If I had any cash in the bank, I would invest in euros immediately!
I spent only four days in Amsterdam, my first
time there.
Not an expert, but will try to answer all your
questions -
except the one about soccer - you were kidding,
right?
Yes, of course.
If I moved to Amsterdam, how much Chinaco could I get thru customs?
Bart,
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you can get as
much Chinaco as you
want in Amsterdam. After all, you can buy
Cuban rum and cigars there.
It's part of the FREE WORLD - not like the police
state we live in!
What airline did you take?
How are the airports in Europe and what cities
did you fly thru?
We flew Continental Airlines from Midwest city
- Newark - Amsterdam.
The flight from NY was about 7 hours - in coach.
Lucky me, I was travelling
with some doctors and they had written each other
some nifty prescriptions to
help us through the trip. ( I now know what they
mean by "professional courtesy"!)
So we had one pill to take the pain away and one
pill to put us to sleep.
The plan was to sleep through the whole flight,
but after we took the
*no pain* pill we felt so good that we decided
to stay awake. Played
a zillion games of Hangman on the video screen
that was mounted
on the seat in front of us. Could have watched
movies, but the movie
offerings really sucked. Anyway, that pill
put us right into stupid mode -
perfect for a stupid game.
I had an army brat friend in college who lived
in Germany for a while.
They'd go on long-ass rides for a skiing weekend
and eat a gram of hash
to help them sleep until they got to the mountains.
My first inkling that I was in a free country
came when we got off the plane
in Amsterdam. Even though I chewed nicotine
gum to get me through the
11 hours of *no smoking* airports and flights,
I was dying for a cigarrette.
Low and behold, there was a nice spot as you
entered the terminal where
you could stop and smoke, have a drink, relax.
Yeah, I was home.
How's security at the airports?
No problems with security either way. Just
the usual.
Take off earrings, bracelet, shoes. Go right
through.
Just make sure you clean out your pockets for
the trip home. No sniffing
dogs or body cavity searches for us, but you
never know.
So, we took a train from the airport to the central
station, and from there a
cab to our hotel. We were pretty tired, not having
slept. As we arrived it
was drizzling a bit, which worried me. I had
been watching the weather
forecasts for Amsterdam before we left and it
was all rain, rain, rain, rain.
I stopped right there and had a little talk with
the city.
I said, Hey Amsterdam, I already like you.
But, if you want me to LOVE
you, you've got to give me some sun. Probably
just a coincidence - the
sun came out within an hour and it was sunny
every day we were there.
So I fell in love.
Dropped our bags at Hotel Ambassade - too early
to check in - and
headed straight for what became our daily breakfast
bar on a nice
cobblestone square a few blocks away.
Breakfast for me is coffee and cigarettes.
This place was great, old
like everthing in the central part of the city.
It's one big historic district.
Summer, so the whole front of the place is open
to the square, you
can sit in or out. Our favorite table was
inside, but right on the edge of
outside. No smoking/non-smoking BS there.
In every bar and restaurant
you can smoke. Not like the U.S. where
we smokers are criminals!
The bartender brings great coffee, a little shotglass
of cold water, and
on each saucer there's a little cookie. My kind
of breakfast.
So we'd just sit and watch the people go by,
drink a few cups. If you
want something to eat, they have grilled ham
and cheese sandwiches.
Yum.
Then we'd stop in at the neighborhood Coffee Shop.
Where did you eat?
What did you eat?
Let's see...... we ate mostly at night - dinner.
The first night we ate at a Spanish tapas restaurant.
mmmm gazpacho.
Second night, we went to an Indian restaurant
the hotel recommended.
Really great food. So good, we returned the next
night. Mistake.
Well, that was after we got the hash/pot joint
that was supposed to be
the strongest one. "White Witch" or something
- they all have names.
ha ha
The owner/waiter sat us at the same table we had
the night before.
We all ordered different things than we'd had,
but he somehow got
it in his anal-cumpulsive head that we had to
have an EXACT repeat
of the previous dinner. So he brought us
exactly what we had eaten the
night before even though we ordered totally different
things. Very freaky.
Even freakier was when I looked across the table
at my brother and
he was WHITE, no color in his face at all. Even
his lips were WHITE and
he was dripping sweat. His eyes were kinda rolling
up inside his head.
Bad, real bad. Guess he shouldn't
have ducked into that alley to take a
couple extra tokes before dinner. I thought
he was gonna hit the floor.
But Doctor Steve said no, it was just (medical
term I can't remember).
Doctors!
We tried to act like everything was normal, ate
the exact same stuff we ate
before and prayed that he would recover. He did,
after about fifteen minutes.
Two morals to this story:
One: Don't eat at the same place two nights
in a row.
Two: When you're wrecked out of your mind,
let it settle before you do more!
The last night we ate at an Italian restaurant
that was very good, popular.
We always drank wine with dinner. The boys drank
beer all day too.
And they make great vodka gimlets - only they
call it vodka with lime.
Don't ask for gin. "We don't drink gin
here," the bartenders said.
