Well, here I am in Amsterdam, slowly going broke as I write Chapter 5 of my Trip Around Europe....
To be honest, I don't like the Dutch capital that much. Take all of the bad things I wrote about Prague earlier this year and amplify them by about 100, then take out most of the good things and what you're left with is Amsterdam - a city of Dirt, Drugs and Sexual Degeneracy. I guess partly it's a matter of perspective, but really, what the guide books describe as "gritty", "hip" and "liberal" just translates into grimy, commercialized and immoral. There are still some very beautiful buildings around but, sadly, they're so degraded by the surroundings that they don't even look real anymore; more like the left-over parts of some largely-dismantled movie set, abandoned and left to rot from the inside out.However, this isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed my time here. Smoking a joint at an outdoor cafe was an interesting enough experience, but the problem is that there's really nothing stylish or unique about it as I'd imagined. All too often, the people here don't drink or smoke simply to relax and socialize; they smoke to fry their already-fried brains, and drink so that they can stare at the "prostis" in the windows without feeling intimidated or embarrassed. Me, Nath and a bunch of Canadians we befriended did exactly this last night, and, for a while, it WAS kinda fun - the Red Light District has a highly charged atmosphere probably not unlike that of Las Vegas, and it was interesting to see this alternative subculture come to life after dark. However, you can only walk along a street looking at half-naked, half-Negro women for so long before it all starts to get a bit stale, yet when I suggested that we go to a bar and at least look at some normal women, no-one seemed particularly interested. So on we went, part of a sweaty, all-male crowd wandering around with shiny eyes and hands buried deep in their pockets.
I have to say that there seems to be, in Europe, a close correlation between this sort of dirt/degeneracy and multiculturalism. Homogenous societies tend to be extremely clean (you can't help but admire the spotless, puddle-free toilets in Finland or Singapore), whereas highly "diverse" societies seem to almost deliberately debase themselves. Amsterdam is, for sure, the most multicultural city I've been to in Europe, and everywhere on the streets there are stagnant puddles, squashed chips, wads of chewing gum, food wrappers, used tissues, ripped tickets to peep shows, etc etc. The problem is, if you import enough people who don't have any sense of belonging to your country, then this is what you're going to get. No-one's going to bother keeping a place clean and respectable if they don't care about it, and quite frankly, most of Amsterdam's non-European population don't seem to care about much else than easy money, cheap women and showing off to brain-dead tourists - usually Americans with too much money and too little self-respect.
Unfortunately for me, one of the finest examples of Amsterdam's dirtiness is the bathroom in our very own dorm. It looks and smells like the toilets at Flinders St station; there are suspicious stains, wet toilet paper and pubic hair everywhere and, worst of all, whenever you take a shower the whole place floods with dirty water, so that for the next hour you have to put on boots just to be able to go to the toilet. For anyone who's read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas - well, it's like the bathroom Raoul Duke and his attorney share at that Las Vegas hotel.... a complete shithole. What's ironic is that the dorms are supposed to be "professionally cleaned" every day, but the only evidence I've seen of cleaners is the fact that an entire block of Finnish chocolate disappeared from my bed sometime yesterday morning - which REALLY pissed me off.
Admittingly, the rest of the hostel is better: there's a nice bar downstairs and it's very easy to meet fellow travellers. The biggest problem I have is that one of the varieties of ganja makes me sneeze, although thankfully it's pretty expensive and therefore rare. Still, the crowd -- although mostly bongheads that gave up on "thinking" a long time ago -- is generally very talkative and friendly, and one of the bar-men, a half-Polish half-Swedish guy, has proved very useful in helping me brush up on my native language before our imminent finale in Poland.
So - that's Amsterdam in a nutshell. Tomorrow me & Nath plan to escape the grime and bustle of Amsterdam and go on a day trip to Rotterdam, Europe's biggest industrial maritime city. I would've liked to write more about Finland but it's really too late to go back to it now; at any rate there'll be plenty of time for stories when I return so, for now, enjoy the fotki!
Mateusz
Mama can you put more money into my account as soon as possible - I had to withdraw a huge amount yesterday to pay for my six nights' accommodation here, and I just need some more for food and public transport. I can't believe how expensive everything is here; I constantly feel like I'm getting ripped off. To be honest I'm not happy at all at the moment; I totally regret ever visiting Emilia and Amsterdam has turned out to be a dirty and thoroughly unpleasant city. I'm just looking forward to seeing Warszawa and Krakow again and then coming home.
Anyway, can you please let me know what was the issue with Uni? I'm just hoping it's nothing bad because enough bad things have happened already in the last few days -- even though I'm meant to be on holidays I've felt extremely stressed and, to be honest, I still do. Maybe once you put more money into my account I'll get one of those phone cards and call.
Bye,
Mateusz
Vincent: "....you know what they put on French fries in Holland instead of ketchup?"Jules: "What?"
Vincent: "Mayonnaise."
Jules: "Goddamn!"
