Liverpool St Station is packed when we get there, luggage in tow. some fool's organised a Facebook Flashmob to convene in the foyer. i'm all for anarchistic protests and celebrations of public space by the public, but there are people trying to use this as a fucking train station you inconsiderate motherfuckers. the police-presence is massive - i stop counting at 20 of them, standing around eyeing everyone off, trying to work out who's travelling somewhere and who's there just for fun and they're getting more in the way than the Flashmobbers. next time go meet up in a Maccas or in front of Westminster or fucking Piccadilly Circus.
i'd met Louise at the station with her bag to save her from having to cart it in to work and then out again. between my ever-present shoulder bag and backpack, i still have a hand free when i'm dragging her little rolling luggage so it bothers me not at all. after sorting out our tickets (we had them all along, they just didn't look right, so there was something of a panic while we ran around trying to find an internet connection i could hook into with my Eee and check the details) we grab some food, then navigate the gauntlet of "For Your Protection" (yes we are travelling - can't you see the backpack and rolling luggage?) and find our train to Harwich. the arrangement is beautifully elegant: on the one site you book your ferry passage on Stena Lines from London to Hoek Van Holland. the package includes Liverpool St to Harwich tickets on the train for the day you leave, then Hoek Van Holland to ANY DUTCH STATION tickets for the next day when you arrive. yeah - ANY Dutch station, so no matter where you're going you're covered. hell - you could ride the Dutch rail system all day long if you wanted.
2 hours or so later we've got to Harwich, through customs and found our cabin on the ferry. it's not huge - 2 bunks, a little couchy thing and an ensuite bathroom, but it's all you need for an overnighter. the bar is hit where we burn the last of Louise's euro-change before we decide to sod it all off, grab a bottle of el-cheapo Californian wine from the duty-free shop (the entire bottle is ~50c more expensive than the glass Louise had at the bar, with the benefit that we have the comfort of our cabin to enjoy it in. win!) and we bed down for the night.
the beds are comfortable, but neither of us sleeps well. i have another shower under the torrent of scalding water the shower provides to wake up and we're off, through immigration and out into the Dutch morning. add a couple of hours and we've passed through Rotterdam and emerged slightly lost at Amstel Station in Amsterdam. the train from Rotterdam passes through village after village, spaced out by well irrigated (or is that "drained" pasture with the occasional windmill or turbine spinning in the distance. every available surface is graffiti'd, but not the train, or anything that looks to be of value. some of it's beautiful, most of it's amateur, but no one seems bothered by it. i can't decide whether i like it or not - i love graffiti art, i hate tagging random pieces of wall... but then most of the walls were grey and boring to start with so why not add some colour where you can?
we follow the map we printed out off the hotel website, only to realise that it's wrong. luckily my man Dan is staying in the same hotel and he comes and finds us. through happy coincidence Inspector Morse was in Amsterdam for an interview the day before and was staying until Sunday, giving us a day to run around, and run around we did. bags get dumped, maps acquired, and we're off into Centraal to find food, fun and adventure, which comes in the form of getting minorly lost, nearly run over by trams and flocks of pushbike riders with a god-complex, the Van Gogh Museum and the Heineken Experience (a tour through their old, inactive brewery, followed by getting fed beer and advertised at). hiking back to the hotel for a change of clothes and it's back out on the street in search of something to fill out stomachs prior to a night on the town. Amsterdam's an odd place to wander around after London. it's still flat, but full of canals, and you can turn down an seemingly innocuous road and realise that you were one street away from a restaurant or shopping district. there's Mexican, pub food, french, Italian, Indian, Thai, Indo (not to mention a thousand places to get great chips and mayo) and a noticeable amount of Argentinian food around, which is where we fetch up, waiting an hour for food to show up which turns out to be fantastic. throwing caution (and budgets) to the wind, Dan and i embark on the Meat Odyssey - a charcoal burner full of meat which lands on the table with escorting side-salads and we enjoy the most high-quality protein either of us have had in since we'd left. Louise sits through the whole thing listening to us moaning with the happiness of the satisfied carnivore with a smile on her face - i gather the show we put on was just as enjoyable as her meal was, although when i gave her a couple of bites to try she understood.
staggering out of the restaurant we find the red light district and wander around for a while, finding a couple of pubs and getting ourselves nicely wasted before finding our way back to the hotel... more by luck and guesswork than by skill or map-reading. none of us were in any condition to read the map anyway.
the next morning is a slow start. we're all hungover, but Dan and i grab some food from the breakfast bar while Louise gets an extra half hour of kip. he's got to get to Amsterdam Centraal Station for his flight out, so the day becomes one less of touristing and more of wandering around the canals and seeing what the place is really like to live there. there's a motivation behind this greater than exploration though - Dan's trying to work out whether he wants to take the job he interviewed for if it's offered. it's a hard call and he's going back and forth. on one hand, he's a raver and Holland would be insane for that. on the other, he's gotten attached to London and isn't relishing the idea of trying to make friends in a country where he doesn't speak the main language. it occupies most of our conversation until we put him on his train at 2ish.
