1. I was with my ex,
2. It was only for two days,
3. The locals wouldn't talk to us,
4. I got high - which had never happened with any American pot I had tried - and proceeded to remain high the entire time we were there. From one joint. So the main thing I learned on that trip is to not smoke pot on my next visit, if I wanted to remember it at all.
But this (introductory) post of the Wandering Wednesday series will focus on my second trip to Amsterdam. . .
I went with my friend from high school, M., and some of her friends. We went for New Year's, which is excellent if you're not afraid of firecrackers. They just kind of throw them around the streets at midnight and it's up to you to get the hell out of the way. Anyway, winter is the time to go because there aren't any tourists, so the Dutch people are all nice and friendly and charming and nothing is crowded.
I used to scrapbook. I wasn't very good at it.
We stayed at an affordable, nondescript American-style hotel a tram ride away from the center of the city. I really only remember being there to sleep, which we mostly did in the day time. M. and I got there a few nights before everyone else, so we set about find a cool bar. Which we did. It was so cool that we stayed there until 3 am, which would have been fine if the tram hadn't already stopped running. And if the taxis hadn't stopped working.
There was a freezing rain coming down as we started walking back to the hotel. The hotel that was miles away. After we'd been walking for twenty minutes or so, a gentleman pulled over and asked us if we wanted a ride. He had a ginormous dog in the back seat. He explained that he was going to work and could easily drop us off at our hotel.
We never would have gotten in that car when we were teenagers, or if we'd been in the states, or if we hadn't been pretty drunk. Our plan was to (casually) imply that we were FBI agents, familiar with and loaded down by weaponry.
Seriously. I also want to point out that we were about 27 when the story took place.
So, the perfectly innocent man tried to start a conversation about which museums we were going to visit. . . .and we started talking about Glocks. To this day I have no idea whether he was laughing at us or terrified for his life, but he certainly hurried to drop us off near our hotel.
A few nights later, joined by M.'s friend F., we ventured to one of the city's infamous live sex shows. It was a lot more performance art-ish, than porn-ish. There was just a rotating series of erotic scenes, with penetration but no ejaculation. We were (I think) the only group of women at the show, but no one was rude or made us uncomfortable.
Before cell phone cameras, I used to buy a lot of post cards. And yes, I really did
save my ticket from the live sex show. Who wouldn't?
Well, not until we saw F.'s boss there. F. worked for a large international corporation that my dad's company also worked with, so I had a momentary fear that someone I might know through my dad was there as well. It passed quickly, but from then on we were also trying to look for a way out that would not take us right past F.'s boss. I don't know why M. and I just didn't walk nonchalantly out of the theater, it's not like the boss knew us. . .but instead we followed F., crawling down the row and up the aisle. Which probably made us more conspicuous, but F.'s boss never said anything to her. Of course, why would he? Then he'd have to admit that he'd been there too. . .
My favorite place in all of Amsterdam, despite my utter fascination with the red light district, is the Van Gogh Museum. If you ever get to go to Amsterdam, that's the museum to visit.
There's also the cool bar, where we also went for New Year's Eve 1999, but I can't remember the name of it and I have no idea if it's still there. It was on a small square between Dam Square and the red light district. It was one of those places where everyone who visited wrote on the walls, with excellent beer and the hottest bartender. I think we forced him to kiss us at midnight, which he handled very gallantly. We also met a bunch of locals, who kept making fun of us for only being able to speak one language. But they bought us shots too, so we got over it.
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