Cram then scram sterdam

This is Der Wag, or the weighstation. Ships would bring their cargo here to be weighed before it could be sold off. No comment on whether I weigh more going out than I did going in.



Woke up early to retake the Free Amsterdam tour. Still a great tour, but I kinda got to see behind the curtain a little and, they memorize a speech. I know, what did I expect? But I wanna believe that this earnest young lad really did fall in love with [insert European capital name here] so much so that he devoted his life to study of the intricacies of its lore. I mean, anybody can memorize a speech!

But it was still lovely, I learned a lot, and I would recommend it to anyone.



Sean? Something tells me they sell waffles. By the way, our new hostel's name is Euphemia. Gold star to the first one who can tell me what that means!



Woke Ian up, before we Van Go-Gogh'd, (You think it's insufferable here, you should hear what Ian has to put up with; Prague was nothing but "Waiter, Czech please!" and "Czech this out!") and let me tell you something: That guy could paint.

I mean, he just got it. There's a painting here I couldn't even bring myself to buy the postcard because it was nothing like NOTHING LIKE the experience of looking at the painting. You can see bits of the canvas in parts and in others there's a daub of paint so thick you can see the outline of his penknife. The wheat blows in the wind, and the reaper reaps and all of this is happening just with color. Wow, I must be getting old. I like art now.



Ian was a sport, and we were off on The Heineken Experience. Pretty goofy, but fairly imaginative entertainments for a brewery tour. (Some of you may have received the unhilarious new webvid circulating the youtubes that Ian and I shot at the HeinEx (patent pending). We're hopin' it will get us a gig in primetime. It's not included here for legal reasons, mainly stemming from a lawsuit involving The Heineken Experience's fraudulent claim of "All the Heinken you can Handle!") I mean, can you say that you've been on a virtual reality tour of the life of a beer bottle? I can!



Ian, transfixed by buttons and whistles. They're so cute at that age.

After fully exploiting all of our drink tokens, we happened (?) upon this shop.



With the sun setting over the canals,



we wandered off to the Vondelpark, where our recollections begin to diverge. There are bits we are certain about. A pond. Or two. A tall bird. Hilarity. Cold Drinks. Rain. A woman yelling at us in Dutch to leave her establishment. More rain. A bar with a woman so scary, we don't even try entering. Rain and wind. A coffee shop! Rain. A bar entirely staffed with (and frequented by) elves. Or Dutch people. More rain.

But that's just the parts we remember. Not the parts we laughed the hardest at. Eventually we wound up back at Euphemia (anyone?) had another hearty laugh, and Ian let me loose on the blogmaker.

Although the rain has dogged us the entire trip (dear god! Al Gore was right!) I wouldn't change a minute of it. It was exactly the kind of trip I should have taken 10 years ago, but am glad I finally did. My plane back to reality leaves in (whoa) four and a half hours, and my pupils don't seem like they want to sleep, but I think I can say with some sincerity that this has been one of the best trips of my life, and hopefully I'll be back in Europe again soon.

My next post will be stateside, so warm up the TiVo, Micah, and get out my watching-hat, Daddy's comin' home!

P.S. Ian needed some various ointments (the scrapes he gets into!) so we were about to go into this apothecary.



Turns out it was a Hypothecary, which means they could only help us with theoretical problems, like, If I was mauled by a bear, which unguent would I require?

P.P.S. Euphemia? Yeah doesn't exist. I did find aphemia, which is a mental aphasia where you can't express ideas verbally, but you can still write. Hey kinda like me right now! So maybe Euphemia is a mental aphasia where you can only express your ideas through the substitution of some other words in place of words that are harsh or vulgar.

Amsterdam is a lovely town. . .

Had to change hostels today, breaking the strong pull of the Red Light district. For the best.

Still cold and rainy. You call this summer?

New hostel has wifi, so Ian went to work and I continued my unguided tour of Amsterdam's finest drinking establishments and grittiest coffee shops.

We attempted Van Gogh this afternoon, but were Van Stopped by some sort of big police action. Rather than ask any questions, we quickly walked the other direction.

It doesn't make such good blog, but I am on vacation, so occasionally I'll just relax. Tomorrow is my last day, so I'll probably have much more to report. Especially if I can convince Ian to go on the Heineken Brewery Experience.

[deleted]

Started the day out pretty tamely, woke up too late for breakfast so I stopped into a coffeeshop to eat a . . .

