Amsterdam

 As  he often did when visiting that fateful city ,out of curiousity or of nostalgia he would
 go to see the house that he had lived in for seven years some thirty years ago .
 Those were different times with its residue of the sixties, squatters and riots and a few bombs  going off here and there ( some uncomfortably close to the flat ! )
 As he turned into Ruysdael Kade, he felt as if he was in that time again , nothing seemed
  to have changed and the place felt charged with a spring like feeling everything felt new
  and sparkling and there was a  feeling of welcome from the street, the houses and the trees,
   especially the elm trees which he had so often looked at and drawn.
               The beautiful Rijksmuseum looked down with its golden towers over the scene-
 He looked up at the second floor of the house at the alcove where he had often sat, walking up
 the two steps he noticed that the door was still the same dark green with the same familiar metal grating over the small window and beyond he could see those steep leg breaking stairs leading- Looking at the names above the door , he noticed that the owner of the house  (after thirty years ,was still living there,and he knew that if he still held the key to that house, that he could walk  through the door, climb those hilly stairs and resume his life as before, forgetting his other life  and that other city .
      .