obsessed; ineffectual posers more concerned with their haircuts than with hard work. As a truck driver in a bar once told me: ‘In Rotterdam we earn the money, in Den Haag they count it, and in Amsterdam they spend it.’ The rivalry cut both ways: Amsterdammers looked down on their southern rivals as unsophisticated and uncultured; inhabitants of a sprawling, dirty city with unfashionable bars, lame restaurants and outmoded shops.
