i hate to say it, but i'm fucking happy to be out of Amderdam. seriously, how much a place can change from winter to summer is amazing. it's not the town itself - it's still the happy little burg it was when i was here in February. the bucket's the same, it's all about the shit that's in it.
i'm being overly harsh i guess, but sitting on the bus on the long ride to Berlin i reckon i could have spent more time in Bercelona rather than stop here. i was only going to make it an overnighter, then get back on the bus in the morning and motor it onwards but i'd organised with the girls from Toowoomba whom i met in Bern to hang out while i was here so i took 3 nights rather than just the 1. it didn't help that they were a no-show for our evening out, leaving me fucked and abandoned, sitting on the side of the road in the RLD while i sat like a mug with my book on the kerb having stoned tourists trip over me while cigarette butts rained down out of upstairs windows. the only thing that saved the evening was when i went for a walk to look for food and ran into Mel from Busabout walking in the opposite direction and hooked in with her and her friends from there on in... although on reflection that may have wound up being the silver lining on the storm cloud that was starting to form over my head because if i'd not met up with Mel i'd not have met Dee, Stef or Val either.
i was already in a bit of a shitty mood when i took up my position on the kerb at 4PM. the previous night getting in was alright - i'd been in my dorm for all of 8 seconds when i got chatting to the Canadian who was lying on his bunk moaning and groaning about having been stoned and drunk every night the last week and spending too much money on prostitutes. didn't stop him coming down for a beer though, or paying for everything past the first round. we had a pretty good evening sitting around the Irish pub downstairs from the Witte Tulp (White Tulip) Hostel. even the rowdy Brit tourists who generally yelled over us and, while friendly enough, had a certain streak of "quick to anger soccer hooligan" about them, didn't really spoil the mood. they were just a taste of what i was going to see out on the streets later though.
the "English Stag Do" has a pretty bad reputation in most of Europe that i've seen. they get out in a pack, go somewhere cheap or fun and generally act like it's a fucking theme park. they seem to roll with the philosophy that they're only there for a couple of days so they can run amok and not have to worry about the mess they leave in their wake. it's all about getting pissed and shoving past you in the street while singing football anthems with these arseholes. it's not everyone, of course. not every young Aussie lad wears boardies, a blue wife-beater and a stubby-holder on his arm and makes a mess of Galipoli on ANZAC Day, but it happens enough (or used to - i avoided it when i had the chance this year based on the reputation, but people who went this year said they've cleaned up their act and this year was very respectful). Amsterdam attracts the sort of people who really want to get this sort of shit out of their system. want to go get stoned and not worry about getting arrested? want have a different girl every night and not go through the effort of chatting them up and buy them drinks? want to be able to piss in the street? actually, that's not really allowed. i nearly wound in lockup when i ducked down a quiet alley for some relief and was given a good shoving by an angry plain-clothes cop. the rest the Dutch will more than happily charge and tax you for. there are 3 Golden Rules i've been told have been the main tenents of Dutch law for hundreds of years: 1) You must be discrete. 2) You can't be harming anyone else. 3) It must be good for business. obey these three and it's all on for young and old. Catholicism survived through the Protestant age because of these three rules. Jews were accepted with to greater or lesser degrees even into WWII because of this.
it's just that it attracts seedy wankers who messy up the place and use it as an excuse for a big party, and summer is the time when everyone takes their break so plenty of them come to Amsterdam. i don't know how the locals stand it, but then the Dutch are famously liberal and open-minded. to this day i've not met a rude or nasty Dutch person - just look at Wiebe and Mieke who i hung out with in Sintra.
waking up the next morning without anywhere to be and a bit if a hangover i'd have loved a sleep-in... even just to 9:30 or 10AM. my grand plans of getting some fucking rest were defeated by the Old Church which my hostel happened to be in front of. it's not even a fucking church anymore, but that doesn't mean the bellringers have been laid off. starting at 8 and going on until about 10 at night the bells go off every fifteen fucking minutes. the bells... THE FUCKING BELLS!! WHY WON'T THEY FUCKING STOP? WE'RE IN THE ERA OF WRISTWATCHES FOR FUCK'S SAKE! i HAVE A CLOCK ON MY PHONE, MP3 PLAYER AND CAMERA! I DON'T NEED TO KNOW THE TIME FROM A FUCKING BELL! SWEET JEBUS i'LL RECANT MY ATHEISM, JUST MAKE THEM FUCKING STOP!!! every morning. every motherfucking, dog-raping, child-vivisectioning morning.
