If you’re planning on going to Amsterdam for ‘a cup of coffee’ why not avoid the usual shady emporiums and instead head to a DIY café.
We all know about the coffee shops in Amsterdam and how their coffee is only a side attraction. Well there’s now a completely new reason to get ‘creative’ in Amsterdam and it has nothing to do with the trees (aka. weed).
DIY coffee shops do exactly what they say on the door. If you have something at home that’s in need of repair but you don’t want to throw it out, you simply head down to the coffee shop (not the weedy one) and get it repaired right there for free by a random Joe Soap. Sounds like a novel idea.
There are now more than 30 of these ‘Repair Café’s’ knocking around the Dutch capital and they’ll fix anything from you’re missus’ favourite skirt to you’re favourite piece of electronic equipment. The New York Times visited one recently and it made for some interesting reading. They basically fix everything from large washing machines to small teapots.
Volunteers’ pool their respective skills together to help the greater community and it’s really helping people to reduce the amount of waste that eventually makes its way to landfills.
It’s a fairly novel idea and it’s got us thinking, would something like this catch on in Ireland? Why not, it could very well work in these recessionary times. We just have to stay away from the idea of DIY pubs. Booze and super glue rarely mix well.
