I heard getting grow gear is next to impossible now in Holland?!, what happened to that laid back approach you had over their?! I went to Amsterdam in 1993 and was a great experience, sounds like that is long gone
Not impossible but a lot harder especially for the smaller grower, or less convenient. I used to have a handful of growshops in my neighborhood (as a matter of speaking) where I could walk in and buy/order anything. Now I have to order carbon filters, hps, exhaust separately for example. Or order from .uk/.be sites. I never liked ordering online giving my name and address, but, now I would be giving my name and address to a shop that may be raided the next day...
Royal Queen Seeds (not one I'd recommend anyway) and a few others no longer supply seeds (at least to dutch) either.
The Amsterdam experience for a new tourist, besides that many shops have been closed, hasn't changed a whole lot, yet. Things will get worse though. It's too backward to explain but I posted some info in my journal on page 19 and up. That "laid back approach" is definitely gone. Amsterdam has always been a special case though, it's where it started and somewhat of a stronghold. The party that won the local elections (city council) is the main pro-regulation party nationally as well. Growshops in Amsterdam announced they'd stay open regardless of the new law, growshops in Rotterdam for example all closed the day the new law went into effect, growshops in the province Noord Brabant in the south (where a lot of mj is grown) got raided the first weekday the law went into effect. It differs a lot per area.
That "laid back approach" is also all it was. I recently had a discussion, if you can call it that, about that with a mod at icmag. He claimed I didn't realize how good we have it... lol... I can legally grow 5 plants without artificial light, meters etc, and can legally have a maximum of 5gram (no typo, no missing zeros) in my house. Coffeeshops are allowed to sell 5 gr per person, but are not allowed to buy from suppliers or grow themselves. They are allowed to have 500gr in the shop, which for many is just a portion of what they daily sell. That laid back approach led to a billion euro industry, unregulated... as much as I'm pro-legalization, it's a mess and most sensible folks here agree the dutch policy failed. There's a rather larger majority amongst the public and politicians to legalize but not amongst enough matching political parties that could form a coalition. That last part is really a major obstacle.
There's some good news too though, judges often side with coffeeshop owners and growers. A mayor can retract a permit for a coffeeshop based on how the owner lives his/her life. If that sounds nuts it's cause it is. Two shops recently got closed because they had many many kilos of mj stored above the shop. Judge ruled against mayor, coffeeshop have to remain open. That's the best example, but happens more often and it's not even unlikely that the judge will rule in favor of the growshops that got closed. So we're all waiting for those first cases to be handled by a judge. Most judges really don't like the work that is 'created' by the new war on cannabis.