This is a wonderful song by Jacques Brel. Watch it and enjoy. Also have a good look at the audience, they really seem to enjoy it!
There are some stories on why Jacques Brel wrote this song. One story is that he wrote the song in the early sixties sitting in his friends house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin overlooking the mediterranean. He used the word Amsterdam because it made the song sound so much better than Antwerp or Hamburg or any other harbour he knew.
The other story goes that Jacques Brel visited Amsterdam some weeks before he wrote it. He went to a typical brown cafe in the red light district and had some beers with his friends among them Ramses Shaffy and Liesbeth List. On the back of a beer carton he wrote the first lines of his song. The beer carton is well kept in the Amsterdam Historical Museum.
I like the last explanation most. It’s very romantic.