This post has been deleted by the author's conscience. We apologize for any incovenience.

. . . to wander the streets aimlessly, an empty husk of the man I once was.

The Tolerant City (but they haven't met me yet)

Sitting in the Bulldog Coffee Shop, watching faces form out of the wood-grain of the walls through the Silver Haze, I suddenly found myself thinking about how I would write about this moment.

Maybe Ian's right. Maybe I'm living for the blog. Already I've been thinking about making this a long-term affair, and what the implications of that would be for my family, friends, even strangers I meet who will have no idea their actions might be fodder for this litany of literate logorrhea (Note to self: good title.)

But then so what if I am? What if it's the desire to write about them that spurs me to do things I wouldn't do normally, things that frighten me and challenge me? Seems to make more sense to me than living my life for some possible afterlife.

Took an overnight bus in from Hamburg and arrived in The Tolerant City at about 6 AM.

A stray dog rifles through some garbage in the gutter, a sad disgusting reminder of the previous night's revelry. No shouts of groups of drunken rugby teams and hen parties haunt these early morning streets, but the smell of urine is palpable.

OK, I'll stop. It doesn't really work without hearing the accent, anyways.

Too early for check-in, too early even for the Metro, we wandered the streets looking for eats. Finally we found a nice hotel with an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, and since we had nowhere to go until 2, we sat down and ate all that we could.

Later I decided that even though I'd been pretty much up all night, had a bad ankle and a chafing issue I won't go into here, that it would be a good idea to take the free walking tour at 11:15.



The Koninklijk Paleis on Dam Square. You know, where they Dammed the Amstel to make Amsterdam?



Here it is, folks. The one that started it all. The original corporation. You know them, you love them. The first name in genocide and colonialism for over 200 years, it's the Dutch East India Company. What happens when a bunch of rich shipbuilders get together to protect themselves from pirates and negotiate better prices from the native spice growers? The world was never the same.



That's Landros, our Greek guide.



Here is a beautiful, postcard-esque view of Amsterdam.



And here it is with my ugly mug.



On the banks of the Amstel, we stopped for a quick break, and when I turned around, the tour had disappeared. That's right, I lost the tour. And I want to stress that I was fairly sober at this point. But only for a couple of minutes after this point.

Finally it was 2, so I met Ian back at the hostel and we put down for a nap. I think mine may have been more restful than Ian's, I'm not sure. Anyways around 10 we were able to get up and at them, but drizzling rain and sex aggressively for sale sent us back into various bars to drink.

As of this writing, I am the new proud owner of the knowledge that most, if not all, coffee shops in Amsterdam close around 1 AM. Saw a number of other "first-nighters" stumbling about in the rain, searching for someplace to get inside, dry out, and relax.

So we're back at the hostel. Tomorrow I guess I'm going to have to take the Dam Tour again, seeing as how I missed the second half, and there's still Van Gogh and Heineken to experience, so stay tuned.

By the way, all the rooms here are themed. This is our front door.



And here are the weird blacklight designs that make up the only art in our room (and one whole wall):

But where are all the hamburgers?

Pretty lazy day today, as the rain procludes any real sight-seeing and we're just sort of waiting for our midnight bus to Amsterdam (Whoot Whoot!). So, after locking our luggage up and a nice Große Frühstück (big breakfast), we decided to catch up on some Internettery, the fruits of which you are currently no doubt enjoying.

After a couple of hours of screen-staring, the sky had cleared up somewhat so we headed out a-sightseeing after all.



We happened upon St. Nikolai church, which was all but completely destroyed by the bombings of WWII, but rather than rebuild it the people of Hamburg decided to keep it as is, as a war memorial. Ian and I amused ourselves by pretending to be BBC reporters on NPR. Note: the following should be read with an unplaceable but somewhat British-sounding accent:

The sounds of the children playing in the rubble is all you can hear around this part of Hamburg these days, as the bells of St. Nikolai no longer ring out. Their shrieks of joy and laughter are a far cry from the sufferings of their grandparents. Local resident Henrietta Schmidt remembers: (now you hear a German woman talking for a half a second before another British voice is laid over it) "We had nothing. Nothing. We waited for hours for bread. And fish? You could never get fish!" (back to the reporter) Today, a stone plaque is all that remains of this once-proud community church. Though the children, play on. From Hamburg, Deeta Bangwali, BBC World.

And we'd laugh and laugh.



