So David, Adriene and I rented a car and drove up to Holland May 13-16. It was a 4 hour drive that somehow took 6 and a half, but I wasn’t driving (can’t drive a stick) so I don’t question it. The scenery was nice and let’s just say, I’m happy to be alive. David the Spaniard is an iiiiiinteresting driver, and very creative in the fact that he can create new areas in which to drive on a 4-lane highway. Seriously, do they not have roads with lanes in Spain or something? Anyways, the 3 of us got there in one piece…or 3 pieces…whatever… and we stayed at Adriene’s parents’ house in a little Dutch village just outside Utrecht, Holland. It was very cute and her family is really nice. I had a lot of fun talking to her 17-year-old brother Arco, editing science exams her mom had written in English for her students, and tasting the traditional Dutch meals her father made….good stuff.
The first day, as it just happened to be National Windmill Day in Holland, we stopped by an old windmill close to Adriene’s house and joined in the festivities. I know National Windmill Day sounds like such a scream, but it was actually pretty fun. We got to climb up inside and learn all sorts of neat stuff about making flour… Hmmm. And then we drove to Amsterdam! Well as soon as we got out of the car and into the city center, the first place we happened to “wander into” was a coffee shop. Now, if you’ve been living under a rock and aren’t familiar with Amsterdam and its “coffee” shops, or you are my mom or someone like her, let me clarify a bit. “Coffee” is a loosely used term here. I don’t know if you can even order coffee at all in some of Amsterdam’s coffee shops. The main product sold from these business venues is weed, in it’s appallingly numerous forms. Every coffee shop has its own menu of types of weed for sale, each variety named something different like “White Widow” or “Good Times.” Hash is also available for sale, as are brownies and muffins with varying levels of THC baked right in. I, holder of a business degree that I am, was interested in the supply and demand side of this type of business (well I hadn’t studied one quite like this in school, had I?) and asked the bartender all sorts of questions that I’m sure he was annoyed with by the time we left. Turns out that the coffee shops get their supplies from various growers throughout Holland who package it themselves and bring it in for sale. Even the muffins are made by the growers and brought in…interesting, huh?
After the coffee shop, we wandered into a…dang, can’t remember what they call them now…place where you can buy bongs, pipes, etc, and guess what, shrooms! Now this was interesting. Set up next to the shelves covered in various brightly colored smoking paraphernalia was a giant glass-front refrigerator full of packaged shrooms. And of course, there were just as many varieties of them as there were of weed. It’s pretty funny too, because you can talk to whoever is working in there and ask them all sorts of questions and they really know all about them. They talk to you like a pharmacist would in telling you how to take them, what to do before and after taking them, what to do if you have a “bad trip”, etc etc.
So after our visits to the drug shops where varying items may or may not have been purchased by some or no members of our group, it was off to the Red Light District. It’s not really what I had imagined from all the stories I’d been told, but nonetheless, amusing. The district is actually in a nice little part of Amsterdam. Okay it’s not 5th Avenue, but there is a typical Amsterdam Canal running down the center of the main street, there are some nice old buildings, and lots of lovely trees all around…quite a nice framework actually for the business that goes on there, and if you didn’t stare directly at the windows on the fronts of the buildings, from a distance, one might think it was a nice, quiet neighborhood. Of course, it was also the middle of the day when we walked through, but, anyways… business was still going on, I guess there’s a good enough demand for hookers at 3pm to keep those red lights a-burnin’ (I always come back to this business crap, don’t I?) But let me just tell you, it’s possible to find ANY type of girl there that could possibly interest someone…and ladies, around the corner from the main street there is plenty of action for you as well, though there aren’t any naked men displayed in the windows like the girls are…I’m not sure why, but life’s just unfair sometimes isn’t it? Well actually, now that I think about it, it’s probably a good thing that there aren’t naked men prancing around in the windows…eww. But the Red Light District really does seem to be catered to both men and women. After the bouncer of a club with male dancers shouted at us, “ladies, come get a big dick!” I was sure of it.
I wish I could say that after that we did something like we went to a museum or took a boat ride down one of the canals, or something remotely culturally enriching, but really, I can’t. We did go shopping for a bit (no, not back to the coffee shops), but that was about it. We were pretty tired with all the excitement of drugs and hookers that had controlled most of our day, so we got a nice Dutch dinner and went back to Adriene’s house and crashed.
The next day we took a whirlwind tour of what is seemingly the rest of Holland (it’s not that big of a place ya know), and we went to 3 cities in one day. First we checked out The Hague where Holland’s government buildings are. It’s a really interesting city actually. Lots of very modern buildings and lots of neat things to look at. We went to the beach there, as The Hague is right on the North Sea, and even though it was still too cool to give up our jackets, it was really very nice. It’s always good to get some fresh sea air and dig your toes in the sand. It also happened that the big national sand sculpture contest was going on and we got to see some really neat ones. After a stroll on the beach, a couple of sand fights, and some “hand and face tanning” we went to Delft, a really cute old city. It was a quick trip through as we only went to the old square and ate “poffertjes,” a very tasty traditional Dutch dish which is basically baby pancakes covered in whipped cream, powdered sugar, and strawberries. Quite a nice afternoon snack. And as it turns out, we actually ate poffertjes at the very same place as President Clinton when he went to Holland during his presidency…pretty nifty, huh? After Delft it was a late afternoon trek to Rotterdam where Adriene goes to school. She gave us a quick tour driving through the city and pointing out different things, it’s always nice with a native. We stopped at Rotterdam’s main bridge and I saw the place where, back in the day, the Dutch people (including some of my ancestors probably) got on ships to come to America. And that just about wrapped it up. The next day we took a little drive through the Dutch countryside and saw a lot of milk cows, farmhouses with thatch roofs, and more windmills. Then we bought some tulip bulbs (how can you not when you go to tulip mecca?), packed it in and drove home…this time taking only 4 hours with my maps and navigational expertise.
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