No, not sacrificing the city -- sacrificing my time in Amsterdam.
I made a very difficult decision yesterday. I'm fortunate to have become, over a couple of decades, a fairly big fish in certain small ponds. Consequently I serve on various advisory panels.
One of them, a large European open access project, is having its meeting in Amsterdam next month. They will pay my travel, and put me up at a swanky hotel, and feed me ever-so-well.
Free travel to Amsterdam! Free luxury lodging in that most lovely of cities! Hooh-hah!
I'd get to spend a productive day with a bunch of European colleagues who I see only rarely, and enjoy a great deal. I'd learn a lot about European attitudes to things we confront in the US too, and that I need to understand professionally; and I was to present a brief report on some of the movements in that same arena in the US. And maybe take an extra day to just enjoy myself.
But I decided, after much pondering, that I just couldn't do it.