From Africa To Russia

Get up in the morning, it has rained during the night. Drank a bit too much last night, am feeling hungover and weak. Walk up to the north station, catch the train to Amsterdam. They are out of sandwiches on the train, so I have a waffle (sugar-coated, damn tasty). I ride the train through Holland, trees and fields and turning white windmills under an overcast sky. Pull into Amsterdam, walk out of the station, across the canal and find my hostel on Warmoesstraat. The atmosphere reminds me of New Orleans, it is like a carnival – this is definitely a party city. All manner of coffee shops, bars and sex stores line the narrow street, banners hang overhead. I walk around a bit, discover the canals, which you cross frequently as you wander. I grab a sushi roll at around three, then wander around drinking beers at different places. I settle for a while at The Greenhouse Effect, a little bar / coffee shop near my hostel. The bartender is a chick from England, and is very cheery, almost motherly to the patrons. A bunch of black guys and a few stoners sit in the back room smoking, smoke billowing all around. A guy walks in. “Can I see a menu?” (He means for weed.) The bartendress directs him to the place next door. I get up and wander some more, it starts to rain pretty heavily so I take refuge in the bars and pretty much wind up drinking beer all day long. The World Cup is on, and at one bar the sound system suddenly craps out and the bar is silent. The quick bartender immediately picks up the commentary on his own, “Beckham, now Gerrard…” I head back to The Greenhouse Effect, talk to a bunch of English lads from the isle of Jersey, then go next door and get myself a joint. I go back over, smoke some ganja ya mon, drink some beer and talk to the boys from Jersey. World Cup is still on, the black guys in the back room are whooping it up. I smoke the joint slow, taking into account the reputation of the stuff over here. It would suck to pass out and get rolled, losing passport, credit cards, cash etc. After a while, I decide to go back. My head is floating and my eyes are burning but I feel good. Back at my room at the hostel, there are about thirty Japanese preparing to go to sleep, including one who is already asleep and is snoring like a diesel engine.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.