this leaves me and Louise at a bit of a loose end. neither of us had come out to Amsterdam with much of an agenda past "get out of London for a weekend and have a couple of big nights out", so we take stock and check the map. taking a canal-boat ride is traditional, but too expensive for our tastes. after some meandering which took us unexpectedly through the Red Light District again we fetch up at the Jewish History Museum (don't bother unless you're really REALLY keen on Jewish History), followed by a short bus ride (the only bus i'd seen so far, but i'll get to that) to Anne Frank's House on the other side of town (DO bother - it's surprisingly interesting). out of there and we're wandering towards hotel, enormous burritos and another heavy night of drinking in front of Dutch television.
the Red Light District in Amsterdam is a curious beast. i've been to the equivalent in Bangkok and from that experience i was wary. Amsterdam was as far away as you could get while still being the same sort of thing. when we wandered through last night there was the scent of sleaze in the air. the streets are full of students on Eurotrip, smiling police paying less attention than you'd expect, tourists there for the spectacle, drunken louts who've come to make a mess, interspersed with actual punters looking for a good time and seedy looking men on standing in the shadows muttering things like "coca, coca, coke" and "heroin? got heroin...". these guys don't really seem to bother anyone. they're there. they're touting their wares, but they're not in your face and they're not trying to shove it down your throat. meanwhile, every so often you'll pass a series of 7"x3" windows with red fluorescent borders illuminating a girl in a bikini or similar who's generally standing there looking bored and smoking a cigarette. big girls, small girls, young and old, smoking hot or somewhat not so, they're there and they're working. a little research will tell you that they're actually incredibly well treated - there's a Support Centre (or so i'm told) where not only will they help you get out of the industry, but help you get IN if that's what you want to do - who to talk to, what the laws are, where to get medical advice... i heard this and i just about fell over.
the RHD didn't seem like a particularly happy place... these sort of districts don't leave me with the sweetest taste in my mouth. still, there was a vibe of "safe" fun to the place. i never felt like i'd be assaulted or attacked or coerced into losing my cash... but of course, anyone who wants to spend some cash would be well accommodated. it's clean, regulated depravity, with a constant whiff of high-quality marijuana for perfume. yeah, it's there. it's EVERYWHERE. "Coffee Shops" differentiate themselves from the cafes in that they ALSO sell coffee. the locals don't seem to care. go have your fun. get a couple of joints into you and you'll not be starting any fights, and you're less likely to vomit in someone's garden than if you go 10 pints and stagger home with a skin full.
the Dutch seem to be the most permissive, accepting people i've met anywhere. anywhere i went i was greeted with a smile and a hello. there were a couple of times i'd walk into a cafe to be greeted in Dutch - i'd smile and say "sorry... english?" and they'd just switch over for you. no english version of the menu? they'll be happy to translate for you. directions? happy to oblige. an ounce of award winning pot after banging an attractive prostitute? might i recommend my favourite establishment good sir? they don't care, just don't fuck around and be an arsehole and everything's mintox. i was really starting to dig it.
another thing you notice really quickly is the transport, and not just that the cars drive on the wrong side of the road compared to what i'm used to (i kept checking both ways before i crossed a lane to remind myself of which way the traffic was going to come from). yeah, there are plenty of cars, but i never once saw a petrol station. pushbikes are the kings of transport, and the only reason i think the trams have right of way is because they're bigger and will fuck your shit up. most of the "footpaths" are actually cycle paths, and woe betide he who strays onto one. put one foot wrong and i'll be greeted by bells. the cycle path us usually broader than the footpath, and while people will put signs and rubbish bins and cars in the way of peds, cyclists get free reign. everywhere we went there were people giving each other dinkies on pushies. even tandem bikes were not uncommon. and i wasn't kidding about the trams - they're frequent and fast and you get the feeling that they'll only stop to scrape you out of the gears, then they're off again.
still, we've another day here tomorrow. no idea what we'll get up to, but i'm not really fussed to be honest. it's refreshing to not have an agenda and be free to just wander. they'll be coffee whenever i want it, and canals to walk down. it's been overcast and dreary since we got here and i can't help but feel that if it was sunny it'd all seem just that much happier. still, i'm loving the cruisy pace everything seems to be at. every canal is lined with houseboats, and everyone seems to ride these rusty, clapped out old bikes. i haven't seen a fat person since i got here, except for maybe a tourist or two. Amsterdam seems full of fit, contented people going about their lives with no concern whatsoever. if only Canberra could be so contented...
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