This is the train station. A fairly impressive structure, considering how long it's been around and the variety and number of shops inside. Speaking of shops, we spent most of the afternoon walking up and down Spitalerstraße, this long promenade full of shops and cafés, which on a Saturday afternoon was all a-bustle with people from all walks of life.

Our train leaves in 90 minutes, and we'll arrive around 6 AM. An attempt to save on another night in a hostel, sure. But also, Ian says that sitting up is the only way I sleep silently.

Next stop, ... uh, what was I talking about again?

Don't fear the Reeperbahn...

Woke up to blue skies and strange dreams. Ian has taken to shouting out random strings of words to get me to stir and roll over in my sleep, and I think it's affecting my REMs.

Checked out of the hostel, took our last S-bahn ride over and across town (partially accompanied by a street clarinetist playing Love Me Tender) to the ZOB (Zentraler Omnibus Bahnhof) to catch our bus to Hamburg.

When the manager of the Hamburg hostel saw our big heavy bags he offered us a room on a lower floor with a double bed. "No thanks," we told him, "We'd rather lug our bags up to a 3rd floor walk-up than accidentally touch legs in our sleep. Just who do you think we are?"

Took a walk downtown, to see the town hall,



which in German is called the Rathaus. Tee-hee! Hamburg is Germany's second largest city, probably due to it's position as a shipping center. Connected by waterways to both the Baltic and North Seas, it even reportedly has more canals than Amsterdam or Venice. Huh.



Ian and I had a nice dinner on the Elbe River, fortifications for the night ahead.



I thought this was a cool building:



The main tourist draw in Hamburg, however, has nothing to do with architecture. It is a small strip of street called the Reeperbahn.



Probably best known to Americans as the place where the Beatles honed their craft in small bars and clubs, it is now Hamburg's red-light district, where anything goes and usually does.




After a brief voyeuristic stroll down the boulevard, evidently some god was upset because the sky cracked and split and rained down furious precipitation on us. We quickly dove into the first bar that didn't have pictures of naked women on it, a sort of beer hall with a DJ/singer at the front. He was a middle-aged man who would play old songs, sing along occasionally and encourage the crowd (Germans of all ages) to join in. We got into the act on Que Sera Sera, but most of the standards were too foreign to us.



As is the case with all the good parts of our trip, my photos just pale in comparison to the experience itself. Speaking of experience, we couldn't just walk up and down the street all night without going in to some of these places, right? Right.



Our first attempt, the Funky Pussy Club, was a fairly typical dance club. All your Beyonce, Eminem, and Rhiannon needs could be met in here. Btw, can you read the banner above the entrance? Evidently they offer the finest in "black music." I didn't know we had the technology to color music. Where can I hear some purple?




As you can see, the police maintain a presence here, but I didn't really see them do anything but patrol. Prostitution is legal here, so I'm not sure what exactly they were looking for, but I digress. Next we paid our 5€ cover to go into a place called Safari. The first thing we noticed was the old-timey pianola music playing as we were led to our seats. Looking up at the stage, it was like we'd transported back in time, to a vaudevillian burlesque show, complete with feathers and a red velvet curtain. It was soon after we sat down that we were offered our first drink, at a price of 25€ (for those of you bad at math, that's like a $36 beer) so we up and left.



By now the crowd is swelling, it's getting harder and harder to see where you are, much less where you're going. We crossed the street to the Dollhouse (sounds promising), paid a ten-euro cover and headed towards the bar. When the entertainment turned out to be male, we couldn't get out of there fast enough. "No, guys, don't go! The BIG show is coming right now! BIG show." said the bouncer, but we were pretty sure that we had seen all we really wanted to.

Back to the Funky Pussy for a little more bump and grind, a quick bratwurst at the imbiss ("It's famous!") then we cabbed back to reality.

You know in Pinocchio, when he goes to that Pleasure Island place, and everybody's having a great time, shooting pool and smoking cigars, but his ears start growing and a tail sprouts and the more time he spends there the more he turns into a jackass? Well it was kinda like that.

I hope there's something else in Amsterdam to occupy my mind, because I'm getting pretty sick of the sex trade.

The longest rainy day of the year

Today is the summer solstice, ostensibly the day with the most sunlight of the year, plus we're up here in the Arctic Circle, so all week we've been looking forward to this super-long, super-sunny, all-day, open-air music festival.



