Saturday, June 03, 2006
The biggest problem with hitchhiking is getting out of a city. On a map of Brussels I found a road I thought just might be the right motorway heading north towards Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. I left the hostel at 11.30 am, thinking that I would never make it to Amsterdam that day.
Well, first I found a bus that went directly from outside the hostel to within a reasonable distance of the motorway, paid 1.50 euros. Got off at the wrong bus stop, walked for 20 minutes, found a slip road going onto the motorway to, indeed, Antwerp. Very little traffic. Waited for 10 minutes, no luck. Put the camera up on the tripod to film my misery, and immediately Kalid, a French speaking guy from Brussels pulled over...
 My first lift!
The only "problem" was that he wasn't going to Antwerp - he was going straight to The Netherlands! Well, only just within the border. Still, I couldn't believe my luck. Apart from "thank you" and "let's go", Kalid spoke only French. So for about 45 minutes, we had an almost non-stop conversation in French!!
He forgot to drop me off at the last petrol station before his exit, so I ended up on a petrol station on the wrong side of the road, going in the wrong direction (near Breda). I'm glad he did, if not I wouldn't have had the privilege of meeting Frank and his family, who came to my rescue. They were heading out to the seaside, to Vliessingen, for a family weekend, and I asked if I could join them until we got to another motorway heading north... no problem! They even drove onto the right motorway, near Rosendaal, to ensure that I was heading in the right direction.
Before I even had the chance to put my thumb out, Bart pulled over.
Bart is a Pole who's lived just inside the Belgian border (but worked in The Netherlands) with his beatiful wife and kids for eight years. One day he got in his car with his family and just set off from Poland, heading in a generally westerly direction. After some to-ing and fro-ing, he ended up in Belgium. He feels that he was given so much help at that stage in his life, that he now wants to give something back. A real human being! He was going to Gouda (not to eat cheese, but to meet a friend) just before Rotterdam, but he drove me right to the other side of Rotterdam and dropped me off in the best possible location to catch a ride to Amsterdam. He even bought various groceries for me at a petrol station, though I tried to insist that it should be the other way around... at that point I'd actually made money on my journey from Brussels!
And finally, after a five minute wait at the petrol station, the lovely rose grower Lowie (spelling?) picked me up and gave me a lift to Amsterdam.
We found that we had a few things in common in our way of thinking, which I luckily captured on camera. I think the coincidence of these four different people heading in my direction at the right time, and then choosing to pick me up, means that we all had something in common whether we liked it or not.
He dropped me off at the outskirts of Amsterdam. I immediately spotted a tram going to "Centraal Station", but I decided to walk it - otherwise I wouldn't be able to brag about having travelled from Brussels to Amsterdam on one euro fifty! I'd made it to Amsterdam with a total waiting time of no more than 20 minutes, I'd met some lovely people, it was only 5pm, the sun was shining!!
I'm glad I decided to walk, or I wouldn't have met the enchanting Yvonne and Tjalling (?) in the enchanting Vondelpark:
It was quite late when I entered the centre, and as it was a Saturday, all the hostels were full... At 11pm I found a bed for the night, I was just about to give up and spend the night on a bench...
Amsterdam gave me such a good vibe that I immediately booked a further 5 nights in a different hostel, the Bulldog (an off-shoot of the coffeshop chain), getting the 5th night free. As the first hostel took pride in being dirty, I didn't mind the move too much...
Now, the days are slowly going up in smoke...
More later!
____________________________________________
It's a few days later, and I have to sum up my experiences of sexy, sexy Amsterdam...
I'll start with a poem:
"Beautiful Dutch girls whizzing past on bicycles"
by Martin Voll
I look.
She looks.
I smile.
She smiles?
Life is that instant.
Amsterdam Travel Tip 1: Stay out of the cycle lanes. Seriously. It took two near-death experiences for me to realise this. Not to mention the kamikaze-pidgeon, but that's another story.
Amsterdam Travel Tip 2: Rent a bicycle and join the killing spree. Expensive, though.
Me on top of a multi-storey bicycle parking!
Amsterdam Travel Tip 3: Be nice to the girls in the windows. So many tourists behave like immature arseholes. The Red Light District isn't actually that exciting - it's squeaky clean, organised, institutionalised, a parody of itself. And full of bald, fat, male tourists.
 
Amsterdam Travel Tip 4: How do you get away from all the tourists? The centre is full of them. Luckily, beautiful Dutch girls on bikes are everywhere... So get a bike, head out of the centre. You definitely have to go to the Vondelpark where the Dutch are out in force and so easy to randomly meet. If you're young at heart, you could try the bars around the university. But where do they go out at night? There is no consensus. I did have a good time at the club Bubbels, just off Leidestraat, south side, near Leideplein. Tacky as hell, terrible DJ, no tourists, lots of beautiful Dutch girls - not on bikes.
Funny Sight 1: Death metal dude on granny-bike.
