Strangers with Candy

Alright we're about to catch a train out of Amsterdam to Berlin/Prague. I think Feroz and I are both pretty done with this place.

Mom you may want to skip this entry (it's not that bad really). Oh yeah, mom's on myspace. Add carrie. put her in your top 8. She's cool.

So we got into Amsterdam yesterday, or the day before or something. And we were basically homeless. We had some friends who were supposed to be in town but we couldn't get a hold of them and the hostels were full. So we sat and had a couple of beers. The beer here is excellent. It's amazing, and strong. But they treat it so bad. After England where the bartender would take a few minutes to poor you the perfect beer, we were a little surprised to see the barkeep here pull two foamy beers and then wipe the tops off with a butter knife.

Glass washing also leaves something to be desired. The dishwashing system is a tub of COLD water that sits next to the bar. The bartender dunks the glass for a few seconds and presto. Yeah, this doesn't remove lipstick stains. Found that out first hand.

Anyway, after a few hours on the cold and rainy street we decided to get a room. We found a pretty nice set up with two beds and a private shower. This is a very gay friendly town, and the hotels were nice enough to offer a lot of one bed set ups, and one guy even said we could push the beds together. Awesome.

But I needed time apart so we slept in seperate beds.

After getting set up we turned on my phone, and it works out here no problem. I have no idea what the bill's going to be, but it was nice to get a hold of Feroz's friends.

We met them about a mile away from our hotel and proceeded to serious partying. We closed down a few bars, drank everything Holland threw at us, including some awful 12 year dutch gin that tastes like cheap tequila.

So at the end of the night, I've probably had a little too much fun and this guy comes up to me w/ a red chunk of something or other. Turns out it was E. He's like, 'hey man, let's take this!!!'

I'm like 'What? E huh? Gee what could go wrong? I'm in!!!"

Feroz is smarter than me.

He saved my life and took the damn drugs and gave them back to the overly friendly guy. Yeah. I don't do E, and after all the drinking there's no doubt it would have made me horribly sick, so good one Feroz. And bad Nate, no candy from strangers!

Anyway, we start heading back to the hotel and end up completely lost. We walked for probably an hour and a half in the wrong direction, out into rural amsterdam before finally hailing a cab who got us back to the train station. At that point we started walking in circles and finally paid a homeless guy to take us to our hotel. The best part is I have no clue how this prick found our hotel in 2 minutes w/ my description.

'DUDE....we're staying in the hotel w/ the really small beds..."

Feroz; "yeah..and there's a bunch of stairs."

'Yeah, stairs, and small beds...you know it?'

Homeless dude: "yeah, I take you there."

Of course he does it and we give him 5 euros and go pass out at 7am.

3pm day two we finally get out of bed. Lounged about ate some great food and then went out to see what amsterdam's famous for.

If you don't know the redlight district is full of....well...women with serious self-esteem issues. It was a kind of crazy experience. We walked down and it was a trip. Kind of like going to the pound, you just want to feed and cloth them, talk some sense into them, but instead we went and had a few more beers.

Now you've gotta be wondering..dammit Nate you're in amsterdam why haven't you been high the whole time?

Well I'll tell you. It's cuz we're light weights. We don't smoke, don't really like to smoke and if we do we're done after a hit. I have no moral problem with weed, I think it should be legal. My problem is it's too damned strong.

So yeah, we got high as hell last night. And ate every dutch munchie we could get our hands on. And the dutch have a bunch of great munchies. Ended the night around 4 430, woke up a little while ago feeling like absolute hell. I'm still completely brain dead and Feroz is amazed that I can put words together well enough to write this.

It's pretty much time to go, so I'll check in again after we leave the next city. Current plan is train to prague which stops in berlin. We'll probably hang there for a day or so. We're not too sure of anything right now.