Amsterdamage

Back in Amsterdam

Aug. 9

Hello, all.

So far, so good, and you can’t ask for more than that. The train out of Penn Station was on time, and although I was confused by the monorail stops at the airport, I got to the right terminal. Actually, I got off by mistake at Newark Terminal C for an instant, but had time to ask and get back onto the train so I made the next stop (Terminal B) without delay. Damn, I’m easily confused.

That gave me plenty of time to nurse a couple of beers over fish and chips and watch women’s water polo from London. Who ever heard of water polo before? But they were televising the bronze medal game and the gold, which pitted the United States against somebody else, maybe the team from Brazil or Mars.

I think the sport has become popular because of an event I read about in the New York Times. It seems that there is an underwater camera to catch the action as the ladies wrestle for possession of the ball.  According to the Times, there is sometimes a “swimsuit malfunction.” According to the story, one network switched to the underwater camera just as one player grabbed another by the swimsuit and bared her opponent’s breast “for all to see.”

Wow. That would be something if you don’t have Netflix or HBO. 

I noticed there was no underwater camera work in the broadcast we were watching at the bar. But that was all right. I had beer—Sam Adams Lager, Blue Point Toasted Lager (which is downright spectacular, for a lager), and Stella Artois (which is good if you have it first, but is weak after the Blue Point). 

Besides, I have Netflix.

Aug. 10

I don’t recall much of the flight except for seeing parts of movies, one about old Brits on vacation to India and another in which Owen Wilson was a champion birdwatcher. After four pints at Chammps Sports Bar, I slept for most of the trip. Conditions were better than I could have expected. The only empty seat in the plane was the one next to mine.

I got onto the right train at the airport, so I went directly to central station. Actually, it was guess work because the train wasn’t marked and no one was sure we were on the right train.  The rest was easy, because I took a cab.

Larry and I took off to rent a bike and on the way passed the maritime museum. Across the canal from the museum is another museum that looks like nothing less than the bow of a sinking ship.

A sandwich of smoked herring with a glass of white wine constituted breakfast around noon. Space cake and coffee around half-past 12 were good for lunch.

It’s about 2 in the afternoon, local time. The space cake is kicking in.

More later if I remember.

Harry

Aug. 10

Two seats for the price of one! 

Space cake for breakfast. Guess you will have space cake for dinner, which is soon.

You are in your element. Have fun.

Did you meet Ms Libby in Newark Airport? August 9th was her first day on duty. I expect to read about her in your journal.

Joanna

No, I didn’t see Libby. Maybe on the way back.

Harry

Catching Up, Sort of

Aug. 11

I am officially traveling again.

The rows of townhouses in the old city are all either four or five stories high. The top story is a dormer with a projecting beam and hook, one after another down the street, waiting for pianos, sofas, and lynchings. As I’ve remarked before, this city looks as good close up as it does in postcards.

I’m sleeping on the top of Eerste Atjehstraat 44. You can actually find that address on Google Maps.

A little to the northwest of No. 44—an inch or two depending on the scale of your map—there is a landmark noted: Brouwerij ’t Ij. (I don’t know how to pronounce it, but when I say “brew’ree tie” people seem to know what I mean.)

It’s really a brewery, and has a tasting bar that is open for a small amount of time each day—maybe four to nine. but it also has Amsterdam’s only windmill. Larry introduced me to the place the last time I was in the city. He even snapped a photo of the windmill with me in front of it.

So yesterday in the cab coming from the station, when I saw a windmill. I honestly thought, “Is that the Brouwerij?” and was very smug seeing a few minutes later that, yes, it was. Hot damn. I know my way around Amsterdam. I think you can see where this is going.

Shortly after I finished yesterday’s brief message, Larry and I took off for the far side of old town. The buzz was fantastic. Walking was a challenge. Standing was weird. It seems this place all floats on water, but you can only sense the rocking after space cake. Riding the bike was downright magical. I am not as aggressive as locals, so I stop from time to time for tourists, delivery trucks, pregnant ladies with strollers, and the distracted.

Larry had a meeting at four, and we were early, so we traced a route over canals, through picturesque neighborhoods of light and shade, and I have literally no idea where we went. We stopped outside a fantastic bar that I will never find again without assistance.

It specializes in Dutch craft beers. I don’t even remember what I drank. Maybe it was water. I’ve rarely had beer that tasted so good. 

I fell off the bike only once. And that was on the way back from the station yesterday, before we got to a coffee shop or a bar. I was stopping, pulling up to a light, when a lady came barreling past me from nowhere because I had wasn’t paying proper attention to traffic in the bike lane.

My front wheel jackknifed around on me and I went down. I landed on my right hand and may have brushed the ground with my trousers, but they were unharmed so everything was fine. I have only packed one spare suit.

I apologized to the lady, who had stopped for the light. but she didn’t turn around or acknowledge me in any other way. Maybe she was afraid I was mad instead of embarrassed.

