Friday, January 28 ---
---Before we leave Ostend, I quickly run over to the one beautiful thing I have seen in this city (and no, it’s not a sexy woman on the corner. I haven’t gotten to Amsterdam yet, remember?) -- the unbelievable cathedral St. Petrus. It is absolutely huge and contains a huge circular stained glass window, one that makes me ache to see it from inside. Alas...
We hop on the bus and Billy cheers us up with the realization that this is our fourth country in two days (England, France, Belgium, and Holland aka the Netherlands, if you’re keeping track) along with a slew of stereotypical Scottish sayings -- those only Americans actually think Scots say; ones carefully culled from movies such as Austin Powers II and So I Married an Axe Murderer -- such as, “Git in mah belly,” “Aye, the baby,” and, “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!” Ahh, to be so refreshingly cliched as us...
Along the way, Billy gives us our morning quiz, offering a coveted reward of a pint of Guinness and a packet of jelly babies (we weren’t quite sure what the jelly babies were, but everyone wanted them after hearing Billy say their name: “jell-ah bay-bees. Gotta love the Scottish accent...) Our question: what is a polder? After receiving a silence so profound that a mouse fart would have sounded like a sonic boom, he reveals the answer: they’re the plots of land that they pump water away from so they can actually use it for something other than a backyard swimmin’ hole.
Billy stops the coach so we can grab a bite to eat, kindly stopping at a McDonald’s for some familiar food (or “botulism on a bun,” as Billy says. What a card.) I am a little perturbed when they don’t have my two cheeseburger meal, but I get a kick out of what their menus actually have to offer. While they may not have the greatest value meal in the hamburger industry, they do call their tea ‘thee,’ their coffee ‘koffie,’ their shakes ‘MacShakes,’ their nuggets ‘McNuggetskip,’ their diet Coke ‘Coca-Cola Light,’ and their value meals ‘McMenus.’ All this, plus the illustrious McKroket, which no one, not even the server, is quite sure what it is (after a quick pow wow we decide it is a deep fried hamburger. Mmm. McKroket...)
We arrive in Amsterdam early in the afternoon and promptly go on a tour of the city. Not the greatest idea since everyone has been cooped up on a bus all day and are still tired and cranky from the early departure time (around 8 o’clock), but these are the cards we are dealt... After a large groan comes from the crowd when we learn of this, the driver and tour guide (for fear of a mass lynching) pull off at a windmill so we can take pictures. I snap one or two, then wander off to find an enormous gaggle of chickens just wandering in the park. There are roughly a hundred of them and over a half-dozen different varieties (my favorite is an all black one with a strange mohawk that keeps mouthing off to me. If you can’t picture it, don’t worry - I laid on the ground and took a picture of the two of us together. Then I got pecked on the side of my head for trying to get too close...). I try talking to them in their native tongue (which garners some befuddled and bewildered stares from the group and the guides who can see me down the road), and when this gets no surprise, I try singing to them to warm up the crowd (which really gets some attention from them.) (The song that really ruffled the birds’ feathers (sorry) was the “I Feel like Chicken Tonight” song from the commercial, complete with me flapping my arms and bobbing my head like a chicken.) This gets quite a response from the crowd (the chickens liked it, too) and I walk back to the coach feeling the praise of my peers shower down upon me (praise, jeers, whatever...)
Riding around on the bus, sleep tempts me to her, but I manage to fight her off and pay attention long enough to learn some pretty interesting things. Here are the basics: the city is the capital of the Netherlands and contains roughly 750,000 people, 30% of which are less than 25 years old. They have a queen (currently Queen Beatrix), humongous traffic problems (we sit in the bus at an intersection for 20 minutes and don’t move forward), and they speak Dutch (a problem when you get to the restaurants and look at the menus posted outside. “Ooh. This place has saucijzenbroodje! That other place didn’t have saucijzenbroodje...(that’s a sausage roll, for those who care.))
The city has one main natural waterway, the Amstel River (and yes, the beer is named after it) and a series of four main canals that circle out from a central point in the city. Amsterdam is 2 meters below sea level (six, at its lowest point) and that is why it is such a wet country. Our guide tells us that because of this, this country is a big producer of vegetables for the UK, and they spend millions of dollars each year to pump out incoming sea water. That’s also why this is the land of the windmill -- there are currently around 950 of the contraptions still around to pump out water (there used to be over 10,000 in the past).
