What happens in Amsterdam…aaah…Stays in Amsterdam?
Friday, December 1st, 2006Hello everyone! I apologize for the lack of posting in the past week. For some strange reason they like to switch the letters on the keyboard in Holland, Belgium and France…cruel Joke. The only way to type is to pretend you are a chicken and peck at the keyboard with one or two fingers…with what I have to pay for the internet…I decided against it. You have all been great as I am still getting tons of emails. I am glad that people are still reading the blog and keeping up. I only have 2 weeks to go and I will do my best to make them as exciting as possible. I am now back in the friendly confines of free internet land, Barcelona. Let me catch you up on the hap…hap…happenings of the past week and a a half.
So on tuesday the 21st I flew from Barcelona to Amsterdam. All the people you meet who have in your travels who have been to Amsterdam tell you all the stories about the red light district, the drugs etc…but you dont quite believe it until you see it… well like Davey Jones from the Monkees used to sing…”When I saw her face…Now I’m a believer.”
The face was a young lady dressed in the bare minimum standing in a window lit with red lights as I wandered down the street with a map in my hand that was held inches from my face looking for my hostel as i pretended not to notice her…Welcome to Amsterdam, i thought. As I walked further down the street I realized she was not the only one, there were lots of ladies, young, old, skinny, fat, white, black…you name it! The ultimate form of window shopping I guess.
I checked into the Hostel and had a wander. Looking around it really amazed me how everything was as people said. It is funny how you see “Coffee Shops” everywhere. If you want coffee however you go to a cafe, if you want weed or hash you go to a Coffee Shop. These places offer everything and anything under the sun except for hard drugs. You can go in and ask for a menu and they have all kinds of crazy names for the marijuana…this is all secondhand information, i dont actually know this from my own experience.
One night I was having a wander around and a young man stopped me in the street and said:
“Do you know where the Red Light District is.?”
Now keep in mind, when he asked me this the street was littered with people. I was walking through crowds of people and this guy had a radar lock on me from like 10 feet away and when he approached I hadnt the faintest clue of what he was gonna want. Now I must have gave him the impression that I am a guy who knows where to go to pay for sex, surely I hope not. He tottally caught me off guard and I think I mumbled something and pointed behind me…quite strange.
The next day me and Lee, the guy I was traveling with, ran into a Canadien guy named Alex in the lobby of our hostel. He seemed like a nice enough guy at first, that is until he started talking. Before I make fun of this guy I want to say that I am not quite sure if he was actually retarded or possibly had something wrong with him. If that is the case I apologize in advance to him but I have to make fun of him regardless.
Lee made small talk with him by asking him where he was from. This question completely baffled the guy and I swear he didnt know the answer at first.
“Aaah…Canada? Alberta?” He said with a look of confusion!
Lee, being from Australia asked him what side of Canada it was on.
“Aaaah…East Coast… yeah…East Coast?”
I knew right then and there this guy was either higher than a kite or quite possibly the stupidest person I had ever met.
We agreed, with some hesitation to go and get a beer with him. We followed him to an Irish bar that he said he know of and all three of us sat down and ordered a couple of pints of guinness. He was asking me about my travels and I had mentioned to him I had been to Africa and because of his inability to know where he was from I made a specific point of saying I was in the country of South Africa, his response:
“Oh, South Africa…you mean like Morocco, or Tangiers?” He said this with some new found geographical confidence.
“Aaah, no…” I said. “South Africa…in the south of Africa.”
“Oh…you mean like Ghana.” He said as if he was apologizing for mentioning Morocco and Tangiers, like he should have known.
Once again I informed him that he was incorrect and that he would not be a contestant on todays showcase showdown.
“South Africa is the name of a country…it is in the southern most part of the continent of Africa.”
I was making hand gestures as if that would help but pretty much knew that even if i had a map and Nelson Mandella standing next to me it would not have mattered. After I spelled it out as clearly as I could he gave me a look of disbelief and confusion, like the look he probably makes at work when someone had just told him they wanted to supersize their extra value meal. Luckily I turned away and managed to strike up a conversation with another American guy across the bar. After we finished the beer me and Lee both looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking…this guy is a wierdo. We told him we were gonna get a bite to eat and that we would meet him later at the hostel. He told us he was gonna take a walk. We ducked down a side alley and got a bite to eat. After we ate we decided not to walk up the main street by the hostel so that we didnt run into him again. Sure enough we hit the side street and who walked right by us without noticing, yup, you guessed it, Alex, the wierd Canadien guy. I guess it was kind of hard for him to notice us as he was doing a wee bit of window shopping if you know what I mean. When we went back to bed late that night he was sitting on the computer in the lobby and asked us where we went. A quick, “oh sorry we looked for you” and then we went to sleep.
The next day we managed to see him and his dad on the street but once again passed without him noticing…phew! We were on our way to the Heineken Experience. Heineken beer was started in Holland and for 10 Euros you get a nice little tour of their factory along with a few cold ones and a nice little souvenir…not quite sure what the souvenir is but someone is gonna get it as a gift.
Overall I would have to say that the Amsterdam I saw was not very appealing. I mean if you are into Sex and Drugs, then it is your place. The tacky souvenir shops selling some of the most unusual items and the coffee shops are a wee bit much after a few days. I am sure that once you get out of the touristy areas the city itself probably has tons to offer and is probably really quite beautiful, unfortunately I didnt get to see that. 3 days was enough for me and It was time to move on…next stop…Brussels!
Gagnonius