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Amsterdam, a tale of two cities (in one)
- del.ico.us
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- Last edited: 2:43, Sep 10 2007
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Amsterdam is two cities: the local city and the tourist city. They aren’t so much geographical boundaries as ones of priorities. In the two days and three nights I spent in Amsterdam I threw myself into the latter… [some content may offend]
After arriving in Belgium to organise my flat I had six days to kill before day one of work at Boondoggle. My initial ideas of Paris and then exploring Belgium were soon forgotten when I realised the Netherlands was only a four hour train journey away. “Time to meet the relatives” I thought and with that in mind I emailed Marieke (my mother) for a list of what portion of the Dutch population shared the same blood, booked a hostel in Amsterdam for the weekend, and purchased a return trip on the train for €64. 
I had time in Amsterdam before receiving Marieke’s reply so I set about exploring what all the tourist fuss was about.
Prior coming to Amsterdam I had already been supermarket shopping in Leuven (where I am staying) and had discovered to my delight and horror that Hoegaarden is sold in miniature kegs and Leffe is only €4.50 for a six pack. Since I was now going to break my tee-totalling and resume drinking once I got home (that sounds weird) I figured I might as well start whilst I was in Amsterdam.
Night one and I met a Japanese uni student studying in London at the hostel. She was on her last night in Amsterdam so we decided to metaphorically hold hands and brave the Red Light District together. The red light district is kind of like an adult carnival, with multi-coloured - well red - light bulbs, people walking around staring open mouthed at the attractions, hustlers yelling at you from their stalls to ‘come on in and try your luck’. 
Having had a wander and a few beers we decided it was a good idea to see a live sex show. I had high hopes, the Red Light District is more than infamous. The entire planet seems to know that if you are in the neighbourhood of Europe and you want a good time swing by the old district. Much to my displeasure the ‘live sex show’ was little more than a trumped up strip show. There was only one act of live fornication on stage, which was so fast as to be comical. Watching two people f#ck like a 40s car chase scene, in which every second frame is removed to give the appearance of action, does not get my juices flowing. I did have the fortune of being dragged up on stage with three other unwitting guys whilst a naked 40 year old woman did lewd things with a banana. It wasn’t attractive, especially when as part of the show she slammed my head against the wall with her butt cheeks and gyrated rather violently. I couldn’t figure out for the next days why my nose hurt so bad until it finally dawned on me… “oh that’s right”.
After a level of disappointment I hadn’t experienced since seeing U2 play in Auckland (I will only explain that in the comments if someone wants me to), we then went onto a coffeeshop to eat cake. Coffeeshops don’t sell coffee. They sell marijuana. Don’t eat the cake if you don’t want to get stoned. The cake was good, I like cake. Especially because the thing that is giving you the munchies is also getting you more stoned and therefore giving you stronger munchies. The perfect combination. I think Bill Hicks might have joked about a similar perfect union regarding mushrooms and cow pats.
For the record I did not sleep with a prostitute! I may or may not have been tempted, the going rate was €50 (NZ$100) for 15 minutes of conversation. In reality I couldn’t do it for so many reasons, mainly due to the fact that if anyone asks if I have slept with a prostitute I don’t have to lie. I don’t like lying, probably because I am crap at it.
The following day was spent doing the typical museum thing - seeing the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum. That evening I thought I would revisit a coffeeshop in the red light district, smoke a joint and read The Satanic Verses to pass the evening. I purchased a pre-rolled for €4 as I cannot roll to save myself. All was going well until I got paranoid that I was going to fall of the chair I was sitting on. I re-read the same page at least a hundred times, gave in and walked back to the hostel to sleep it off.
On Saturday feeling particularly adventurous I rented a bike and rode on the wrong side of the street for a day. In Manhattan pedestrians own the roads, in Amsterdam it is the cyclists. I got to see a bunch of Amsterdam inaccessible by just walking. My legs and arse hurt like mad as I hadn’t been on a bike in over a year. I had heard that Amsterdam was full of tourists and particularly the British. Whilst the majority might have come from elsewhere the British men (and they were all men) stood out like sore thumbs. No necks, bald, balding or shaved heads, talking loudly walking in packs of six aside rugby teams, often wearing the same shirt that can only serve to help them find each other when they are blindingly drunk in a pub. I felt sorry for the local population having this assault every night. Amsterdam, along with Prague, is one of the places to take your mates and get blottoed on cheap booze and cheap women. I can only imagine what Ibiza is like.
Upon giving up the bike and returning to the hostel I met a group of New Zealanders, only the third I have met so far on my travels (relatives excluded). Craving some home cooking I tagged along with them for the evening which was hilarious, and somewhat similar to the British travellers I outlined above, although it was four women and one bloke. I only hope that all New Zealanders aren’t like them, although my memory seems to serve me that a substantial proportion are. They were a group of Kiwis (and one Aussie) doing the massive flatshare in London, drinking every weekend, meeting other Kiwis and travelling to Amsterdam for weekends of “wow I’ve been to Europe”. At dinner they were incredibly jovial and struck up conversation with our waitress very easily, who turns out was from Morocco. One of the girls, who was from the Coromandel, in sincerity asked her if she knew the translation for ‘Moccona haf mer mmmm’, to which the Moroccan waitress’ confusion will entertain me until I die. The ‘bloke’ of the group, who was amping for seeing ‘pussy’ at a live sex show, upon discovering that the waitress had 4 identical sisters wanted to meet all of them. I am not sure if his girlfriend who was sitting right opposite minded but she didn’t care to stop his blusterings. The group proceeded to bag their previous flatmates who weren’t New Zealanders or Australians. This might be an unfair call, as they could have had flatmates of nationalities who weren’t Antipodeans and they just weren’t mentioning them. At one point the Aussie woman rhetorically mentioned to me that they were loud and that they must seem embarrassing, to which I replied, “yes I found them all quite obnoxious”. She didn’t know quite how to take that and went quiet. Luckily for me I don’t think they knew what obnoxioius meant and they all remained very friendly for the rest of the evening.
Nevertheless I enjoyed their company because there was something nice about being with people who are drunk and loud and from the same island as me. Plus for all my high-horsing I have on occasion been known to be drunk and loud and obnoxious. I followed them, once again, into the red light district. We did a quick tour as I’m an old hand, before I dragged them into a coffeeshop and got them all royally stoned. Some had never smoked weed before and proceeded to stagger their way into the same sex show that I seen two nights earlier. I bid them adieu (I am reading Pride and Prejudice at the moment) and walked back to the hostel while finishing off the last of the joint.
This is possibly the single most liberating thing I have done. Walking two kilometres through central Amsterdam past other drunken revellers, police on patrol, people just wandering around, whilst smoking a joint. At first it felt wrong, like I should be watching over my back the whole time for that hand on the shoulder. When I realised the hand wasn’t coming it just felt normal. I have heard from friends in the U.K. that marijuana potency has gone up so high that many people are now being submitted to hospital with schizophrenia from only one use. I can’t help but think that buying from a coffeeshop (of which there are hundreds) you are more assured of what you are purchasing. Whether one agrees with marijuana usage or not, I smoked legally in Amsterdam whilst in public and I had a good time. Kids, don’t try this at home without adult supervision.
So what was Amsterdam like? I don’t know. This may be a tale of two cities but so far I have only experienced one.