But it's raining. A lot. So, after a delightful breakfast (thanks Dirk!) we thought we might as well do laundry.



Don't adjust your internet, that really is a garbage bag carrying a garbage bag.

Laundry took all day, as it will sometimes, and we found ourselves at dinnertime. We went to this crazy health food place called RNBS* (don't bother looking for the footnote, I spent hours. It's just part of their name) for energy-meatballs with guarana in them and rice-paper springrolls and mango milk. It was a lot better than it sounds.

On Thursdays in Berlin from 18.00 bis 22.00 all the museums on Museum Island (I know, it sounds like a magical wonderland no kid would ever want to go to) are free to the public. So we went to check out the Pergamon, which is famous because of all the gigantic antiquities they have there. Among these is the Ishtar Gate, which was the entry to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. That's right. They must have taken it apart brick by brick, shipped it all here, and reconstructed it inside this museum. There's also the 2nd Century Pergamon Altar, and a bunch of other stuff from before JC came along and screwed up the world.



As you can tell, Ian and I take our antiquities very seriously.

As I mentioned, this was our last night in Berlin, so we were going out come hell or high water. When the latter came, it didn´t dissuade us from planning a club agenda including some of the hottest nightspots in town. Watergate, 103, Cassiopeia, Matrix. We were all set to freak the night away. First we just had to meet up with Tom at his local bar up in Pankow.



Garväty is a beer hall and music venue in a building still standing since the 18th Century. Evidently the city wants to tear it down unless the owner can prove it has some sort of cultural significance. I´ll let you be the judge. When we came in out of the cold and wet, we were awash in the warm glow of drunken Germans enjoying the sounds of "Strings mit Wings", a rock band fronted by, well, I´m pretty sure it was Captain Lou Albano.



We struggled through the crowd to get our first beers, found Tom, and sat down to relax and enjoy the covers of Johnny B. Goode, Come Together, and the like. But these guys actually rocked. It's pretty ballsy to do a Beatles cover anytime, but to reinterpret it and make it your own is just downright impressive. All of a sudden the barmaid (I later found out she was known as Inga the Machine) plopped an unordered beer down in front of me. At least I thought it was beer. It turned out to be alsterwasser, which is a mixture of beer and Sprite. I reiterate, I hadn´t ordered it, I wouldn´t have ordered it, but it was exactly what I wanted, and when they just kept coming I kept on enjoying them. Give it a shot, you might be surprised.

A hearty slap on my back and an abrupt invasion of my personal space introduced me to a very intoxicated young man with a frightening facial scar. "Yeah, baby!" he said, "I'm Norman. Shtormin' Norman! We have tequilas, yes?" Now, my close friends and drinking buddies know that I never touch the devil-cactus-juice (anymore), it's the only liquor I'm just downright afraid of. But how do you turn down Stormin' Norman? "Four tequilas, yeah baby! Brown or white? Brown ist ok? Four Brown Tequilas! YEAH, baby! PROST!"

By now the band had gone on break, and Tom disappeared for a couple minutes to talk to some of the locals. See, he's a drummer, and most thursdays the house rocks to a blues jam.



It took some convincing, as most of the talent was already tipsy, but eventually they found a guitarist, a bass player and a singer. The ragtag band of musicians started right in with some good ol' fashioned Delta Blues, the kind that makes you stomp your feet, clap your hands, and hoot and holler. By the time they busted out Hoochie-Koochie Man, I was convinced I'd never experienced anything like this in my life. Tom later blew my mind further when he told me he'd never met any of the guys before tonight.



Aside from the just amazing musical proficiency of the artists, and the general awesome vibe coming from everyone in the place, I guess what struck me so hard was the unpretentiousness of the whole scene. Tom tells me that same bar will host chamber musicians one night, then the next night a DJ will spin techno, then the next night an Andrews Sisters tribute band will put on a mock, 1940's USO-type show and the same crowd will be there every night loving every minute of it. If it's good, they support it. This is just miles away from my experience of live music in L.A. Everything has to be labeled and categorized and ultra-hip and perfect and people will still disdain. Can you imagine a singer in a rock band in the States busting out the kazoo without any irony, but just because it sounded good?

