Motherly Vindication

I never really, truly believed my mom on those occasional summer afternoons when she glanced into my bedroom and threatened to set the Cleaning Police on me. I knew there wasn't any such thing as cleaning police, and I was right... mostly.

There are no cleaning police in California. There are, however, in Amsterdam.

While Jesse and I were meandering through small streets and along canals, we had to pull over to let an official-looking vehicle pass by. The orange stripes on the side labeled it as a police car; the word on the side labeled it as something far more frightening: the Reinigingspolitie. Which means, yes, "cleaning police."

Street-cleaning vehicles make nearly daily passes, it seems, and city workers do their best to sweep up debris and leaves. If you didn't know better, you might think you'd landed in a Harry Potter movie.

The Amsterdam Quidditch team on the way home from practice.

Their Keeper and his trusty Cleansweep Seven.

First-years aren't allowed to have brooms. Filch has confiscated these.

You may think—and here you would be supported by the city workers I caught on film—that I'm a huge nerd. You wouldn't be wrong.