This city’s houses (which, for the most part, are rather dirty and dilapidated looking things -- very disappointing, if I must confess) used to be built on great wooden piles for their foundations. A cheap, reasonable idea in theory, but since this is such a wet land, the wood started to rot and that’s why many of the buildings are noticeably tilted. City workers have been replacing the rotting piles with concrete since 1950, but this is a laborious process and it costs, on average, four times the house’s worth to renovate and replace it. (Incidentally, they call these houses ‘dancing houses’ or, strangely enough, ‘leaning houses.’)
Besides a teeming mass of tilting houses, the city is also chock full of houseboats and bicycles. (I had always heard that people rode their bikes a lot here, but they are seriously everywhere. Looking at the bike racks at Central Station or the big RAI convention center looks more like the postcard from the Schwinn factory than a slice of modern city life.) There are 2400 houseboats in the city’s canals and the waste their owners generate (we’re talking #1 and #2 here, folks) empty right into the canals (the guide told me this as I was taking a break to swim in the water, right next to a strange looking pipe coming out from under one of the boats, and everyone was staring at me, disgusted looks on their faces, but I don’t quite know why. Maybe I had some saucijzenbroodje stuck in my teeth...) The canals are flushed out nightly in the summers, but only two to three times a week in the winter (so, to read between the lines, if you’re going to swim, swim in the summer!)
When the water is flushed away, the careful eye might spy one of the 40,000 bikes that are annually fished out from the basins of the canals and river (why these people throw their bikes into the river, I’ll never know. You should see some of these things -- they’re the oldest, rattiest things you’ve ever seen, a good portion at least 20 years old. (They’re so old, I kept expecting to see one of those really old style ones with the giant front wheels rolling down the street. It wouldn’t be that far out of place...)
Besides having a problem with the drink, the bikes in town also have a problem with thieves (which is why so many people have such ratty bikes. If they’re embarrassed to be seen riding around town on them, what do you reckon the thieves are thinking?) and roughly 160,000 bikes are stolen here each year. They are promptly sold again for ten to fifteen Guilders (roughly 5 to 10 bucks) or thrown right into the water.
And those who say that Las Vegas is a city filled with temptation and a somewhat seedy side have never been here, as this is the undisputed Sin City. If you’re not dodging the trash in the streets (strangely, there are garbage cans everywhere - something you never see in London, so that explains some of the trash - but there’s still litter everywhere), you’re trying to get around the thick clouds of pot smoke that permeate the air or the prostitutes that proliferate on the corners.
Yes, hash bars are legal here (only they operate under the namesake of “coffee shops” -- subtle subterfuge, to be sure) and they sell everything from pre-rolled joints, to bags of weed, to bags of hash. An interesting observation -- one of the hash bars that we went to, the Grasshopper, was situated like so: the basement was the actual place to buy the weed, the first floor was a bar, the second floor was a dance floor, and the third floor was a steak house. Strange. Another interesting observation: because their weed is so potent here, they roll everything with tobacco so you don’t completely obliterate yourself in one sitting (which didn’t quite work for one of my compatriots. He was having some “coffee” and then proceeded to pass out, eyes rolling to the back of his head. He then stood up, went to the bar, and proceeded to pass out again, eyes again rolling in his skull. Freaky.) Since they do this, it means you can’t smoke it as fast because it’s so much harsher. Or so they tell me...
Besides being filled with the Three Ps (porn, prostitutes, and pot), the two Bs (bikes and boats), and the Big T (lots and lots of trash), the city also houses little hooks dangling from the top of every house. These contraptions, a simple two foot wooden pole that juts out from the house with a 6-inch iron hook dangling from the end, are used to hook a ladder and ropes to so that people can lift furniture to their oversized windows. This is because virtually none of the houses sport elevators, so everything that can’t fit upstairs (and this includes yourself, often times) must go up the outside, and we actually see one of these in use. Pretty cool stuff. (They’re called “flying Dutchmen,” by the way.)