After three or four songs of the best live blues I've ever heard (it ain't hyperbole, it was really that good) Strings mit Wings got back up there and when they started doing Born to be Wild (complete with their own smoke machine) and Norman jumped up on the mike for the chorus, we were absolutely convinced that this was way better than sweating our euros away in some hip nightclub. I had finally found the truly German experience I'd been looking for all week. And, when we did finally stumble out of there, around 2ish, Inga had memorized how many of what drinks we had, and the whole night cost me under 10€, which is probably what the cover would have been at just one of those clubs.

Too late for the U-bahn, we grabbed a taxi and some currywurst, and then off to bed with visions of bluesmen grooving in our heads.

Green Eggs and Spätzle

Last night at the hostel we watched the movie Hostel.

Well, Ian watched it. I watched the first twenty minutes, the parts with all the naked breasts and rampant drug use, but once kids started disappearing I ran away and hid, coming in later only to see horrible bits like eyeball-popping and finger-chopping. Why do people like that stuff?

Anyways, we checked out of the spooky rural hostel and bussed our way back to East Berlin. I know everybody says it, but I was really struck by how West Berlin could really be Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or some other upscale American neighborhood. All the high-end shops and pre-fab architecture did not feel old-world or European at all. And clearly there was a lot of money around. It was strange coming back to Mitte, where you'll see shoddy brickwork and former squats converted into nightclubs.



For those who didn't believe me about the name of the hostel. It's actually one of the nicer we've stayed at, with bright sunny rooms and a delicious breakfast no doubt lovingly prepared by our host, Dirk (and his houseboy, Nino). It's located on a little street just off Oranienburgerstraße, in an area I'm going to go ahead and assume is the gay quarter of Mitte. Why not? There's an abundance of theatres, the local English pub is called The Oscar Wilde (!), and there's just something about the way the waiters look at Ian.

As I may have mentioned before, there's no wifi here, so Ian and I set off for some sightseeing. We began with a light lunch at a corner cafe. I had the boulette, which is a traditional German meatball, served on a bun with waaaaay too much ketchup and mustard. And not the kind of brown, spicy mustard you'd expect to find in Germany, we're talking bright yellow.



So Ian and I went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, which was started by this guy in his apartment right after the wall went up. As the stories poured in, he just kept expanding his collection, and now it's full of art inspired by the Wall, historical records and stories of escape attempts, paraphernalia, etc. It's pretty amazing, the lengths people would go to try and escape the East, as well as the lengths the Communist government would go to prevent them. False passports, secret compartments, underground tunnels, homemade hot-air balloons and flying machines, it just went on and on. Fascinating stuff, and well worth the seemingly exorbitant admission charge. Even Ian liked it, although it is rather stuffy and we got stuck behind "another one of these Old Spice guys."



I don't know why I thought I'd get a good exchange rate at this place, but I went in anyways.

After the Mauer (wall) Museum, Ian was feeling a little sleepy (I can't imagine why he has so much trouble getting a full night's sleep) so I continued the sightseeing on my own.



This is the Bundestag, which everybody just calls the Reichstag, even though the Reich has long since been defeated.




In the interest of transparency and openness, they've built a big glass dome on the top of the building, where anyone can go in free of charge and look down on the German Parliament doing their business.



In the dome is this big mirror thingie. It's all full of photovoltaic cells and good stuff like that. I didn't really understand that part of the brochure, I just thought it looked cool.



That little flashpop is me.

For dinner, Ian and I went out for some authentic Swabian (southern German) cuisine at a place called, wait for it, Schwarzwaldsteuben. Ian had the Kässspätzle (sort of a German mac and cheese) and I had the Maltauschen. This is like a ravioli with meat hidden inside. It was invented during the Catholic rule days so that people could secretly eat meat on Fridays by hiding it in pasta. Great, right? As Ian put it, "Take that, useless dogma!"

Checked out Cafe Zapata again, though the biergarten is somewhat less fun in the drizzle, so we went into the Oscar Wilde just in time to hear a cover band of British expats massacre Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out." It was about to, so we went into the other room and tried to figure out what was going on in a UK-Netherlands soccer match, but it was almost as incomprehensible.

Some more wandering around the Oranienburgerstraße, a late-night shwarma from Dada Falafel, and it was back to the hostel to watch Daily Shows and Colbert Reports downloaded onto Ian´s laptop. I know, not that exciting, but we were taking it easy because tomorrow night is our last night in Berlin, and we're going clubbing, rain or shine (schön?)

Incidentally, in wrestling with that shwarma I think I discovered why Hasselhoff loves it over here. It's the land of messy messy sandwiches.