So we get to the neighborhood where Larry has his meeting. He’s writing for the website and catalogs of a local retailer. I need help with the bike chain when we are locking up our rides. This is not a good sign.

So Larry goes over it real slow: “Meet me here at 5:30.” He points to a bar across the street from where his meeting is. He says it three or four times, I think. Or maybe my mind is running deja vu in a loop. I mean, how would I know the difference?

He has me write down the address of the bar. I have the presence of mind to dog-ear that page in my notebook. I also note the cross street.

I also have a plan. I tell myself: No turns. Just walk a straight line, Harry, maybe stop for another beer, but don’t take any chances on getting lost. You may not be able to find your way back this time. You may not be able to ask directions. Not sure, but there is a remote chance that you have lost the power of speech.

It’s like I told Matt once. He was a toddler and we were out on a country road, and he was concerned that we would get lost, because I said I had never been on that road before.

I have been lost before, son, but I have always found my way back again. Except once. I used to be somebody else. That shut him up for all of two seconds, and then he started to talk to his Mom.

Anyhow, straight lines don’t count for much when you are walking in a fog. The patterns of the paving stones are fantastic. The color on the canals looks like Impressionism. The voices in your head get very witty. Sometimes you laugh out loud at their jokes.

The streets change names, too. So I’m on Haarlemmerstraat, then Haarlemmerdijk, but how did I get onto Nieuwedijk? Did I get to an intersection and decide that it was necessary to turn? Left or right? This is like being outside or inside the moat at Chiang Mai. Only this time I was really spaced out.

I turned around and tied to retrace my steps. OK, I actually got back to the starting point, but only half an hour had passed which left me another hour to kill. I walked the other way, and came back with little difficulty. OK, this is getting better. Remember, Harry, you can recognize the Brouwerij’s windmill from half a mile off. This is the sound of hubris taking hold.

So now I’m ready to walk the cross street, Kaisersgracht. This is the canal street where I stayed last time, but that apartment was almost at the other end, far across town. I was on the west end of the canal this time. But I knew (sort of) where I was.

Then I got cocky. I made a turn.

When I eventually groped my way back to Kaisersgracht, I had lost all sense of direction. But after all, the canal only goes to the left and right. That gives me a 50 percent chance of being wrong.

In my experience, 50 percent is a sucker bet.

It was only after I had gone quite a ways--a mile, maybe 20--that I actually noticed that it was the wrong ways. The numbers were rising. I was so stoned asking directions back at the intersection never occurred to me. I have no idea why looking at the street numbers ever occurred to me at all.

So here are the right bearings, but it's now down to 10 minutes before I'm supposed to meet Larry in the bar, which was an indeterminate distance away.

So there are a couple of ground rules learned.

Rule No. 1: Don’t go exploring a strange city, if you have an appointment. Or are stoned. 

Rule No. 2: Don’t panic. It’s for occasions like this that they invented cabs.

I get out of the cab and go to the place, but Larry's not in the bar. Did I have it right? Or was I supposed to go across the street where the meeting is? I do that.

It's another bar, so I order a beer. I tell the bartender my mission--that I'm supposed to find my friend Larry somewhere around here, who is in a meeting with Derry, the boss. The bartender goes upstairs, but isn't too sure if I'm Harry or Larry. He knows I'm not Derry.

So Larry comes out of the meeting, grinning all over. He knows the synapses are slipping and misaligning all through my head. Meeting's not over yet. Fine. I'll wait here and sip this beer. Good, then you won't get your ass lost again.

I had a little chat with Derry, too, when the session broke up. He remembered meeting me two years before.

That first space cake came from a shop called Bush Docter—yes, spelled that way on the sign. It turns out, as Larry told me later, this is a hangout of one of his friends, Barry. So everybody knows Larry, too. He’s chatting up the people at the counter. A guy on the steps gives him a Marlboro to mix with hash.

And that’s where I had my first space cake of the trip. 

At some point we linked up with Sir Michael, a British ex-pat friend of Larry’s, who met us and took us some place to get hamburgers. 

Michael is probably my age or older. He is leading the bicycle convoy. I can barely see him. He is tear-assing up the road. Larry’s next and then I get cut off by a van. 

I pedaled forward and stopped. Sooner or later they’ll backtrack looking for me. I stay there a couple of minutes and then think of a better spot, back at an intersection, which is where I found them. Or rather, they found me. I could hear them calling my named from a crowd on the roadside.

They had made a right in the instant that the van had my full attention.

We finished the night at the bar of the Hemp Hotel. This is where many of Larry’s friends hang out. Sir Michael’s a regular. There was a Rasta-looking guy named Banta tending bar when we got there. His hair was gathered under a large knitted cap. 

As I found later, Banta isn’t Rasta. He is African, raised in Germany, but doesn’t care for the German language so he came here to study at the University of Utrecht in an all-English degree course.

The trip back to the apartment was without serious incident. I know this because I woke up there with nothing broken or bleeding. Love to all.

Harry