Countrymen! Lend me your ears!

Amsterdam, November 25, 2001.

No! Vincent! I didn't mean that literally! I bet that hurts...

Amsterdam is a wierd place. I was sitting in a laundrette yesterday when
a Canadian guy (presumably in an attempt to strike up a conversation)
says to me, "So, are you into trees?".

I told him he won the prize for the wierdest single thing I've ever been
asked while waiting for my washing to finish. I think I put him off a
little, I didn't mean to be nasty, it was just another strange episode
in what had already been a reasonably strange day.

I managed to haul my bum out of bed in time to catch the train in Paris.
I had just worked up an appropriately gallic amount of facial hair and
discovered the secret to speaking French by the time I had to leave. The
trick, I've decided, is to just not pronounce the last part of words.
Just sort of tail off half to three quarters of the way through. Oh, and
while I'm still with France, a couple of people asked about the
catacombs: In the early 1900s (I think) the cemetaries in Paris started
filling up, so they had to clear up space by exhuming bones and stacking
them in unused tunnels under the city. Every so often there was a
"headstone" telling you which cemetary that selection of bones came
from. Now you know.

So after having gotten a hold on French, I change countries and
therefore languages. Why in the hell did anyone need to invent "Double
Dutch"? Single Dutch is confusing enough. It sounds a bit like German
crossed with Danish. But that doesn't matter as everybody here speaks
English (and probably six or seven other languages) perfectly.

When I got off the train I made a beeline for the "Flying Pig" hostel,
which I'd heard of as being the place to go in Amsterdam. It was full!
Apparently it's always full, but it was especially full then as the
"Cannabis Cup" was on. Imagine the Sydney Royal Easter Show with pot
instead of gladioli, that's apparently what it's like. I didn't get to
see it as it finished the day I arrived, but it meant the city is even
more full of stoners than usual. This made the hostel I spent the first
night in a very scary experience. But I got out of there and into the
Pig pronto, so everything's cool with that.

After being here now for almost a week, I've discovered that there isn't
really that much to do in Amsterdam. I saw the Van Gough museum (and now
know three ways to pronounce it: "van Goff", "van Go" and "van Goch"
(the way the locals say it, with a throaty growl at the end). I enjoyed
it quite a lot, even though Sunflowers was in Chicago at some travelling
exhibition.

I've also seen the Reijksmuseum which, apart from a couple of rooms of
Rembrandts and the odd Rubens didn't do it for me much. There is
altogether too much space devoted to furniture and gold spoons. I went
and saw Anne Frank's house which also was quite unremarkable,
unfortunately. When their cover was blown and they were all shipped off
to various camps, the SS cleared all the furniture out so the rooms are
fairly bare. So that leaves the Rembrandthus and the Heineken brewery if
I could be bothered.

I've been out a couple of times. I bought a ticket to see the Avalanches
play here on Saturday night. I was pretty tired after having gone out to
Haarlem (15 minutes on the train) to see Pete Gooding (Renaissance DJ)
on Friday night, so I was just going to have a couple of beers in the
hostel bar on Saturday evening and then a power nap before the show,
which started at 1:00. So a couple of beers turns into about 5 (pints,
mind) and I end up crashing at about 10:30 and not hearing my alarm and
not waking up until 3. You've never seen a man move so fast into his
clothes and into a cab, and I got there in time to hear the last half
hour of the Avalanches set before they finished at 4:00. ARGH!

I had a bit more success on Sunday night when I went to see the rapper
Guru (of Gangstar/Jazzmatazz fame). He didn't play anything I recognised
but I had a good time nevertheless. For one brief but joyful moment, I
was one of the Guru's niggaz! :-)

But that's all over the course of 6 days! What on earth have I been
doing for the rest of the time? Mum, stop reading now.

No Mum, really. You ought to stop reading now. Please. Ok, then, don't
say I didn't warn you... I had actually been here for three days before
I had my first spliff believe it or not; due to a funny wake/sleep cycle
and not wanting to sit there getting stoned on my own. But there are a
few people about in the hostel so the done thing is just to sit down,
blaze up and then see if anyone is in a fit state for conversation.

The first gram (of "Blueberry", the 2000 Cannabis Cup winner) lasted me
a day and a half; the next gram ("Afghan Widow") lasted a day and I went
through a whole gram of "B52" yesterday evening (but it was crap). So
you can see where my week is heading. The question now is do I stay here
for this weekend or have it in Frankfurt instead (I have to be on the
plane at 1400 hours on Monday, so that really means spending Sunday
night in Frankfurt). Or, by the time I have to make the decision, will I
be in a state where I could really give a flying F...udge. Mmm, fudge.
There are heaps of bakeries here evily preying on the munchies of stoner
tourists. It was one of the first things I noticed when I arrived :-).

I'd better get out of here now, I've been sitting in front of this
bloody computer for hours and I'm getting hungry. Looks like it's too
late to go and see the Rembrandthus though, whatever will I do for the
rest of the afternoon?

7 days and counting...

Cheers, Robert.