Reminds me of Amsterdam

Dave reposted two nice Amsterdam Photos (1, 2) today. Both show places I visited several years before and reminded me on a very weird story from my first Amsterdam visit… Take seat, smoke a bit and listen… but mention: there’s a parental advisory for that story!

I first visited Amsterdam with my girl-friend (now it’s ex, sorry ‘nother story) some years ago. We wanted to have a nice weekend in the hippie-city but obviously it was a mess. First thing: there was a soccer-game that weekend Ajax vs. Manchester or something like that, nearly all beds were occupied. It took us half of the first night and about 500 km walkway to get an affordable hotel room (Regal, Binnen Wieringerstraat 7-9, 1013 EA Amsterdam). The weather was bad. My girl just had one idea of Amsterdam: go shopping! And her parents were visiting Amsterdam too on sunday, so we had to meet them for dinner (as if we couldn’t lunch together enough at home). My mood was not very »amsterdam-like« you might guess.

On sunday, after another long walk (can anybody tell me why shops in the Netherlands aren’t closed on sundays?), we visited »Waterlooplein”, maybe you know the market there. After an hour it (again) began to rain. Heavy rain. We were totally wet after seconds. So we entered the nearest coffeeshop, which was the well known Bluebird (if you don’t know it, go and visit it). Just to warm up a little, maybe for a smoke or two, awaiting the dinner meeting.

Let’s say (for some reasons) when I visit Amsterdam I smoke pot. It’s allowed there and for me it’s a part of the cult (unfortunatly I haven’t visited Amsterdam for a long time). So we got us two joints and smoked. But we were hungry, too. So we did something I will never do again (that way): we bought a big piece of space-cake and ate it. It tasted great and there were no signs of being totally high or something like this, like in »Cheech & Chong in Amsterdam« or so. No, we just felt comfortable.

Three »Chokomel« later, exatly an hour later, we had to go for the dinner meeting. We met my girl-friends parents right at the city hall, when it started to rain again. When we reached the restaurant I was totally wet again, cold, shivering. But the restaurant was heated. It was warm there like in the indonesian jungle, maybe because it was an indonesian restaurant. We took place and the normal talk began: »What did you do today? Is the room fine?« etc.

Right in the moment I wanted to answer… the spacecake hit me like a punch in the face. From one second to another I was totally high. Extremely high. Higher than high. I was floating on my chair two meters above the table and watching the scene from above. Laughing. Everybody was looking at me, especially my girl-friends parents observed my like they were near to call the police. Only my girl-friend herself looked into nowhere, she didn’t noticed me or anything around anyway.

I started to think about the situation. »What do all these people think of me, when I don’t stop flying around with the chair?« Come down again! And I did. So that worked. I tried to call the rest of my brain to take over control again. What were they talking about? Say something! The parents talked about the just delivered opening dishes, some very hot peppered vegetables. They thought that nobody can eat such hot stuff. They asked me if I want to try and if I could stand such peppered food. Err, what kind of a question was that? Ridiculous. Were they laughing about me? Were they really talking with me (from that day I understood the hitchhiker scene in »Fear And Loathing”) did I say anything?

OK, that was pursuit illusion, what would come up next? I thought, when I discovered. I fell mentally asleep for about half an hour. The waiter awaked me with the meal, and I was away again for I guess 20 minutes. There was a cat walking around in the restaurant. Nice kitty. I like cats. Err, was there really one?

Clack! It ended like it started, all of a sudden. I was back to the reality at once. I had eaten the meal. I had drunken two beers and a coffee. Minutes later we left the restaurant. Outside the weather was fine again. No rain. I felt like I totally ruined the dinner. Didn’t talked to my girl-friend the whole time. Not sure if I said anything the whole time. I felt something between total shame and total easement (thanking god it was over). We drove back home with my girls parents that evening, couldn’t talk about it the whole journey back. When we were home again that night, we laughed about it for over an hour. My girl-friend also was also totally absent the whole dinner.

I can remember the pictures like it was yesterday, the parents later told me, that we just said nothing. Me flying around on the chair through the restaurant, nobody noticed it. But the cat, the cat was real.

Amsterdam? It’s so funny.