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I love Amsterdam. The city is vibrant and alive. It's fresh and so open. It's definitely one of my favorite places.

I grew up in Batavia, Ill., a small town out in the corn fields, west of Chicago. It was boring.

I have always lived in Amsterdam. During the war, we inhabited the Rivieren neighborhood where many Jews lived at the time. Our downstairs neighbors were Jews, and there were also Jews a few houses from us. We saw how they were rounded up and taken away. That made a very great impression on me.

Ireland is also quite nice. So is Amsterdam.

Historic Amsterdam, that old part you first see when you turn up at Centraal Station, may have its monuments, but it's also the most tawdry and overcrowded part of the city.

I think Amsterdam is to Holland what New York is to America in a sense. It's a metropolis, so it's representative of Holland, but only a part of it - you know, it's more extreme, there's more happening, it's more liberal and more daring than the countryside in Holland is.

When I moved to Brighton from London in 1995, I was struck by what I thought of as its townliness. A town, it seemed to me, was that perfect place to live, neither city nor country, both of which like to think they are light years apart but actually have a great deal in common.

Stand outside De Eland, on the Berenstraat Bridge over the Prinsengracht, and you see what real Amsterdam life is like.

I feel like, big city or small town, you can relate to following your parents' footsteps or putting your own dreams on the back burner or vices that we get caught up in - that whole cycle. That's not just a small-town thing. That's a life thing.

I grew up in a little village in the west of Ireland.