InsaneJournal

Current mood:	cheerful
Entry tags:	random mental floss

Holiday's End
We just back home and settled in, which of course means we are both in front of our computers less than ten minutes after getting home. Both of us did very good not to think about random surfing much...much. I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, let me warn you, this is going to be a long post. I'm discussing 6 days of activities, so yeah, it's going to be much longer than normal.

Okay, the flight to Amsterdam was good as far as smoothness of the flight was concerned. However, upon our arrival, we were told that we had to pay an extra fee for our suitcase. The lady at the ticket counter flat out lied and said it was an option we hadn't checked on the web site. That is pure bullshit, because I had hubby go over the form with me, and we'd even gone so far as to select our meals for the flight.

And that turned out to be another lie. Partway through the flight, the crew served cold sandwiches AND charged us for it. My sandwich was so crappy it tore up my stomach with the first few bites, so during the flight, hubby and I were both grumbling that we'd be looking at a different airline for future trips to Amsterdam.

But the flight itself was smooth, and we arrived at the Central Dam Station about a half an hour sooner than Luche was thinking. We got a map from a snack shop, and after consulting it, we started walking. Despite not being to the city in three years, I found it easy to get back to our hotel, the Quentin England.

Once we arrived and dropped our bags off, we turned around to head out for a bar first, where I sucked down a half a Guinness before my stomach said, "What, are you fucking kidding me?" So we left and went a block down the street to a coffeeshop. I picked up a pre-rolled joint to puff and get my appetite back. Then we went to a kabab shop for dinner and pigged out. We returned to our room, and while hubby read House of Houses, I switched back and forth between three different books until I was tired enough to sleep.

For day one of our stay, we decided to head out to search first for a bookstore Luche had noticed on the way to our hotel. Only we couldn't find it, and instead we went to another bookstore. I tried to avoid picking up anything at first, but then Luche pointed out the store was having a sale on two books about magic, one titled Defense Against the Dark Arts. Well of course I need that for research purposes, so I picked those up.

We spent most of the day walking around without coming to a decision on where to go until after the museums were close to closing time. Well, most of them, anyway. While wandering around randomly, we stumbled across the Torture Museum, and we toured it before going to another coffeeshop.

At each place we stopped at, I picked up a pre-rolled joint and puffed about half. By the time we got back to the hotel, I had two half joints on me, plus another half in the room.

Oh, but before we went back, we wandered in search of the bookstore again, and we tried to visit the Pink Floyd, which it turns out is no longer in business. This was very sad for me, but we went to the Popeye instead, where I picked up a gram of pot which was called Bubblegum. The flavor was just about right, and it was a nice mellow smoke.


We finished out the day by napping and reading, and then we went out to dinner at a "pancake house" which also served spare ribs as an all you can eat deal. I had those, though I was only able to eat the first two racks on my plate. Hubby had a steak and a baked potato, and it was pretty good, all told. We both had more beer. Yay!

Then we went to another coffeeshop, and I picked up another joint. We puffed that and returned to the hotel, and hubby passed out pretty quickly while I stayed up and finished reading Twilight, another few chapters of Tarzan, and another few chapters of Heart-Shaped Box.

Day two saw both of us devoted to the idea of making the rounds in the museums, so we walked out early and went for breakfast to another pancake house. I got a chocolate pancake, and hubby's pancake was apple. Then after taking some pictures around the area, we walked to Anne Frank's house.

I cannot tell you how weird that was for me. Maybe it was just that one group we went in with, but I didn't get the feeling that anyone really gave much thought to being trapped inside this cramped set of rooms, nor did it really seem to affect anyone when the museum showed a video of Anne's father, who concludes his short segment by saying, "Even with as close as I was to my daughter, I didn't know her. And because of that, I don't think any parent knows their children."

That affected me, and I had to watch the sequence over. But everyone else in both showings just shuffled on to the next part of the tour. I heard someone point out a set of height markers on the wall. I'd noticed them and felt sad, because those kids never got to finish growing up. And yet, not a minute later, I heard someone say "Oh Look, height markers! Isn't that neat?" Another side comment that irked me: "Oh look, this is Peter! You know, Anne had a crush on him."

I dunno, maybe I'm a cynic, but I got the impression that a lot of people took Anne's house as just another attraction to tour and view something from the past. I don't get the feeling that many people spent much time thinking about Anne's fate. I suppose it's best not to dwell on such things, and I admit my own melancholy didn't last that long. But while I was there at the house, I felt the gloomy past of the house deserved a somber attitude, and it felt odd to see how many people didn't.

After this, we went to another coffeeshop, and I got the munchies, so we found a frites shop and picked up chips. I had barbecue sauce on mine, and hubby had chili cheese.

Then we walked to Rijksmueseum and rented the audio tour headphones. I haven't been to an art museum since I was eight, and that was the Dallas Museum of Art. I was just blown away by everything I saw there. The Rembrandt paintings alone were worth the price of admission, but there were lots of other displays that blew me away, like the two huge dollhouses, and the marble sculpture of John the Baptist's head.

We returned to the hotel, and while hubby napped, I read and smoked, keeping my eye on the growing pile of half smoked joints. Somewhere around then, I started thinking "I should stop buying pot and finish what I have." Heh.

