Amsterdam: The Elaboration

Apparently a couple of sentences voicing my love for cheap shots of jager does not meet many of your standards in terms of blogging about my Amsterdam adventures. I assumed you would be sick of my unpleasantly long blog posts; but you [CLARE BROWN] have convinced me.

So here is an elaboration of my 3 days and 2 nights in Amsterdam - though I will be focusing more on the nights. As I am unsure of who exactly is reading this (bosses, grandparents, little cousins, orphans, protestants, the latin-American dance community) I will be sure to tone down some of the events. I am aware blogs are for being explicit and honest, as my older and hairier brother told me upon hearing I would be leaving out several Amsterdam happenings, but this needs to be done.

AMSTERDAM. Night One. Matt [the aforementioned hairier Hickey], his lovely [particulary when drunk] girlfriend Maddy and I had just seen a new Indie flick called 'Away We Go'. I won't get into too much detail about this movie, but it was FANTASTIC. But not at the start. It gets better. So watch it. Then tell me what you think. Yeah? Good.
SO the movie had finished, and we found a little Heineken bar where, lucky for us, it was a prerequisite that all waitress' be young, pretty and wear tight white shirts. I love Amsterdam.
Nothing of grave importance occured at this bar, so let's move on to 2-for-1 wines at a random bar-cafe with an exceptional amount of neon lighting. BAD WINE. Baaaaaad bad wine. The aluring neon glow had, once again, gotten the better of me. They stand to be my greatest enemy since velcro [long story]. Matt and Maddy thought it to be a wise idea that they dance, quite poorly, to one of those oldschool JT songs. I watched, and even tutted them occasionally to show my disapproval. They did not care. They were drunk - I was not.

Across the road we frolicked [in a manly way..................] to another bar, which seemed to only play a random assortment of the Black Eyed Peas and hits of the breakway 80's hit, 'Grease'. And my experience as 'Eugene' in the Nudgee College 2007 stage performance of said musical [which critics deemed to be a 'surprise sensation'] enabled me to have the upperhand in the song 'We Go Together'. I know what you are thinking - you can do anything in Amsterdam and you sing Grease? We thought we should up the anti and went to a bar next door which was packed full of young tourists on a pub crawl. BUT FIRST: On our way out the door - it happened. 'It' being the happiest moment of my life. Matt turned to find a sign that read '10 Jager Shots for 10 Euros' - and they were to be served in test tubes. Knowing that my life was now complete, I quickly ordered this phenomenal deal and they went down a treat. You can probably understand that the next part gets a little hazey for me, so it will not be as informative. After enterting the next-door club, we enjoyed some moves on the dance floor. Amsterdam seemed to appreciate my inablity yet willingness to 'bust a move' and tear it up far more than London. This pleased me greatly.

What's that? Matt and Maddy want to go home? Because you are staying an hour outside of Amsterdam? BLAST! Our night had ended, or so I thought. I arrived back at my hostel [I may have not made it clear that I was staying in Amsterdam in a room with 18 randoms whereas Matt and Maddy were staying with her dad in Breda] to find cheap heinekens available at the downstairs bar. Why, don't mind if I do. Take my last 15Euros and give me as much heineken as this allows. Hello random friend next to me. Lauren, is it? Rad. First hostel friend. And she was in my room. So we stumble up the ladder-like stairs and I wake up everybody in my room trying to find my toothbrush in a barrel. So.. oh wait. That sounds weird. I say 'in a barrel' as the hostel provides each visitor with a large, metal barrel to use as a locker. I do not usually keepmy toothbrush in a barrel. That would be inconvenient and I don't imagine how I would fit one in my bathroom. Plus they are very noisey. So as I was saying, my room was now awake. Should I let them sleep? No. No I should not. I decided to keep them awake and swap stories of Jager in test tubes. This seemed to be shortlived as there was only 1 story about such an occurance and it came from me. Sleeptime. (I would also like to mention when everybody woke up, 90% of the room liked me and found me funny the night before. 2 of them seemed to be upset I had kept them awake. Who cares. They worse socks with sandals)

