Playing Catch-Up, Part 2: Amsterdam, Oh Boy...

Pretend that I am a commited blogger and that it is actually Halloween weekend and that nothing has happened since then even though I may reference things that have.  Ok, continue...

So, Amsterdam is not quite the magical fun time as John Travolta described to me in Pulp Fiction.  In fact, it kind of sucked.  Maybe it was the group, maybe it was the weather, maybe it was because I just wasn’t into snorting coke off of a prostitute in a red lit ally.  I dunno.

In actuality, it was probably because the city was largely artificial.  The most historical parts were the 200 year old phallic sidewalk-street separators with the city’s coat of arms (XXX… yup, that’s where that came from.  Surprised?) on it that the residents wanted to preserve.  The old city center, the one with the canals and red light district and stuff, was a rigidly planned semi-circular grid consisting solely of souvenir shops, novelty restaurants, and the infamous coffee shops where the sell pot by the quarter-pounder (of course, they’re on the metric system- they don’t know what the fuck a quarter pounder is…).

Then there was our hostel, the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel.  It was the worst place I have ever stayed in my life.  Dirty, overcrowded, and cold, the place actually took pride in its shitty facilities.  They turned the Gulag-esque conditions into a marketing gimmick- ‘it’s so shitty it’s good,’ I guess, like the poo stench, sex noises through the wall,  and dirty sheets were supposed to make you feel like everybody has an awesome time there.  You know the guy who only thinks it was a good night when he can’t remember it?  He must’ve been named Hans Brinker.

Despite all that, it was a pretty cool city visually:  lots of old houses, beautiful canals, and tight cobblestone streets.  Often the houses jutted out diagonally in several directions over thin streets making much of the city feel like Diagon Alley.  Because of its grid design, it was relatively easy to navigate and the center was only the size of 4 or 5 city blocks/ 4 Carleton campuses (actually, the amount of drinking, smoking, and general freedom and jovalty on the streets made it feel a lot like a Delta house college campus).  I explored most of the city on my own, moving at my own pace, which was kind of nice.

You’re probably all curious about the coffee shops I mentioned earlier.  Well basically, pot is the Amsterdam equivalent of beer and coffee shops are their equivalents to bars.  We went to a few (don’t worry, I didn’t get blazed, fall asleep on a couch to wake up robbed and then run out the shop to find the thief only to trip over a hooker and land in a sunken houseboat in the canals) and they were always heavily decorated with lots of cool art relevant to their store names (the Dolphin, for example, was covered in coral reefs made, much to some high people’s surprise, of Styrofoam) and served lots of good coffee and snacks with a smile and cute Dutch accent.  Oh, and mounds of marijuana.

The people there (though I probably saw more tourists than natives and heard and saw more English than Dutch) were the biggest disappointment.  Most likely because of the abundance of coffee shops, they were all very lethargic and spacey.  It was like being in a city where everyone was me, but not naturally.  One of the girls who went with me stated it best: “this place is just a city of zombies!”

The food was probably the best part.  We went to the greatest pancake restaurant I’ve ever been too, and that includes Evanston’s Walker Brothers.  Yeah, I said it.  Unsurprisingly, the city most famous for its abundance of pot is also famous for its pancakes.  I had a massive omelet with bacon and cheese one night and a Gyro omelet another.  For the former, imagine being able to taste in one bite the excitement in Times Square on V-J day with a dash of Nov. 4^th, 2008 and the feeling of kicking off your shoes and sitting down after running a marathon with a cool lemonade and a dog/cat on your lap.  It was just like that, I swear.

We were there for Halloween weekend.  It was supposed to be a big party there, I mean, Amsterdam, Halloween, what could go wrong?  Oh yeah, the city has a strung out zombie infestation.  I went as Michael Phelps, shown here giving a poor impression of that picture of him where he's yelling really loud: 

I was pretty proud of my McGiverd costume, but didn’t get to put it to much use.  We went to a really bro-d out club where people had as many popped collars as the number of times the DJ repeated “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It.”  Because no one could fit a costume over so many layers of collar, I was one of only a few dressed up people.

OK!  The Red Light District.  Earth’s Asshole.  Vienna’s Troubled Little Brother.  Mos Eisley.  Detroit.  It goes by many names, usually focusing on the hookers behind the windows, the sex shops and shows, and the red lights lining the doorways of anywhere smutty.  Walking down the dimly lit streets (everything actually runs pretty much 24/7, even on Sundays next to the church in the middle of the district, yet it always looks dimly lit) I was offered more sex, coke, ecstasy, and bikes (yes, bycicles, I guess SOMETHING’s gotta be taboo) than ever before, well, ever.  If you got too close to the hookers’ door windows or made eye-contact, they’d nock on the doors and call to you.  From this I learned all about the pricing and logistics of it all!  Hooray!  Wandering around, I’d often start down an alleyway about 15 ft wide with people going through (I avoided the empty ones) and it would end up tightening to about a shoulder-width and a half with two flows of traffic (all men by the end) edging by each other and glass doors opening up on each side like nets counting on the tight current to push a straggler into them.

I felt bad for anybody actually interested in ‘buying’ anything there, going through that tight current of guys equally ‘excited’ for later ‘purchases.’  He would be like the ticker on the Wheel of Fortune and they’d be the Wheel’s notches.  (For the family: yes, I am making sexual innuendo.)

For all the grime and STDs most commonly associated with the RLD, it’s never remembered for its beautiful swans basking in the canal (in front of Porky’s sex Theater) or the nice old couples, kids, and young families laughing and playing (with the hookers) or the grocery stores, tourist shops, and businesses (in between the brothels).  Because you can buy or see anything, and I mean literally anything in the RLD, it really should be known as the internet in physical form- with more viruses.

Will