Hallo from the ‘Dam! I’ve been here for a couple of days now, resting my weary legs. As you know, I spent the first night in Bob’s Youth Hostel, kicking back in the hostel bar with a few Heinekens, breathing in the passive smoke from countless marijuana joints and catching up on the Internet. I had planned on going for a walkabout the town a bit later, but I was dead tired from the past five days cycling. Knowing I had a big day ahead, I was in the sack by 11pm and out like a lightbulb.
Anyway the next day (Saturday, my first full day in Amsterdam) I got in contact with a host from Warm Showers, Rod. It turned out he was a Kiwi fella who has lived with his girlfriend in Amsterdam for a long time. Rod was pretty cool, had toured a few times before himself and spent a lot of the Saturday doing some bike maintenance where he showed me a few tips and tricks, like how to replace a broken spoke. Hopefully that knowledge will never come in handy, but as the Scouts taught me many years ago, it’s good to ‘be prepared’.
I was shortly after contacted by my (other) mate Rob, who also hails from the Shire. The same Rob I met in Pamplona running with the bulls last year. Rob’s just moved to the ‘Dam, and has had a few problems settling down. Ask anyone who is living in Amsterdam, there is a chronic shortage of affordable housing. I hope Rob won’t mind me repeating a funny story (I’m sure he will find it funny in hindsight too) but he told me that he’d managed to secure a very cheap ‘place’ in a mixed house for 50€ a week – damn cheap! But on the first night in the house, he went out on the razz, couldn’t find his keys and had to wake the old lady landlord up at 2am to get let in. The next morning, she was convinced that the living arrangement ‘was not going to work out’ and so he is once again homeless, shuffling between hostels and friends couches. A bit like me funnily enough! The poor bugger still had his luggage stored in a locker at the train station after being in town over a week.
The poor bludger was also newly unemployed due to a similar incident with his boss, so when I first saw Rod, he obviously needed a release and I was happy to provide it. We hit the town and Rod showed me to an Irish pub where there was a mix of Dutch and Japanese crowding in to watch the World Cup match. I prayed that the Dutch would win, as it would be the difference between a good night and a great night in town that evening! Thankfully they got up, which is more than I could say for Australia in the next match, calling it 1-1 with Ghana.
Next we hit up an Australian themed bar called Cocos – well, actually I found it hard to find anything remotely ‘Australian’ about it besides the name, but you have to go there at least once when in town, and that’s where all the Aussies were watching the soccer game. We fell into a crowded table full of Dutch people and before long we were also decked out in the national colour of orange, which was all over town. The Dutch really know how to party! I met a great couple of Aussies, Ants and Ali, whom I hope get in touch with me down the road since they were a great down-to-earth couple. Not all Aussies I meet abroad fall into the category of somebody you’d like to meet with again down the track. The vast majority I honestly couldn’t give a hoot if I saw them again, though they are fun at the time, our paths would likely never have crossed paths otherwise, because quite frankly, they are probably normally the kind of dickhead that I would avoid in Sydney.
Before retiring for the night, we did the obligatory walk through the Red Light district. When you’re in Amsterdam, you can’t miss it, and in fact I’d already stumbled into it by accident several times, from several directions. It’s unavoidable, not that I was trying to avoid it! But to cruise through the area on a Saturday night is something different again! It definitely makes you feel like you’re in Amsterdam (as opposed to any old other city that looks the same) when you are stumbling around in an eerie red glow, cast from the windows where scantily clad women advertise themselves to the drooling crowds shuffling by in the streets. I’ll be honest – there are some absolute stunners in there, and 95% of the hookers are allegedly foreigners, not Dutch. There are even different quarters, for example Rod took me up one particular alleyway which contained all the (rather large) African-American hookers. Definitely not my type! But obviously there is a fetish/demand for it somewhere.
Rod was a pretty confident guy as we walked around the red light district, having spent a good 6 weeks of his life in Amsterdam already. He surprised me with how ballsy he was in going up to the windows, where the girl would open the door and invite him in. Having no intention of going in, he would still strike up a conversation with a hottie, just to have a chat. “How you doin’ sweetie? So how much? Any position? Only one, and no hands… what? We’ll maybe sweetie, I’ll catch ya around”. And so it goes, similar with about a dozen women about town. We came across another pub for a drink, but that lasted about a minute when I realised we’d stumbled into an Irish ‘gay pub’. It was time to call it a night while we were ahead, before one of these blokes came over to ask me “how you doin’ matie., any position you like…?”
With some time to kill on Sunday, I slept in, then headed around town on my bike. It’s fantastic to cruise around without all my luggage hanging off the sides, I’d forgotten how fast you can actually go! I checked out the ‘Sex Museum’ which was OK, nothing special. Some interesting phallic looking artefacts to inspect, but the photographs which took up a lot of the museum weren’t that special. I’ve seen better stuff on the internet. Unfortunately I didn’t get into Ann Frank’s house. The line to get in was astronomical, and on a future visit to Amsterdam I’ll know that I need to get there very early to beat the queue. Oh well.
And so I leave the ‘Dam on the night train to Copenhagen. I’m loaded up with beers, chorizo sausage, cheese, breads and some kind of pesto dip. Should last me 16 hours until I get to Denmark! Woop!
P.S.> For the record, the going rate in Amsterdam is now 50€ for 15 minutes…
