Amster! Amster! Dam Dam Dam!

So yes, I got stoned in Amsterdam on 4/20. I know, right? Sadly, Brite, my traveling companion on this excursion, did not take to smoking a hash joint (which is what, exactly, anyway? Brite refused to get a straight up weed joint, but I'm confused, because I always thought hash was oil). Anyway, Brite had never had so much as a puff before, and I was sympathetic, because the first time I ever smoked a joint I got wicked paranoid and StonerEx, who had given me the joint (he wasn't my ex at that time, though) was not at all pleased by my negative reaction to it. Yeah. Don't smoke to impress boys. Anyway, so Brite didn't get paranoid, but she got kind of weirded out from being so relaxed (Brite, spends even less time than I being relaxed) and she got hungry, which she didn't like.

Brite: Would stopping at McDonalds make me a pig?
Me: Does tripping over your own feet when you're drunk make you uncoordinated?

But let me back up a little bit. The stoner thing is what you have to talk about up front, but really my trip to Amsterdam was about much more than weed. I also drank a lot of beer.

Friday started with the quintessential mad dash for the train station. The train station is on the other side of town, and we had to catch a seven o clock train for Paris so we could get a ten o clock train for Amsterdam. So we get just outside the building -- around 6:20 -- and I realize I've forgotten my cell phone. This is not cool, for reasons that will become clear. So Brite takes my bag, and I run quick like a bunny up the stairs to my apartment, find the phone amid the black hole chaos of my room, and book it out of there towards the station. I had planned on catching up with Brite, but we took different routes to the train station, so I sprinting and walking and walking and sprinting, and she was hauling all our crap, and we were both "shitting it" -- her Englishicism, not mine -- and then we got to the train station at the same time with like fifteen minutes to spare. This tells you all you need to know about Brite and me.

So we get on the train, and within an hour our next drama starts. You see, Brite and I only confirmed that we were going to Amsterdam as of like, last week. So we didn't think to make hotel reservations until, like, Tuesday. For Friday. For Friday, April 20, in Amsterdam, Holland. Yeah. There was diddly squat online. Duh. Aside from the 4/20 thing, it was also the tulip festival. Right. So we start calling. One of the hostels we call is like, oh, don't worry, we keep 40 beds free, just call us on the morning of your arrival and we'll hook you up. We open at eight. Foolishly, Brite and I figured our problems were more or less solved. So at eight, we start calling, and it's like trying to get tickets for a rock concert. Read: the phone is busy. We call for two hours solid, the phone is never not busy, and at times we are calling literally every two seconds. Amid the laugh riot, we arrive in Paris. Of course, because we live in Normandy, we arrive in Paris Montparnasse, and because we are headed to Amsterdam, we have to depart from Paris Gare du Nord. As you may (or may not) recall, Montparnasse is fucking ginormous, and the Metro is only about six miles from the train part. And a metro ride halfway across town, and then we get to Nord and have to get to the main line trains there, and we have how long to do all this? 40 minutes. Yes. There was a great deal of running and swearing and continuing to dial that stupid hostel, but yes, we did make the train.

We never did get ahold of the stupid hostel, though. So four hours later, when we arrive in Amsterdam, around 2pm, and no place to stay. We buy a map in the train station, have no idea how to use public transportation (I mean, in Amsterdam. Of course I know how to use public transportation in general. As a sidebar, considering I grew up near San Francisco, how completely wrong is it that cable car/trammy things make me nervous? I have this nagging doubt that they can't possibly actually get me where I'm going) so we hoof it over to the hostel. Full. The other hostel. Full. The place that's supposed to hook you up with a hostel when you don't have one. Got nothing. We get rejected by like six or eight other places (a couple of places have like, one bed for one night for eighty euros, and we reject them) until an enterprising young hotel manager tells us to try the tourist office. A boat, we are told. A boat, two beds, two nights, 150 total. We'll take it, we say, convinced that the next stop is the train station or a homeless shelter in Rotterdam.

And let that be a lesson to you -- okay, let that be a lesson to ME -- to search out accommodation well in advance, even if I don't really have to do that when I go to Paris. Must not get complacent during tulip festival. Anyway.

Right, so we got to the boat, we rested, we headed out, there was the aforementioned stoning and eating. On to Saturday.