We never asked for Chinaco.
Did you eat anything funny?
You mean besides Magic Mushrooms? well....
The boys were determined to find some herring
to eat - guess that's a Dutch
thing. We found a stall by the Flower Market
that specialized in herring and
they got some to eat on the street. It was totally
GROSS. I took one look and
one sniff at that stall and no fucking way was
I gonna touch the stuff.
Little raw fish marinated in something. Kinda
bloody inside. Ewwww!
Truth is, the boys were grossed out too, but
had to be macho and eat it.
Later, one of them was complaining about being
a bit nausiated. Well, DUH!
Bart, when you go to Amsterdam - just say
no to the herring.
Did you see a McDonalds and a Burger King?
I did see one McDonald's, but in a more touristy
neighborhood.
It was near the Rijks Museum, where the great
Dutch masters are.
My favorite picture was "De zielenvisserij "
painted in 1614 by
Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne.
In English the title means "Fishing for Souls".
It's an allegory about the early days of Holland
and the efforts of the
Protestants and Catholics to get converts.
While the creepy church
people "fish", the leaders of the political
factions they shill for hold
court on the river banks. The sick relationship
between religion and
politics has always been the same.
If this painter was here in 2004, he'd be a BartCopper for sure!
Check it out:
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/asp/showimage.asp?src=/ariadata/image/SK/Z/SK-A-447.Z.jpg
(gotta scroll around to see the whole picture)
That's a helluva picture - must've taken all day
to paint that.
Did you see any Amsterdam TV?
I tried to catch the news when I was in my hotel
room.
Cable had a couple of French channels, a couple
in German and
Spanish, a few in Dutch, and BBC and CNN Asia
in English.
Wow - real news - for people with brains
who want the truth.
They even report on the genocidal bloodbath happening
in Iraq!
(Have you noticed - now that there's a really
ugly, deadly war
going on in Iraq our so-called news has no reportage,
no faux-
patriotic graphics, no militaristic band
music, no shock-and-awe?)
Sidebar:
Those bastards!
FOX News and Clear Channel and the rest of them
were so pro-war!
They lulled America into loving war - something
this 50-year old had never seen.
Anyone who wasn't pro-war was un American - like
turning the clock back 140 years.
Also, there were some sex ads in Dutch - but I
couldn't tell what
exactly they were selling - hookers?
Did you see any Americans with t-shirts that said, "Sorry our dictator invaded Iraq?"
Didn't see any Americans period - except on the
Gay Pride float (my fave) called
"Lovers Without Borders" there was a guy wrapped
in an American flag, so maybe
he was a refugee from our *homophobic homeland*.
Sadly, the Netherlands is part of the "coalition
of the killing". They have
1,200 troops in Iraq and the 2nd one got killed
this past weekend.
http://www.bgnewsnet.com/story.php?sid=6668
And today I read that one of those web-savvy "Islamist
Militant Groups"
was threatening the Netherlands if they don't
withdraw their troops.
Was it clean?
Yes, Amsterdam is very clean! I walked
around all day and night in open shoes.
If I did that in Chicago or New York, my feet
would be filthy by the time I got home.
Not in Amsterdam. Clean feet. They had street
cleaners out every day - although
the Parade aftermath seemed to stress the system
a bit.
I didn't see a rat. And I wish to hell I knew
where people put their trash!
In a very densely populated city I saw no trash
cans, no trashy alleys, no stink.
It's a mystery.....
Damn, I'll bet New York would enjoy hearing how
they do that.
They say Paris has sewage in the streets and the women don't shave - yuck!.
Bart, the Amsterdamers are very attractive, healthy
looking people.
Walking, riding bikes, and universal health care
may have something
to do with it. Breathing the air of freedom can't
hurt either.
My male companions were literally drooling over
the tall, slim, blond girls.
In one Coffee Shop, when their oggling and sexist/predatory
comments reached
a fever pitch beyond my tolerance, I said in
voice a louder than necessary,
"Keep your fucking erections to yourselves!"
ha ha
Men!
The women at the table next to us almost died
laughing.
Whole place cracked up, the boys were embarrassed,
and
they toned down the rhetoric after that.
Do you spend good old American dollars?
Or did you exchange currency and if so - for
what - Euros?
I changed some dollars for euros at the airport.
As you can see, the
*Mighty Dollar* isn't doing too well. (see dollar-euro.jpg
attached)
If I had any cash in the bank, I would invest
in euros immediately!
Well that cash didn't go too far, but you can
get euros from any ATM on
the street with your U.S. card. (Dutch
ATM.jpg attached)
Most important - did you place any bartcop stickers?
Oh no, I didn't!
Didn't take any pictures either. I like to see
new places w/out the
distance from my surroundings that a camera makes
me feel.
But now I have an excuse to go back soon.
Thanks, Bart!
PS: I'm attaching scans of a couple cool postcards I bought at the Resistance Museum.
Unlike America, they have a resistance on The
Netherlands?.
I wish our country had the courage to say "No!"
to Bush-style fascism.
Thanks for your trip report.