We pass by the famed Red Light District, the oldest part of the city (so you’re telling me that before these people had houses and businesses, they had whores? Now that’s what I call having priorities...) Our guide tells us that there are over 1000 girls currently in the district, ready to serve the lecher in all of us. They just stand there in the doorway or the window, tirelessly waiting for someone to come and play with them. It costs about $20 to have sex with them, paying for a whole ten minutes of sexual Russian Roulette, but most people are said to be done within seven (we actually watched a dirty old dude walk in there, we saw the curtains close, and he was back on the street, classfully zipping his fly as he exited the door a scant five minutes later. Now that’s efficiency...) (By the way, with those extra three minutes you can trot down to the drugstore (or chemist, as they call them here) and pick up some STD antibiotics and salves for the rashes and boils you’re sure to get. No need to waste any time...) The only stipulations on who can stand in the window (ready girls? Get out your pens and paper to jot this down) are they must be at least 18 years old, and also must be a European citizen (thus shooting down my plans on how to pick up a little extra scratch this weekend.) (Funny thing is that the oldest known working girl is a whopping 76 years old, and yes, she still ‘entertains’ guests. Echh...)
We drive past the Heineken brewery, the second largest brewery in the world (behind Budweiser -- GO AMERICA!). The trademark beer (sorry, Amstel) was brewed in Holland until 1986, but is currently being brewed elsewhere (and, to make matters worse, the museum was closed so we couldn’t go on a tour of it and test out the products. Blast!)
Eventually the tour that never ends actually does, and we enter our hotel, the hilarious looking Hotel Arena. It’s a hostel, so you know not to expect much, but when the sign of the hotel is painted in graffiti on a crumbling brick wall, you know you might be in trouble. The rooms inside are actually really nice (four beds per room, two being up a spiral staircase in the loft), but the toilets are another story altogether.
They look normal enough from a distance, but once you stick your head in the bowl (and I figured a bunch of people were going to be doing that before the night was over anyway, so I didn’t want to feel left out) you realize you’re in trouble. Remember that old third grade prank you’d play (OK, so we still do it in college, but kids, don’t follow in the reckless renegade footsteps of yours truly and my generation. It will only lead you to heartache and a very sloppy tushy.) where you Saran Wrap the toilet and then put the lid back down? Well, that’s what it looks like, except substitute porcelain for the Saran Wrap and you’ve got it. It’s just this flat plateau of porcelain and right at the front there’s the steep drop.
So, the ‘botulism on a bun’ having passed right through me, I had to make a deposit. To make a long story short, the sensation is basically like crapping on a board that’s mere inches from your fanny. Not fun. (Plus, you realize that the water we have in the bowls back home actually serves a purpose -- it prevents some of the odorous gases from getting into the air. You think some of your water-based bombs smell bad? Try doing the deuce in Holland. You could be crapping out flowers and you’d still end up pushing up daisies...)
Anyway, to get back to the hostel, it used to be an orphanage and has been around since 1890. The big chapel, which is really quite pretty, is now a dance floor (reminds me of Winchester and their cinematic chapel. Which is the lesser of two evils? Drunk, half-naked people grinding with each other on a screen, or drunk, half-naked people grinding in person?), one of the most popular clubs in all of Amsterdam (the lines stretch around the block both Friday and Saturday night -- apparently these people really like to boogie, or really enjoy a good case of irony when they see it...)
Hungry, I set off into the city to find some food. We end up stopping at an Egyptian restaurant and I have the lamb shoarma (and a heart attack after seeing the prices. Then, once the food arrives, I have another thanks to the miniscule portions I’m paying through the nose for. I can’t win. I’m never going to be full when I’m over here...) which is basically just fried pieces of lamb in a pita (kinda like a gyro without the veggies and sauce, i.e. completely inferior and rather disappointing. It’s like serving a hot dog without mustard or a pizza without cheese -- just plain wrong.)
On the way back, we pass the city’s biggest gay dance club, crassly advertising (and I kid you not -- even I couldn’t make this up) their huge “Gay Gang Bang Night.” Oh my God. The line is around the corner and the sides of the place are plastered with pictures of naked men. It’s a pretty funny sight -- there are all these restaurants and Mom & Pop stores right across the street, then BAM! Gay gang bang night. Needless to say, there’s something you don’t see every day...
After wandering around some more, I head back to watch a little TV and turn in early. While flipping through the channels I come across, for the second night in a row, free broadcast porn. This time, though, it’s in Dutch! (I’m so cultured!) Mesmerized by this sociological and anthropological window into a foreign culture (and by the hot blonde girls, but this was of negligible import) my roomies and I chill watching this for a little while. I get bored after a while and head to bed with a completely new perspective on the phrase “Hollandaise sauce...”
