" said a woman arguing with her boyfriend in Prague's Wenceslas Square.