Funny Sight 2: Pre-rolled factory packaged skunk joint - three euros fifty.
Amsterdam Annoyance 1: Having to pay 50 cents to take a leek in a club where you are already paying over the odds for expensive beer which makes you pee! Some attendants actually saw my point of view and let me pee for free.
Amsterdam Annoyance 2: In London, lots of people randomly introduce themselves to me for no particular reason. They stand on street corners and start whispering "Charlie, Charlie" when I walk past. Charlie seems to be a very common name. It gets annoying after a while, but I always try to be nice; I stop, shake their hand, I say "And I'm Martin, nice to meet you!" etc. There are many Charlies in Amsterdam as well, but mostly the whispers go as follows: "Wanna buy a bike? Wanna buy a bike? Ten euros, ten euros!" etc.
Amsterdam Travel Tip 5 (How to deal with Amsterdam Annoyance 2): If you actually would like to buy a bike for 10 euros, you have to be careful. The guy selling it could be a genuine criminal trying to sell you a genuinely stolen bike, or he could be a policeman trying to bust you for buying stolen goods. Well, if the bike actually were stolen, I guess that would make the policeman a criminal. And if it's not stolen, then it surely can't be a crime to buy a bike for 10 euros? Anyway, the Dutch have created a way out of this mess, you just have to follow this recipe...
Scenario 1:
You: Are you a policeman?
Guy: No.
You: Are you a policeman?
Guy: No.
You: Are you a policeman?
Guy: Yes.
In scenario 1, the guy is either a policeman trying to bust you, someone pretending to be a policeman for some strange reason, or perhaps a Japanese tourist whose knowledge of English does not extend beyond the words "yes" and "no". In any case, you don't want to buy the bike.
Scenario 2:
You: Are you a policeman?
Guy: No.
You: Are you a policeman?
Guy: No.
You: Are you a policeman?
Guy: No.
In scenario 2, the guy is either a genuine criminal trying to sell you a genuinely stolen bike, a policeman who is now breaking the law by not answering "yes" the third time you ask, or just a figment of your imagination because you have smoked too much. In any case, you do want to buy the bike - if he's a policeman you can bust him, and if he's only a figment of your imagination you can still have a lot of fun flying through the streets on your new bike.
Amsterdam Annoyance 3: Internet access is terrible, expensive, rare. And you only get a "shell" with some internet browser - if actually need the full use of a computer (for file transfers, downloads etc.), forget it. Shame on you, Amsterdam!
Strange Experience 1: Jenny and Tom, from Northern Irland, and I went on a safari on the hostel roof top. Don't ask - I wouldn't be able to answer.
Strange Experience 2: Was invited for dinner at Pieter's, the guy I met in Brussels. Met his friend Rob and his girlfriend Jennifer. (For some reason I don't have a good photo of them....) They were going to help me with the fiming, so I shared the equipment between us. I had the camera, Rob was the lighting guy, and Pieter and Jennifer had a microphone each. As we were in Amsterdam, we decided to reveal people's darkest secrets and their sexiest body parts. In one fun evening we filmed plenty of dicks and tatoos, but disappointingly few parts of the female anatomy.
Strange Experience 3: Met Elise and Ronald in the Vondelpark...
Elise on the art of "just being and desiring nothing more than what you are", and Ronald on the art of rolling a spliff.
...and we went to the Waterhole in the evening to see some live music. The house band was pretty good, and afterwards there was an "open mic" session. In walks the Norwegian folk band Queen Bees, whose members include the ex-eurovision song constest diva Anita Skorgan. It took a couple of minutes for my jaw to return to its normal position, the coincidence was just too hard to fathom. They were great, they played three songs, but sadly it wasn't the time or the place for a GMC contribution. I later played the organ with the house band.
Strange Experience 4: Met a jolly bunch of acrobats, jugglers and tightrope-walkers in the Vondelpark. Marika taught me to walk the tightrope! They make it look so easy, but to begin with it is sooooo difficult. I think I improved pretty quickly, and after about an hour I could either take about five or six steps without falling off, or play the Norwegian traditional tune "Paal sine hoener" on my mouth harp whilst standing still. Standing still on the rope, that is...
I also made some breakthroughs on the mouth harp (with both feet on the ground) whilst in Amsterdam - I'm definitely getting better!
Useful phrase 1: Zo sluw als een vos. (As sly as a fox.)
Useful phrase 2: Ik heb je tuk! (Gotcha'! From a hidden camera show on TV...)
With these two phrases you're sorted in any situation, there is no need to learn more Dutch. Though the word "lekker" ("delicious") also has a special place in my heart.
A few more photos:
Rembrandt:
 
Shaving the Iraqi way with a piece of string arranged between hands and mouth, painful but effective:
Mohammed will show me Iraq once it all settles down, if ever...
Farewell, Amsterdam! And so my "coincidental travels" began, read more in the next travelogue from Vlieland, coming soon...
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