Vincent: "I seen 'em do it. And I don't mean a little bit on the side of the plate, they fuckin' drown 'em in it."
Jules: "Uuccch!"
- Pulp Fiction
* * * * *
Yes, it's true: Amsterdam is the city where nothing's sacred, everybody's on drugs, and hot chips (frites) are eaten with mountains of mayonnaise. What a place.I guess I was a bit harsh on this city in my last e-mail, so I'm gonna utilize the Power of Positive Thinking and write some more pleasant stuff this time round. So, here goes!
First, I've become totally addicted to Vlaamse Frites, otherwise known as "Chips With Mayonnaise". It's true what Vincent says in Pulp Fiction: the Dutch are absolutely MAD about these things, and it's virtually impossible to walk down a street without passing by a Vlaamse Frites stall, full of people with mayonnaise stains down their shirts. Basically, you walk up to an Arab with a greasy apron, hand over 2 or 3 Euros, and in return he hands you a paper cone filled with really nice, fat chips topped off with a blob of mayonnaise - not exactly Weight Watchers food but then I'm not exactly the sort of person to care. VFs are pretty much a staple diet for travellers because they're cheap, filling and easy-to-get, and the chips aren't the mashed-up shit you normally get but whole cut potatoes fried in some kind of really good oil. Incidentally, mayonnaise in Amsterdam is actually known as "frittersause" (I THINK that's the correct spelling) - meaning, literally, "chip sauce".
Yesterday I did some sight-seeing by myself, got invited to a gay party (no kidding), met a girl from Perth who's really into astrology, argued with some Arab over the price of my Internet bill (EIGHTEEN FUCKING EUROS, coz apparently I was on a "special computer"), and took plenty of photos which I'll send out later, when I find the cable for my camera amongst all the Finnish maps and chocolate-covered coffee beans in my bag. The night ended with me and Nath getting inebriated.... more Nath than me to be honest, who could barely walk by 10 o'clock and was coming out with such brilliant observations as "Aussies and Australians are pretty similar people." Eventually he ended up passing out on some black guy's bed (yes we have a resident black guy in our dorm) and, seriously, when the guy came back from his Big Night Out.... well, I haven't giggled so hard in ages. He just stood there in shock for at least half a minute, staring at Nath passed out half-naked on his bed, until I did him the favour of waking Nath up who, bleary-eyed and disorientated, dragged his sorry arse back to his own bed and fell into such a deep coma that even kicking his mattress didn't have any effect. I wasn't quite drunk enough to pass out myself, so I went downstairs to the "Happy Room" and had myself a pretty bizarre experience indeed:
The Happy Room is basically a basement room where all the bongheads accumulate to smoke weed and stare into space. The thing is, there's so much weed smoke in the air that you can get high just sitting there, and after some Irish guy rolled & gave me a joint for free.... well, I wouldn't say I "tripped" exactly but suddenly all of the colours in the room became unbelievably vivid and intense, and every outline seemed so animated and clear -- kinda like being inside a van Gogh painting (and van Gogh himself was Dutch, incidentally). I should explain that the walls in the Happy Room are painted with pot-smoking elves, fairies riding on giant pigs etc and they really do seem to come out at you after a few puffs of ganja, so real that I spent about five minutes fingering the wall, trying to reconcile the conflict between what seemed to be a three-dimensional image and a two-dimensional, like, wall. I would've looked pretty retarded to anyone who wasn't on drugs but, luckily, there's no threat of that around here. No siree.
Anyway, that's enough for one day.... the only reason I wrote this is coz I needed to sit down and the only free seats around here are at the computers. Maybe next time I'll actually write something about Amsterdam.... but, we'll see!
Vaarwel,
Mateusz
P.S. I also went to the van Gogh museum today and it was absolutely awesome.... but I doubt any of you are too interested in that, right?
Today is me and Nath's last day in Holland; tomorrow morning we board LOT Polish Airlines and depart for Poland - beautiful, jovial, wonderful Poland. But there'll be plenty of time to describe how beautiful and wonderful the Rzeszpospolita is (just in case I didn't do enough of that last time) so, for now, back to Holland -- the Land of Red Lights and Green Substances.