We went on one of those great New Europe free tours on Saturday -- honestly, I cannot possibly pimp that company enough. I want to work for them. They're the best tours I've ever had -- and we learned all sorts of interesting factoids. Like! The Dutch people had neither last names nor numbers on their houses until they were invaded by Napoleon in the early 1800s. It was very, "Bob [okay, fine, Hans] who owns the bakery with the flying horse on the side, you know, the one on the corner by the big canal" sort of goings on. So that by itself is kind of a fun and cool fact, but then! This bit is hilarious. So Napoleon and the French show up, and they're like "You must all have lazt names! Ooh la la!" and the Dutch are like "Screw this," and the French are like, "You will all show up tomorrow morning to register for last names!" So the Dutch are very resentful and they decide to put one over on the French. So they show up the next morning and, you know, the boring ones are like, "I'm Bob Baker, cause I am one," and then the practical jokers get up and say "I'm Hans Bornnaked." "I'm Gretel Pubichair." And the French don't speak Dutch so they just write it down and the Dutch go home and laugh their asses off. Of course now two hundred years later, and you can tell exactly what kind of sense of humor your great great great great grandparents had.

Hee. I thought that was so awesome. Because I am twelve. We also saw the Red Light District, lots of canals, and the Jewish Quarter. And other stuff that I can't remember, because my brain cells are used up on that Mr. & Mrs. Pubichair thing.

Right, so then Brite and I split up and I headed to the Rijksmuseum, where there are some Rembrandt and Vermeer. And I like Rembrandt, although I wasn't a huge fan of the Nightwatch. And I realized that I really... don't like Vermeer as much as I ought to. It makes me sad, but I just don't see it. His colors are too dark or too bright or too definitive or something. Oh, I like Girl With a Pearl Earring okay -- although that's in Haag somewhere and I haven't seen the real one. But the other stuff... meh. Just a vague feeling of guilt that I don't like it more. But I do like Rembrandt's portrait work really a lot. His trick with faces is inredible.

Anyway, after a rest back on the boat, Brite and I head out for evening fun. We were actually prepped to pay for the Red Light District tour, but we were too late, so we went out for dinner and drinks instead. Dinner was tasty, although we're both fastidiously picky (me: vegetarian plus fish, health food; Brite: meat eater, hates fish, likes food that tastes good) so finding overlap was a little tricky. Asian food ends up the quickest compromise. We hit a couple bars after that; and then wandered around till we found a club. Brite had (understandably) really wanted to go clubbing in Amsterdam, and we'd been told that the clubs got going between eight and eleven. Perfect, we thought. Yeah. This club that we found opened at 11:30, was halfway across the city from the river, and the trams stop at midnight. Nothing daunted, we paid the outrageous cover price, went in, prepared to dance. Nothing. A DJ, very overpriced drinks, and a bartender who told us the scene actually starts around one.

Fuck that, was my reaction, I was falling asleep on the table. So Brite and I negotiated and ended up bailing. We headed up to a neighborhood closer to where we were actually staying -- took the very last tram up to the river -- and found a coffee shop and shared a thai stick. The coffee shop closed at one, but there was a bar next door playing fun dance music. We did the little "Are you up for it?" "Yeah, sort of, I think, are YOU up for it?" dance and ended up going in... and stayed for two hours, because it was awesome, and when we ran out of money, the bartenders gave us our second round for half prices. (There are many annoying and scary things about being a girl and traveling more or less on your own. But one way in which it is excellent is that you can pretty much count on being able to drink approximately twice the amount of booze you can actually afford.)

On Sunday, we shook off our mild to moderate hangovers, and hit the Anne Frank House on the way to the train station. We were kind of rushed, and had all our luggage and that, so we didn't get as much out of it as we could have, but it's incredibly moving even so. It's a big enough house, and nice enough, until you think about eight people living there together and never being able to leave. I reread part of the book when I got back to France, and I'd forgotten how much of it is Anne talking about how everyone is sort of at each other's throats kind of constantly. I can't even imagine it... every time I try, I shiver uncomfortably. I totally love my family -- Anne obviously totally loved hers too -- but we would kill each other. And then you get to the end of the museum and there was the whole display of the diaries and the showing about how they all died, and I got all choked up thinking about how she was my sister's age when she died.

Then there was the train and France and walking home from the train station, but that part's boring. And that was my trip to Amsterdam.