Have strippenkaart, will travel
Some quick thoughts on Amsterdam:
* A city of bikes and trams would be a great idea, were it not also full of idiot tourists acting like idiots and wandering aruond like idiots and "getting into the spirit of things" and riding bicycles with stupid "look at me, I haven't ridden a bicycle in fifteen years but I'm *riding a bicycle*" grins on their faces.
* I am a total tourist. You are when you don't speak the language.
* I passed well enough in the university park to be hit up in Dutch for a light. Fortunately "got a light?" is universally understood through pantomime.
* The Dutch are so cool - brutally honest and wryly amused at the idiocy of tourists.
* I am such a tourist: I saw the Van Gogh museum, the Ann Frank House, smoked weed in a coffee-shop, and wandered through the red light district at a safe hour of the early evening.
* Van Gogh - did some nice stuff when he hit his stride, but was too often either hilariously maudlin or simply incompetent. Fortunately all the tourists were gathered around the postcard Van Goghs, and there were heaps of other really brilliant impressionist works to look at. And the stuff on the top floor was great, too - an illustrator called Redon who I didn't know, but was amazing.
* Ann Frank house - formed no sense whatsover of what it was like for Ann Frank, although it seemed a good building to hide an apartment in. Bizarrely labyrinthine. Short on stuff.
* Weed in a coffee shop - Amsterdam weed is kickass. It doesn't help that I still can't roll a joint for shit and ended up smoking ten times what I'd intented simply to thicken out a massive rolling paper. It was sold to me by a wryly avuncular Dutchman so used to the embarassed euphemisms of tourists that when I wanted coffee, it took a second or two to make clear I just meant a cappucino. I accidentally got completely bombed then promptly got lost and wandered around Amsterdam for a few hours.
* Red light district - Like a Disney version of a "wild west saloon". Far less sleazy than the backpacker district. The prostitutes in the window - I don't know. Personally I'd find it more humiliating to stand near-naked in a window while offering myself for sex before hordes of tourists than to actually BE a prostitute. But maybe they're all third generation feminists who see it as street art and are working their way through college. I tend to feel unqualified to have opinions on these sorts of things.
Berlin tomorrow.
* A city of bikes and trams would be a great idea, were it not also full of idiot tourists acting like idiots and wandering aruond like idiots and "getting into the spirit of things" and riding bicycles with stupid "look at me, I haven't ridden a bicycle in fifteen years but I'm *riding a bicycle*" grins on their faces.
* I am a total tourist. You are when you don't speak the language.
* I passed well enough in the university park to be hit up in Dutch for a light. Fortunately "got a light?" is universally understood through pantomime.
* The Dutch are so cool - brutally honest and wryly amused at the idiocy of tourists.
* I am such a tourist: I saw the Van Gogh museum, the Ann Frank House, smoked weed in a coffee-shop, and wandered through the red light district at a safe hour of the early evening.
* Van Gogh - did some nice stuff when he hit his stride, but was too often either hilariously maudlin or simply incompetent. Fortunately all the tourists were gathered around the postcard Van Goghs, and there were heaps of other really brilliant impressionist works to look at. And the stuff on the top floor was great, too - an illustrator called Redon who I didn't know, but was amazing.
* Ann Frank house - formed no sense whatsover of what it was like for Ann Frank, although it seemed a good building to hide an apartment in. Bizarrely labyrinthine. Short on stuff.
* Weed in a coffee shop - Amsterdam weed is kickass. It doesn't help that I still can't roll a joint for shit and ended up smoking ten times what I'd intented simply to thicken out a massive rolling paper. It was sold to me by a wryly avuncular Dutchman so used to the embarassed euphemisms of tourists that when I wanted coffee, it took a second or two to make clear I just meant a cappucino. I accidentally got completely bombed then promptly got lost and wandered around Amsterdam for a few hours.
* Red light district - Like a Disney version of a "wild west saloon". Far less sleazy than the backpacker district. The prostitutes in the window - I don't know. Personally I'd find it more humiliating to stand near-naked in a window while offering myself for sex before hordes of tourists than to actually BE a prostitute. But maybe they're all third generation feminists who see it as street art and are working their way through college. I tend to feel unqualified to have opinions on these sorts of things.
Berlin tomorrow.
posted by Nicholas at
11:35 AM
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