Hello 大家好，这是我们的第一集 Weekend English Club 播客。音频本文如下，以供跟读如有需要，重点单词/短语也会特别标注在文末。

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Welcome to the first episode of weekend English club. With this podcast I hope to help you improve your English listening skills with the help of short and hopefully entertaining stories.

Today's episode will be the first in a series about different cities and their culture.

The first city I will talk about today is my hometown, Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is the capital city of the Netherlands, a small country in Europe next to Germany. Almost one million people live in the city, so it is not very large compared to many Chinese cities. However, the city was very important for some time and many tourists still visit it every day. People have lived in Amsterdam for more than 700 years, but it became one of the most important and richest European cities in the 17th century. This was a time 400 years ago when people from all over the world came to Amsterdam to trade and make a lot of money. One of the reasons they came to Amsterdam was that Amsterdam is on the coast, and from Amsterdam you can travel on rivers all the way to Germany and France. This is why the city still has a lot of beautiful old buildings from that time, because all the rich people who lived in the city wanted to live in the best houses they could buy.

Many famous people have lived in Amsterdam, and one of the most famous people in the Netherlands might be the painter Rembrandt van Rijn. During the 17th century many rich people liked to collect paintings for their homes and Rembrandt was one of the best painters alive at that time. His paintings became so famous that you can still find them in museums all over the world, and if you visit Amsterdam you can still visit the house he lived in. Since many famous painters lived in the Netherlands, you can find many museums in Amsterdam with art from all over the world.

Although Amsterdam is not as important as it once was, it is still a very international city where people from all over the world meet each other. For example, in the city center you can find a Chinese neighborhood where the street names are even written in Chinese. This is because many Cantonese people who worked on ships came to Amsterdam and decided to stay and live there. This is where you can find a lot of very good restaurants, thanks to the Chinese influence.

I think Amsterdam is very unique because the shape of the city is something you will not find in many other cities. This is because of the canals, which look like rings surrounding the city. It is hard to explain, but if you look up a photo of Amsterdam from the sky you can see the lines of water in the city. Because of these canals, you can take your boat and travel through the city on water, which is something a lot of people like to do for fun. Sometimes so many people want to do this when it is sunny outside, that they actually create traffic jams on the water with all their boats.

The most common way for people to travel around in Amsterdam is with their bicycles. Because the country is totally flat, it is perfect for cycling around. There are actually more bicycles than people in the city because of this. Everywhere in the city you will see special roads for bikes, so you can safely and quickly get to your destination. If you are visiting, you can rent bicycles everywhere for traveling around, but you will have to be careful if you are not used to it, since the traffic can be very chaotic in the busy parts of the city. Cycling around is usually better than driving a car though, because the city is very old and there is not much space for cars to drive around.

I am curious to hear what you think of Amsterdam and I hope you learned something new. Are there any other cities you want me to talk about? Please let me know, and until next time.

• Episode: 集
• Series: 系列
• Podcast: 播客
• Capital city: 首都
• The Netherlands: 荷兰
• Tourists: 游客
• Century: 世纪
• Trade: 交易
• Cantonese: 广东话的
• Influence: 影响
• Unique: 独特的，非常特别的
• Canals: 运河
• Surrounding: 周围的，附近的
• Explain: 解释
• Look up: 查找
• Travel through: 在...里穿越旅行
• Traffic jam: 交通堵塞
• Rent: 租
• Chaotic: 混乱的
• one of the: ... 其中之一
• all over the world: 全世界
• on ships: 船上

主播：Daniel

校对：nan_nan