For dinner, we went to De Blonde Hollander, and I had a sausage with mashed potatoes and kraut. Hubby had beef stew with potatoes and carrots. Now what was fucked up was, in both cases, this kind of food has been a regular part of my diet since I was a kid. I never knew how much of my folks' cooking could be described as Dutch, but eating "exotic" instead turned into eating comfort foods for me. Not that I'm complaining. That was good sausage and kraut. We both had beer again. You'll notice I don't list brands. This is because I can't spell half of what I ordered. =^P

We returned to the hotel room and I read and smoke a LOT. So this may explain why I bought a box of 4 pre-rolled joints from another coffeeshop the next morning. Hehe. Our plans were to go with a light breakfast, since the days of gorging left both hubby and I feeling a bit bloated and uncomfortable. Then after eating, we would go to the Van Gogh museum.

And here again, I reached a point of feeling weird. Van Gogh was not a master painter, and his studies in various styles are often copies of prints which he made variations on. Fan-fiction, in writing terms. The audio tour also made it clear how little of his work sold in his time. People were somewhat unimpressed with him, and he ended up killing himself because he saw himself as a failure and a burden to his brother.

Later on during the night, I started thinking about how much of Van Gogh's work influenced later generations, and I felt a sort of kinship to him. In writing, I'm largely self taught, and like VanGogh, I don't see myself as a genius. Rather, I see myself as studying the tools used by other creators, and I try to create a form of art that uses the same tools according to my own darker and slower style. And maybe that might never work. Maybe someday, I'll come to see myself as a failure in writing and give up. The inkling of this thought was nagging at me in the museum, and I guess that's why it felt so weird for me.

Day four was going to be another day of tours, starting first with Begijnhof. But before we got there, I spotted the hidden logo for the American Book Store, and at last I understood how we kept missing it during daylight hours. The outside of the building was covered in scaffolding and dust clothes, so the logo was hard to see in daylight. We saw the lighted sign at night, and didn't register the coverings at all.

The bookstore was huge, and it put every book store in Italy to shame with the selection they had available. Hubby went nuts and bought a whole bunch of books, but I was good and only picked up Duma Key during that visit. But we would end up returning again later, and I wasn't so good the second time around. I'll get to that later.

We wandered around and hit another coffeeshop, where I accidentally ordered a gram of Nepal hash. Honestly, I didn't think I was going for hash, but once the lady set it down, I couldn't asked her to take it back.

Then the fatigue I'd been trying to ignore for the last two days knocked me down, and I dropped in the hotel for a nap. This messed up my stomach, which was a shame, because we went out for Mexican, and the chicken enchilada was awesome. But I ate about half and couldn't touch anything else.

Well, you'd think after all of this, I'd have been done with drugs, but on the way back to the hotel, I picked up mushrooms. I was exhausted when I took them, and so what happened was I spent most of the night laying awake with my eyes closed, tripping out on different dark halucinations while my mind rattled on and on about the emptiness of human beings.

The overall logic of the trip worked like this: humans are always left feeling hollow and unaccepted in some way. For some of us, we try to fill that void with addictions, while others try to fill that hollowness with faith or religion. Others try to fill it with money, or with words. But at the end of the day, we're still empty, and still not quite satiated. And it's the need to fill that void which both causes humans to strive for greater things, and to sink to their lowest levels.

This drug fueled thought began to kick over story ideas which I filed away and will hopefully be able to recall them when I'm looking for inspiration in my next writing session. But when the shrooms finally left my system I wasn't tired despite not sleeping all night. Or so I thought. Once we got out for the day, I needed to rest a lot more frequently.

After eating a very light breakfast at the hotel, we made an attempt to visit the Amsterdam historic museum, but the air conditioning in the place drove me outside, which frankly wasn't much better. So we wandered around to the bookstore again, and I went nuts. I picked up five books and hubby picked up four. So once again, our biggest expense on vacation was books. I really would have thought my pot smoking would win out, but the books did by about five euros. We wnt back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit. Then we went out to the pancake house again, where I had fish and chips, and hubby took a turn ordering the spare ribs.

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed back toward the station, and only then did I remember that I had to ditch the remaining pot. We went to the Doors coffeeshop and smoked two half joints before I called over the guy behind the bar.

I said, "We have a small problem. See, we're about to leave, and I need to get rid of this pot."

He asked where we were going and when I said Italy, he grinned from ear to ear and said, "Take it with you." When I gave him an incredulous look, he burst into laughter and said, "Don't worry, just put it in your bag. That's such a small amount the dogs can't smell it. If they do, they would laugh at you!" He then proceeded to demonstrate a dog braying laughter at me. And then he wandered around the shop to repeat the joke again for the benefit of the other smokers. I'd be annoyed, but I was still laughing over the line, and I told hubby "That's going in a book somewhere." Then I got serious and said, "But if I end up detained at the airport, it's his fault."

But we weren't detained. In fact, the flight home and trip back to the house was smooth and very relaxed.

So that is my road report for the holiday in Amsterdam. I'm already missing the place, and I'm looking forward to visiting again. I lost count of the number of times I talked about wanting to live there, but I would have to be selling a LOT of books to afford the cost of living there. Still, it is a nice pipe dream.

And so with this report done, I think I'm ready to get back to work...I know, sad, isn't it?

Later...