Since the spring semester in Switzerland does not start until the very end of February, I’ve taken the opportunity to use my Eurorail pass to see a few legendary cities. And what city is more legendary for student travelers than Hot Damn Amsterdam? The great city of hash and hoes, books and bikes - a place where the weird take refuge and the normal seem almost anything but.      
In the company of my friend Michelle Strick, also a C of C student, I was content to walk through outdoor book markets and browse indie zine shops. It was all cool and oh-so-hipster, but what I will remember the most, I hate to say it - is the Red Light District.     
I can’t shake this image of a dark-haired girl about my age talking on her cell phone from behind her window. She wore a pink g-string and a narrow black strap across her breasts. When a guy, also about my age, walked slowly by she hung up her phone and stretched her right leg vertically up the window with eyes of a masochistic princess.      
I saw one man emerge from a session with an older, fuller and more aerosoled woman. He kissed her cheek and said something like “Ciao bella,” then walked away, tucking in his shirt. A quick glimpse of the rougey room behind her window revealed a bed that looked more like a cot, a zebra rug, Christmas lights and a sink. She settled back into her cushy window chair and took out a nail file.     
These images are seared into my mind, because no matter how open-spirited I try to be, the idea alone of Amsterdam’s Red Light District cannot prepare any taboo-conditioned American for an actual walk through it. I still don’t know what to make of it all, but the Harriet the Spy in me has been busy tracking down information:      
The Amsterdam Red Light District is over 700 years old and today houses brothels, exotic sex shops, “Condomerias,” live porn theaters, swinger clubs and a variety of other pay-for-pleasure arcades that I had never heard of.      
The Amsterdam sex workers are legal, tax-paying citizens who come from many countries, most often from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. However, of the approximately 11,000 working prostitutes, it is suspected that between 1,000 and 7,000 are illegally trafficked. In 2009, nearly one-third of the district’s brothels were shuttered in order to curb the mushrooming hard drug and illegal sex trade.      
According to the Prostitution Information Center in Amsterdam, the average price for 15 minutes of nothing-fancy-sex is approximately $90 and most girls will negotiate a special price for a mix of services. Typically, girls rent their windows at $170 per night and sometimes live behind them. Women are not required to be checked for STDs, but most of them demand condoms and according to a pamphlet I picked up, STDs are “not rampant within the industry.” Prostitution is legal over the age of 18, but the red lights illuminate both baby-faced girls and seasoned ladies who look as old as 50.      
These are just the facts that I found - like I said, I’m finding it hard to formulate an opinion on the prostitution industry as a whole. There is a part of me that says, “NO! Prostitution is exploitative and demeaning to women,” but another part says, “How dare anyone inhibit a woman’s right to work as she chooses?”
For me it’s a tough call, and for some reason it’s one I feel I must make. It’s as though my own morals and view of female sexuality depend on it. For me, Amsterdam was a window into a world that exists everywhere behind curtains. Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t shutter out its reality.