Red Light Rumpus

Where better to get up to depraved shenanigans than the Netherlands. It started out at a place called The Bear or The Wolf or some shit like that.

They are this dope pub-den chain of hangout spots where you can go nuts and enjoy your chocolate (space) cake. The tables even offer free loose-leaf pot in wooden containers with rolling papers. Ashtrays are littered with partially smoked joints, as you can even light up inside (place is a murky haze), although only weed. None of that nicotine, rat poison bullshit.

So, we ate our dainty chocolatey servings of cake and had some stout ales (just me). What you don't get to know beforehand is that more central establishments serve less potent edibles, and that for favourable portions of THC you best seek the outlier, underlying headshops. Thus, with a steady buzz we took to the streets, leaving the Red Light District in the direction our phone told us to go, headed towards one of the highest rated cafés in town. The canals were all fucking beautiful, of course. We even got to check out Van Gogh Museum. Anne Frank House was closed, though.

Eventually, we found our way into the not-so-seedy underbelly of Amsterdam (it's a clean, tasteful city don't you know). But the hidden corners and cobblestone crevices where you may indulge in ol' ganja delight. This time across the pond the coveted grail was prepared in a yum slice of clementine-banana bread, listed at 1g, and I had about 2/3rds of it. We went to dinner, pounded more beer (wine for her), then things took off.

With hindsight, in a smaller animal it might have been a lethal dose. Not where they actually would of died, cause none ever do, but when they sink into the floor, shit their pants and aren't the same for a few weeks after.

Also might I mention that the food over there, throughout the continent, is fucking amazing. Not like the fake, processed crap we pile down our gullets over here. All fresh and delicately prepared and chockfull of flavours and herbs the likes of which you've never even heard of. Outside myself, my girlfriend has never been keen to trying new foods or eating anything much beyond chicken fingers and grilled cheese, and so I think she got the macaroni. What a waste, with all that fine cuisine at your fingertips. Anyhow, the whole place could tell we were stoned and hammered to the next dimension. Narrowly we avoided persecution after knocking a bunch of shit over, spilling spritz and me nearly tumbling downstairs to the loo.

Later, at night we found ourselves trying to get home high as kites, with a dead cellular device and no clue where we were going, beginning with the name of the town we were staying in. Another thing about the Dutch Country, it's a veritable labyrinth connected by rail. The entire nation is one big city-town and per capita among densest populations worldwide.

As was it was pouring rain, frigid as fuck and after a few hours of riding the train about the (lovely) countryside - firsthand insight into Vincent's beloved Wheatfield with Crows - like the drunken vagrants we were, somehow us two managed spot the platform which we recognized from the place we were staying in. Now it was roughly midnight (dinner had been around 7 or 8), and we had not a sausage as to how we would locate the rental, many kilometres bereft. So away we went, charting a course along the well-groomed sidewalks and over-water bridges of the sleepy hamlet.

Ours was a property listed on that oh most holy of sights titled in the vein of wind and the morning meal viz cozy accommodations. But they never actually serve you breakfast in bed, which is kind of horseshit when you think about it. False advertising, if you ask me, a damned marketing scheme. Also, we had the strangest host who was rather adamant about us visiting a quaint, romantic town with him and became quite irritable each time we told him our itinerary was full up, did the chap. He also had pictures of a wife and child up everywhere, who were absent, and we feared maybe they'd been abducted by higher-ups because he'd been tardy on his trafficking-quota at work. No, we did not find this to be very funny as our paranoid, anxiety-stricken brains felt that maybe it made sense. Safe to say we barricaded the door at night with travel bags and other household items at our disposal in the bedroom. Not such a proper thanks to citizens of the country (Canada) that liberated your own in WWII. Like they say, you can't ever trust a Dutchman; Goldmember, Afrojack and the whole bloody lot.

The potential of this intrusion was second only in threat to one other experience of ours in country, being the haggard prostitutes who loiter in brothel gallery windows - that you do your best to avoid making eye-contact with - frumpishly grunting as if to say Wanna make sweet fuck?

Thank heavens that at about two in the morning, stuck out walking the streets blind and wet in the pissing cold rain for two hours, one of the moonlight biker gangs finally stopped for us when we waved. No, not like the posses we have here in 'ol North America. These beauties rally in their friend groups and nuclear family's to get all fucked up and go for a jolly ol' cycle, yodeling their gobbledygook blend of German-English and dinging their bells, helmets strapped and everything having a grand old fucking time. Despite that we'd been asking people about an apartment complex, and not an actual address, which we discovered later, one of these breath-stinking legends got right up in my personal space and managed to point us in the right direction after a verbal spew of which I understood fuck all.

So we got home safe in the end, our temporary landlord a little perturbed by our lateness, and his special friend who had been sharing his room there as well, and no it wasn't his sister. On the other hand, just imagine, how kinky would that be. Thus, we crawled into bed and dozed off into frenzies of psychedelic dream scapes. By default, I suppose, we would be tabling the shrooms tea for a later date. Shops there sell everything to do per drugs, such as kits for cooking and using substances like smack, meth and crack.

The next day, our last abound, we visited a town called Zaanse Schans which was supposed to be like Upper Canada Village, settler-styled and all full of crafty, operational windmills and old shit. Basically, the whole town ended up being a giant chocolate factory where hot chocolate is pure cocoa and nature reeks of fresh brew. How fucking cool is that. Smelt great, too.

Fin