I walked with Dylan to the central station, tiptoeing around the larger puddles, however futile it was. Amsterdam hadn't shown us any sun, but it seemed designed for grayness. Dylan was determined to spend a week in London and I wasn't. He hopped on a train and went. I walked back towards the hostel I'd checked out of earlier in the day. I had nowhere to stay, nowhere to go and nothing to do. Awesome.
Arriving in Amsterdam was like walking into the pages of High Times magazine. The language is mostly Jamaican, people are required by law to wear dreadlocks, and bongs are sheathed at the hip like samurai swords. At customs you're given a gram of G-13 Haze and the option to play with the bomb sniffing dogs for up to half an hour. The train station is totally trippy- all decked out in mushroom caps, pot leaves, peace signs and yin yangs. After walking through the weed forest that surrounds the station, you can board one of the many cat-shaped public transport buses that stealthily crawl all over the city. Then you can totally relax. Totally.
The most stoned person I've ever seen in my life worked the front desk of the hostel. He looked like a really tired and hungry seagull without feathers. He could barely function. By his desk there was a large machine he would inhale weed from like an oxygen tank. Later, he told me after two years in the hospital from a work-related accident he moved to Amsterdam. He was on vacation then decided to stay after finding a job. That was over ten years ago. Somehow I wasn't surprised when he said he spoke zero Dutch. It complements the fact that most Dutch I spoke with didn't smoke tons of weed.
I didn't have any plans after Amsterdam so I made ONE: Return to New York on August 30th. That gives me 12 more days.
The red-light district in Amsterdam really does have hookers in the windows dancing at all hours of the day and night. Most of them are very ugly and only some of them kinda look like porn.
On the train I read Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero in one big gulp, like a handful of pills. I was a little underwhelmed but complaining about the novel would probably be like trying to send a steak back after eating it. It was fine. There were those great disturbing moments that made my hands go numb and forced me to look out the window, but it was child's play compared to American Psycho. Besides, the Millenium trilogy and Dune, (I just started the second book, Dune Messiah), are very hard to stand up to. I'm also reading a Phil Roth about Jews. To characterize: Less then Zero was like a quivering rape victim sandwiched between the literary dynasties of Millennium and Dune.
The hostel had a very strict policy against tobacco. You could smoke weed anywhere, but tobacco was forbidden, even frowned upon. It was the most expensive hostel yet, also the worst. For the complementary breakfast, you got a loaf of wonder bread in a basket and your own personal toaster. The beds were shit. The TV I got so excited about was the size of two iPhones (was it an iPad?). The shower was clogged and moldy. Everyone had to share one toilet. Unreal. And this was one of the better reviewed hostels in town (there are thousands). My future employers will be happy to know I passed out both nights with all my clothes on on top of the covers. Amsterdam's finest lives up to its reputation.
ALONE
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