A friend of mine is traveling India right now, sort of vagabonding across the country, and I’m jealous. His witty, exotic, amusing travel stories make me miss mine terribly. So to comfort my currently-grounded self, I’m going to write about one of my favorite adventures…
Standing topless in the surf of the Spanish Mediterranean, embarrassed and laughing internally at my internalized American prudishness, I decided I wanted to see Amsterdam before I left Europe. My Aussie friend Brad had been talking about it for days, and Jordan and I figured why not. Might as well see what all the fuss is about.
Having decided upon a definite course of action, we wasted no time. Running back to our things on the beach (a quick aside for the ladies: I don’t recommend topless running), we hurriedly dressed and headed to the nearest internet café to book flights. The feeling of complete freedom from booking our spur-of-the-moment trip inspired us to spend one of our last evenings in Spain eating Italian food, drinking American cocktails and laughing like idiots in our favorite palapa bar until 2 a.m.
A few days later, we said goodbye to Spain, left Brad in London, and landed in Amsterdam with only one backpack of clothes between the two of us due to a very confusing missing-passport-lost-luggage incident. We were tired from an overnight layover, hungry, and without accommodations, so we hurried to the information kiosk in the airport train station. A very nice young lady helped us call around for vacancies (of which there were few), eventually landing on Bob’s Hostel. Dubious but thankful, we boarded the train and headed into the city to find Bob’s.
Alighting from the train, the most surprising thing about Amsterdam was its charm. People on bikes were everywhere, and it was nice to see multi-level bike parks in place of giant Western parking garages. Only a few cars littered the streets. Old buildings stood proudly with their doors open, ushering in new people. We had heard the city was fun, but its cobbled streets, winding canals and palpable history make it truly beautiful.
Street maps in hand, we wound our way several blocks to a quiet street very near the infamous red light district. A plain blue sign jutting out from a 5-storey brick building spelled “Bob’s Youth Hostel” in skinny yellow letters. We were relieved to have found the place, but it didn’t look good.
Not knowing what to expect, we headed down the short staircase to the basement reception area. The room was cramped, poorly lit and stale. Dreadlocked Americans in Bob Marley t-shirts smoking pot over their egg breakfasts looked up as we navigated the narrow aisle between tables, trying to get to the check-in desk at the back of the room. The Indian man manning the desk looked frazzled and rather inexplicably annoyed with us.
We gave him our names and explained we were there to check in, hoping we could set our stuff down, grab a quick shower and head out to see the city. Looking at us as though we were the stupidest people on Earth, he told us we had to wait until 4:00 that afternoon to check in (it was 10:00 in the morning at the time) and there was no place to put our stuff anywhere in the meantime. OK, fine. We said we’d be back, but there was really no way in hell we were staying there that night.
Instead, we ended up wandering from hotel to hostel until we finally found a small, clean place run by an elderly Australian. We were actually able to rent a small room with two twin beds for less money than we would’ve spent in a big dirty 12-bed room at Bob’s, so we eagerly paid, put our stuff in our private room, locked it, and left to start our adventure.
Now, Jordan is no pot smoker, and though I’ve been known to toke once or twice a year, I’m no professional. But something about our whole ordeal made us really want to go for the complete Amsterdam experience. When in Rome… So we went looking for a place that sells pot brownies. It took us a few tries, but we finally found a small café that seemed inviting. Looking very uncooly American, we approached the young, attractive man at the counter and asked, “Do you sell brownies?”
“Not brownies, but we have ‘space cake’,” he said, smiling and lifting the top off a silver serving dish. “Would you like one piece each or a piece to split?”
Jordan and I looked at each other and shrugged. “One piece each, I guess,” she said. He sliced the cake and we paid, then headed off to a corner table to eat. It was pretty good cake, considering.
When we each had one bite left, three 20-something American girls walked up to the counter and had almost the exact same conversation with the Dutchman, but with one critical difference: when he asked whether they would like to split a piece, one of the girls asked shyly, “Well, we’re kind of new to this, so we’re not sure whether we should each have one. How strong is it?”
To which the hot Dutchman replied, “Oh, you’ll want to split a piece. This is really strong.”
Jordan and I, having just swallowed our last bites, looked at each other. Oh shit.
Nervously laughing off the Dutchman’s assessment of the already-ingested marijuana, we decided to head over a few blocks to the red light district. We passed over a perfectly normal-looking bridge onto a street entirely populated with 18-year-old testosterone. One man wearing stage makeup and dressed in a tuxedo caught my arm and said in a sleazy Italian accent, “Hey ladiessss, would you like to come to my sex show? Lots of licking, sucking, fuckingggg.” I mumbled something to the effect of “no thanks” and we promptly started walking faster.
We needed a protective barrier from harassment if we were going to explore the red light district. We needed to find some men. So approximately 15 minutes after consuming “space cake” we found ourselves in a small sports bar drinking beer and looking for some English-speaking male tourists. We found them in the form of 6 Ohio college boys on vacation.
Sitting around the bar table with our new friends (approximately 30 minutes post-pot ingestion), I began laughing. It was normal at first, laughing at jokes and amusing stories. Then it became uncontrollable. Like a crazy person. Everything was unbelievably funny. I looked at Jordan, tears streaming down my face, and she was laughing hysterically too. We couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. And knowing the unmistakable cause of our behavior, the young Ohio gentlemen asked where they, too, might be able to purchase such potent treats. We laughed and said we would take them, so we all paid our bar tabs and headed out the door.
After 15 minutes of aimless wandering, Jordan and I finally realized we had no idea where the “space cake” café was, so we ducked into a random place painted with wall-to-wall murals of Bob Marley, mushrooms and rainbows. Good enough. We bought more cake, ate it quickly, and jointly decided to go see a sex show at the infamous Casa Rosso.
We made our way back to the red light district and purchased tickets in front of the giant pink elephant for around 20 euro each. Not knowing what to expect, we walked in, laughing nervously. A waiter ushered us to our seats, taking our drink orders on the way. With the curtains and theatrical lights, the atmosphere was more like Broadway theatre than what I imagined a seedy sex show establishment to be.
Until the first couple came on stage.
A large man and tiny woman acted out a seduction scene that lasted the approximately 30 seconds it took to get them both naked. Then they began having some sort of choreographed sex dance during which he started doing one-handed pushups on top of her. Push-up, push-up, push-up, switch… The best part was the circular “bed” part of the stage that lifted the couple a foot off the ground and began rotating so as to give all members of the audience a chance to get a better view. Very, very strange. Hilariously surreal.
After the couple, a single female came out, danced a bit, got naked, pleasured herself with strange objects, exited stage right. Then another female–this time a dominatrix–danced, pleasured, exited. We stayed and watched many more couples and single women “sex dance” for about an hour (which I guess is about the limit of most people because as we were leaving, the first couple came back out and started the exact same routine… Gotta give it up for stamina.)
After the rather uninspiring sex show, we wandered the district for a while, looking at all the beautiful prostitutes on the main drag, then exploring the side streets where they hide the ugly ones. We even found the gigolo section. And at that, we decided to call it a night.
Jordan and I parted ways with the Ohio boys late that night and returned to our clean little hostel. We woke the next morning surprisingly refreshed and ready to explore the less infamous parts of Amsterdam…
Chunks of Life 