Bed and breakfast, about the Eelhouse Amsterdam

The history of the eel house

The house gets it name from the famous "Eel Uprising," which in turn got its name from an old Dutch tradition, the so called eel pulling. In this, a rope was strung across a canal and a live eel, smeared with soap, was suspended from it. Participants in small boats would try to grab the eel, invariably falling into the water, providing fun for all.

On a summer's day in 1886 the inhabitants of Lindengracht organized a street party, to include an eel pulling, which unfortunately had been forbidden years earlier. When the police got wind of the affair, they untied the rope, and the ensuing commotion, albeit for a variety of reasons, turned into a riot lasting several days.

Eelhouse and the owner figure in novel, "The Tenth Man".

The Eelhouse Guesthouse is described in a new thriller "The Tenth Man" written by the American writer E.W. Podojil. In this new novel some meetings take place in the live-in kitchen of the Eelhouse... Not only the live-in kitchen of the Eelhouse is part of this novel, also one of the characters is based on the owner of the Eelhouse. The Tenth Man as a novel is as much about the search for love and acceptance, as it is about the search for a serial killer.