i can get by on 5-6 hours of sleep as long as it'd good and i don't have to do it for long, but a shitty pillow and sagging mattress put paid to that, so between a shitty night's sleep and the sandaled feet of a choir of angels pounding on my head i was not in a great mood. still, awake and with time to kill i headed off for a pile of Pommes Frittes et Mayonaise the NewEurope Free Tour for something to do, and because i knew in my gut that if i went i'd run into Mladin again, which i did. he was on the bus when i left Bruges and i knew he'd do the free tour on his first day to get an idea of the place before covering the rest on foot. he's a good bloke and i was missing the Triumvirate of Tourism from Paris and after walking around for 4 hours we stopped for a quiet coffee before i went off to my doomed appointment.
i spent the rest of the evening getting to know my new batch of 24 Hour Friends while Mel changed hostels and we went for a wander of the RLD since they'd not seen it at night yet. when i came in winter it was fairly quiet all told. this time round it was jam-packed with people and from the number of lads i saw going through the doors the sex-tourists were in full force. when you get up to with your money is up to you as long as it's not hurting anyone but i couldn't pay for it. it's not my style. still, the girls have to make a living so i'll not pass judgement. i heard a story in Paris that there was an interesting legal case in The Netherlands a few years ago where a woman applied for the dole and was asked if she'd tried prostitution and when she said "No" she was refused assistance because she'd "not tried all available options". the case went to court and (fortunately, as far as i'm concerned) the girl won. that must have been an interesting circus to be in the middle of...
the most surreal thing about it though was the tour groups of OAP's being led through, peering in the windows at the girls in their skimpies. that completely did my head in. imagine your grandmother wandering through Amsterdam's RLD surrounded by stoners and sex-tourists having a good old look-see. i can't do it. my head's ready to implode just thinking about it, and i think it'd be the end of either of mine, especailly my maternal. nonetheless, that's what i was seeing, not once but twice, on consecutive nights.
i tried for an early night and a better night's sleep and failed on both counts and in the end i think the only reason i dragged my aching corpus out of bed was to get away from those fucking bells, so i went to catch some of the stuff i'd not seen the first time i was in Amsterdam like the Sex Museum (which was interesting, but small and at the end of the day: meh), then tramed around until i got to the Waterlooplein Markets and found a phone booth so that i could call my kid brother for his birthday. when i got on Busabout they gave me a phone card that's supposed to be good for 5 minutes worth of calls to Australia, but not, it turns out, good enough to call a mobile phone which is the only number i have for The Boy since he stopped being a KIPPER (Kids In Parents Premises Eroding Retirement Savings) and moved out from the Parentals last December so i wound up saying fuck it (out loud, in the middle of the road just so you know) and eating into my drindling credit to call him on my mobile. the sound of shock was worth it. he's my kid brother - these things are worth it.
i ran into Mladin randomly at the monument in Dam Platz while i was waiting for Mel and the crew an hour or so later while i saw there with Inhale Exhale cranked on my PSD and my copy of Day Watch open on my lap and he kept me company while i killed time. Dee's an interesting Indian-Australian who's been good value and Val and Stef are fraternal-twins from canada who are straight as straight, but very Nice - good value one and all. we meandered around and checked out a few things they hadn't seen yet while we waited for our evening canal-cruise, then spent a bit over an hour being ferried along the canals. which was a pleasant way to kill the evening. pulling back into dock i spied Caitlin and her boyfriend sitting in the Hard Rock Cafe - two American kids i'd met in Interlaken and wound up bailing on the crew so i could go over and say hello, which is how i would up giving yet another tour of the RLD. i was going that way anyway - my hostel was in the middle of it all after all. it was an odd random encounter, but pleasant.
this morning i managed to beat the bells. i was out the door by 6:30AM so that i could get across town and to the pick-up point for the bus. the Val and Stef saved me a long walk - they were staying 100m down the road from me and had a spare tram ticket which they donated to me which meant that we were in position a good hour early. now it's all a couple of hours behind me and we're not far from the German border. we've been warned to get rid of any marjuana we may have saved for later before we hit there on threat of the arrest of not just them, but the bus driver as well and no one looks particularly worried. me, i've got better things to do than try to sneak a gram of fine Dutch weed across the border, so i know i'm clean. in the meantime, it's going to be a long run into Berlin and the motorway's pretty boring. if you want to see countryside take the train. if you want to get there cheap while surrounded by Australians take Busabout. i've got Dee sleeping next to me, but there's no way i'm sleeping on this thing so i guess i'll kill the hours watching Pushing Daisies and Flight of the Conchords. thank fuck for buses with power points...
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