* * * * *
Last night, me and Nath had dinner at an Italian restaraunt with two Canadian girls and a girl from Perth (the one who's really into astrology; I think I mentioned her earlier). After some very nice pizza & pasta we decided we'd like some sex for dessert, so we went to the Red Light District for drinks and, afterwards, one of Amsterdam's infamous but must-see "live sex shows". I have to say that this time I enjoyed the Red Light Experience more than I did the first time: it's definitely something different, walking along a street and having full-grown, half-naked women wink at you and give you the international gesture for "blow job" - which always makes me grin back and makes them think I'm up for it. The only problem are the ugly ethnic prostitutes (who usually get relegated to less prominent areas of the district); these are usually more desperate for business and will tap on windows and even grab you if you so much as make eye contact with them. This habit of tapping & grabbing unnerved one of the Canadians so much that she went through the entire district clinging to my arm til I could've sworn there was no blood at all getting to my left hand - which was holding a camera and which, incidentally, got us all into rather a lot of trouble. You see, before we left for this unsavoury expedition I thought I'd take a few photos of the District so that you could all see what it's like; however, what I didn't realize is that taking photos of prostitutes is strictly prohibited. I was about to take a photo of some of the red-lit windows (complete with bored, bikini-clad women of course) when suddenly some massive Negro leapt out from one of the windows and started yelling at me in broken English. I was feeling quite cocky at the time (no pun intended) and shouted back "I'm sorry, I don't understand English!", thinking I was quite the wit. Well, she didn't find this witty in the slightest - in fact, she let out some kind of primeval sound and started to run towards us so, we bolted and bolted FAST. It was like a scene out of some American comedy; running along a canal in the middle of the night, the Canadian girl still clinging to my arm, with some half-naked black prostitute threatening to kill us or, worse still, make us pay her for sex. Needless to say she didn't catch us (hardly surprising, considering one of her tits would've weighed at least 20 KGS alone) but, yeah.... definitely one of the more interesting experiences I've had in the last six days here.
Despite this incident, the Canadian girls still really wanted to go to a sex show but it was 1:30 by this time and all the sex cinemas were closing up. So we contented ourselves by wandering through all the seedy side alleys (the grip on my arm got even tighter at this point, which I didn't think was possible), then we had chocolate waffles and returned to the Flying Pig Hostel for a round of Jenever gin.
Today, me and Nath got up bright & early to go to Rotterdam, about an hour's train ride from Amsterdam. Rotterdam is arguably a nicer city than Amsterdam: certainly more pleasant on the eyes (and nose), easier to get around in, architecturally more cohesive and modern and, basically, devoid of the slum-like atmosphere that characterizes most of Amsterdam. Unfortunately, what was meant to be a quiet and relaxing day trip turned into a totally retarded comedy of errors - obviously a legacy carrying on from my previous Eurotrip with Paul. Just to give one example: by the time me & Nath actually got ourselves on the right tram line to the stadium (we were in Rotterdam to see Poland & Australia play at the European hockey championships), we somehow managed to overlook our stop and, when I finally complained some 40 minutes later that "this is taking forever", the tram turned the corner and we realized that we were back where we started, at Rotterdam's Centraal Station. F*CK!!!
In the end we didn't see any hockey (we were late in getting to Rotterdam as it was), and settled instead for a brief sight-seeing tour around the city centre. Pleasant and Melbournian as it is, there's really nothing to see in Rotterdam except department stores and McDonalds - to picture it all you have to do is picture Collins St, except with shorter skyscrapers, less traffic and people talking in garbled German. So after a brief walk-around and some French fries with mayonnaise (even the McDonalds here serves French fries with mayo), we caught the train back to Amsterdam and the Flying Pig Hostel, just in time to see some New Zealander fall off his stool at the bar and pass out on the floor, blood dribbling out of his eyebrow. I wasn't in the mood for killing more brain cells so I went for a walk and got approached by some Dutch Christian people, which resulted in the usual pointless dialogue:
"Do you believe in God?"
"No."
"You don't believe in God?"
"Not in the sense you're talking about."
"Do you have a religion?"
"Buddhism, sort of."
"Would you like for us to pray for you?"
"Not really."
"We're going to pray for you, so that you find God."
"OK."
Anyway, it's time to submit to my stomach and get some dinner, so I'll leave it at that for now.... photos of Holland will probably have to wait until I'm in Poland, coz the Internet cafes here are useless and run by fucken criminals. Have a nice day over in Oz and see you all in a week's time!
Mateusz
P.S. I just had my Most Embarrassing Moment of the Year about half-an-hour ago.... I burst into our dorm looking for Nath and, sure enough, found the drunken bastard sprawled out face-down on a bed, seemingly asleep. This struck me as a perfect opportunity for some good ol'-fashioned juvenility, so I started arranging thongs & used socks on the back of his head, then, when he still failed to wake up, I slapped his arse with my foot and yelled "Wake up slut!"
Well, it turned out it wasn't Nath after all - it was some American guy who'd just moved into our dorm, and happened to have a deceivingly similar hairstyle & Jeans. Lol.
Unfortunately, this wax mannequin is the closest I got to a naked woman in Europe.
Westward view of the canal in the main Red Light District. It's ironic, but the District is actually located on what is probably Amsterdam's most picturesque and historically valuable area -- which means that side-by-side with Sexyland and Casa Rossa you've got centuries-old Gothic churches, and buildings that were built two or three hundred years ago now serve as brothels and so-called "massage parlours".
Eastward view of the canal (taken from the same bridge).
Nath asleep - on another guy's bed.
Central Amsterdam is a labyrinth of grimy alleys such as this.
One thing I'll say for Amsterdam: it certainly doesn't take itself too seriously.
s
s
.