Saturday morning, January 29---
--- Wake up early, have some breakfast, and then pile onto the bus for a trip to the tiny fishing village of Volendam. This is in the Northwest, roughly an hour outside of Amsterdam, and as I sit on the coach I marvel at two things: one, how bloody long and unintelligible the street names are here. We may have thought we left Belgium and its consonant-laden contents behind since we switched languages, but no. We pass street names as pretty and elegant as Valkenburgerstraat, Purmerend-Zuid, and Burgemeester Van Bartstraat. Roll right off the tongue, don’t they?
The other thing I’m astounded by is how, after spending a good portion of the last three days on a bus, my butt has less feeling in it than a quadriplegic in a coma. Seriously, I don’t know how anyone can be comfortable in these things. They fit a fraction of my left cheek on the seat, and that fraction feels like it’s sitting on a pile of brambles. I can’t take much more of this. I look around for someone to give it a massage (Betsy?), but no one seems too eager. Alas.
After going through some pretty tiny tunnels (if they were an inch shorter we’d have been riding in a double decker convertible and everyone upstairs would have crew cuts), we arrive in Volendam, specifically at a cheese and clog making plant. We first learn about the cheese: they have big vats of milk, they add a coagulating agent to it, then start stirring. They press the steadily clotting clump for four hours, then they separate the whey (liquid) from the curds (solid). Then, they place the hardening chunks into a salt bath to preserve it, then they let it dry for two days. After this, it’s a quick covering of paraffin, a pretty little sticker on the side, and straight to the shelf (or your belly, depending on your whims).
Then, it’s the clogs: these used to be carved by hand (some still are) out of logs of wood. A man could make five complete pairs of shoes a day, while the modern machines can make 500. First, they carve the outside, carefully shaping it into a variety of forms, then they gouge out the innards. Some quick sanding and maybe a coat of paint later, you’ve got yourself a brand new pair of kickers (and yes, I do, too.) Surprisingly, 30% of the population still wears clogs today, especially in the manual labor workforce, they say.
Need for knowledge temporarily abated, we begin browsing the plant’s selections of cheeses and clogs. (My buddy points out that this is the biggest tourist trap we’ve seen yet. The ‘tour,’ albeit informative, lasts a grand total of 20 minutes. The rest of the time we spend shopping. Quite a racket...) I pick out a pair of nice, solid shoes, and then treat myself to a nice selection of freshly made cheese (mmm. Very tasty stuff here. I like their smoked ham and cheese cheese, as well as their goat cheese. Mmm. Goat cheese...) and freshly made raspberry wine (so what that it’s only 10 in the morning? It’s never too early to celebrate the murder of a few thousand grapes by downing a glass.)
After I pet the goat they keep in the foyer (making sure to compliment him on his tasty cheese), we head to the town center to walk around. I wander along the scenic street Slobbeland (and no, it’s not the path leading to my sister’s bedroom) and make my way to the waterfront. It’s really beautiful here, what with the tiny shops and the docks. I enjoy a nice walk around the docks and then stop for a fresh crab salad sandwich. It’s amazing how good fresh seafood tastes and how quickly your tongue forgets this (probably a good thing, or else you wouldn’t be able to choke down those deep fried fish sticks, and then what would you do?)
I make my way back towards the town center, this time traipsing along Monnickendamjammer-Marken (how’d you like to try and fit that on a T-Shirt? “I Shopped on Monnickendamjammer-Marken and all I got was this lousy shirt?” You’d look more like a novel than a one-line read.) and, as I stop next to a quaint little canal, I step in a pile of hippo poop. Seriously, this stuff comes all the way up to my ankle; I almost have to change my sock because of it. A little pissed (apparently Londoners aren’t the only one’s who let their dogs shit all over the place and don’t pick it up. It translates to the whole of Europe, too. Good to know...) I take off my boot and wash it in the canal, my houseboat of a boot bringing a little bit of Amsterdam to the tiny town of Volendam. I see the smiles of the people as I walk by. “No need to thank me, folks. I do these things because I like to, not because I have to...”)
Fully cleansed and shit-free, I hop back on the coach and head back to Amsterdam for an afternoon of fun in the sun.