Amsterdam (aka Pulling a Wayward Foe)

First off, I would like to say that smoking weed is a rather dumb thing to do. I know many people do not agree with me, but to be honest, the only good thing marijuana is for is to sit in a daze listening to hypnotic beats or watching reruns of Family Guy. (What I’m subtly trying to say here is that I do not smoke bhang, okay?)

Back to the story.

Pulling a ‘wayward foe‘ is a term I coined in honour of my dear friend and fellow blogger who shall remained unamed. It basically means planning a journey and then going out of your way to sabotage yourself.

It all started on Friday. I booked my  Saturday, 8.00am return ticket to Amsterdam where I was going to meet my fellow AIESECers and hopefully battle the throng of tourists and junkies in Amsterdam to ‘paint the town red’ (which is impossible, because you can’t show that city anything it hasn’t seen and ten times worse.)

So naturally, I decided that I would set my alarm for seven am and then go out and party until six o’clock in the morning with my insane housemates. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

I woke up the next day at midday. My phone was dead. I had missed my train and I had a touch of the ‘wine flu.’ So I went back to sleep and woke up again at 5.00pm. I jumped out of bed, took a shower and went to the station. Fortunately for me, I had an open ticket and so I could still get the train to Amsterdam.

Upon arrival, I discovered that even though my phone was on ‘roaming’, I could not make any phone calls or receive any texts. So after wandering around the station for half an hour, I finally bought a simcard and called my friends.

They were all epically stoned. The kind of high that people who’s systems aren’t used to anything stronger than a light beer and now coping with massive amounts of high grade, EU approved pure cannabis can get. Eventually, after three hours wandering in the city, taking the wrong bus, we were finally reunited.

If you have ever been with stoners, you know the hardest question for them is ‘What shall we do next?’ So after deliberating with my glassy eyed, giggling brethren, we decided to visit the Red light district.

My soul died a little bit that night. The problem is, there are thousands of tourists in Amsterdam. And they all want to go to see the city’s famous CSW’s. So I had the surreal experience of walking down the narrow streets in single file, looking at all these women posing behind glass windows with hundreds of leering men behind me and more in front of me. They knew we were tourists, and just looking out of curiosity. So what were we doing there? Somehow it seemed sleazier than actually trawling for hookers.

Swans in the red light district (you can't take pictures of the girls, obviously)

One special house had lots of the girls with their doors open (I don’t know if these were the more pricey ones or the more skanky ones, I’ve never needed to make such a distinction before) and it had a weird smell- and we were really, really close to the girls. They could have touched us if they wanted. Or the other way round. One girl pushed my female friend and screamed at her,

what are you doing here? do you also want to get your #*#$ satisfied?

I felt like I was in 18th century Amsterdam, with all the drunk, drooling men and semi-nude girls posing suggestively in their little glass cages. It was embarrassing and sad.

I hear that the only thing sadder than paying for sex is to attend a ‘live sex show’. (We received several offers for a group discount but we decided we did not want to bond in that way.)

After that, the stoners were hungry. So as we were walking back to an undecided destination (still could not answer the question, ‘what do we do next?), one would pop into a fast food joint and get something to eat. Because we were eight people, we effectively ‘toured’ Amsterdam’s fast food joints until about 1.00am.

Finally, after queuing outside a small club for half an hour, we were finally granted entry to push and shove other sweaty bodies and spill our drinks on each other.

And that, my dear friends, is how I spent Saturday night in Amsterdam, stone cold sober, surrounded by drunk tourists and pushy bouncers. And you know what?

It was the best time of my life. (so far this year)

Your very own starter kit

Ps: Amsterdam is a beautiful city, with an unusually high number of drunk tourists. it is also the first time I looked at a city and thought, ‘damn, this country is wealthy.’

I leave you with this picture of a ship that was commissioned by the city to keep the unemployed masses occupied. (Kazi kwa vijana of sorts?)

A ship just for the sake of it