I tried to go through night 1 pretty quickly, as Night 2 has far more interesting things take place than Grease medley's and barrels. Lauren, my newfound hostel friend who also enjoys heinekens in hostel bars alone at 2am, invited me on a bit of a pub crawl with her 2 new friends - Maria [from Vancouver, the same as Lauren] and Texan-skater Jon. We started at St Christopher's hostel bar, 2 for 1 Becks. A lot of them. The most Becks I have ever drunk in my life. Logan, one of Jon's friends, had bought a bottle of Abysnthe, and we decided to do the traditional thing and melt sugar into it. But where do we get sugar? Hang on, he says. It turns out Logan had 250 cubes of sugar. We never bothered to find out why, but this lead to the best game of Jenga known to man. If you do not know what Jenga is, google it immediately. It started off as a fun game between friends. It did not end this way. We got exceptionally competitive [I think the exceedingly large amount of alcohol being consumed played a part in this] and the loser would have to do a shot of absynthe. I lost. First to Jon. Then to Maria. Then to Logan. It seemed my fingers were not as agile as they once were. That and I kind of wanted the shots. Sugary, absynthe shots.

Now, I wish I could be more descriptive with the next details, but it was a really rough night - so I will do my absolute best to relay the rowdiness of this night. We went to several other bars, and picked up some more friends on the way. There was another Lauren, but I am not sure where she was from. There was Sonja, and her friends. And then there were these 2 exceptionally rowdy Bristol boys callled Simon and Khai. I have absolutely no idea how we met any of these people, but through an escalation of dares we ended up in a Tatoo & Piercing palour. Not wanting to decline a dare in Amsterdam, when asked to get something pierced our drunk-selves thought we should fulfill this requirement. Afterall, we were in Amsterdam. Wow, this place looks like a nice place to do something I will regret in the morning. And it is in the redlight district, so it's bound to be interesting. We waited for what seemed like hours, but apparently was only 45 minutes, before being asked to leave. The man was not happy with our yelling or attempts at chair-stacking pyrmaids. We were unsuccessful in our attempts to be pierced in Amsterdam which, at the time, was quite upsetting [I must make it very clear that I was ecstatic to find this to be the case upon waking up. I have never been so happy to be kicked out of a place in my life. I have no piercing's. I just don't have the face to pull it off. My boyish charm would be taken away with one tiny metal bar above my eye.] We decided to drown our sorrows in beer and noodles from 'Wok On' [hahahahahahahahaha we laughed for about 20 minutes at the name]

You know what seems like a good idea at 3am after a big night? Sneaking people in to your hostel. This did not go down well, as our plan was not as fool proof as we had previously thought. Maria, for instance, could not sneak in by saying her name was James Hickey - something we should have realized before attempting this. So, our hostel was a no go.

A few more drinks at local and dangerous red district bars, a bit more trouble with security and a couple of hours later it was definitely time to head back to the hostel. Not for sleep. Never. But for more drinks, with Simon and Khai, who happened to be staying in our hostel as well. The receptionist [do not picture a hot lady receptionist as the stereotype would have you believe. Imagine that the dalali lama ate a sumo... and decided it was appropriate to wear the same clothes for a month without ever changing. Got that picture? This is our receptionist.] seemed to be hating on us. We had, naturally, forgotten about our brief attempt at mutiny by trying to sneak friends in, so wondered why he was so visibly upset with us.

FINALLY. Bed time. 6am? Sounds fair, 4 hours of sleep.
Then. BAM.
Hello dalai-lama-sumo receptionist. Why are you waking me at 8:00am? What's that? I am being asked to leave...? AND I don't get my 20Euro deposit back? I was not even aware I made such a deposit, but think it is only fair that this is returned to me with haste? What's that? No? Ok. Well, I made my point, and you have made yours. I guess I will leave. Without changing. Eating. Bathing. Sobering up.

So it is 8:30am and I am outside a hostel in Amsterdam in the same clothes as the night before, still drunk. And I have to make my way to Breda to find Matt, and I don't have a phone or any clue how to get there.... well that was bound to be interesting.

I am struggling to concentrate now, as there is an oboe being played by Ken [the man who's apartment is where I am currently holding refuge. aka Maddy's dad] rather loudly in the next room, and I cannot concentrate.

I apologize for this is not being up to my regular blog standards, but it really was a blurry couple of nights and I am unable to provide humorous anecdotes that I am sure occured but have since disappeared from my memory. We may go to a bar tonight after our late-night Breda picnic so hopefully I make a damn fool of myself so I have something for you to laugh at.

Oh, and to the 7 readers of my blog who are actually not 40 or older [Laura T, Laura C, Chris, Clare, Candice, Simone, Paige] I can provide you with some more stories of the second night, if this is what you choose. I did not feel it was appropriate to post such ridiculous humiliation on a blog when I am hopelessly unaware who is actually reading it.

Oboe to you all.
James