Absolutely. Yours truly has just returned from a week of European travel. Sort of. I mean, I was in Europe, and technically I traveled, so, yeah. Well, here's the thing: The plan was that we, my college friend Pig and I, were going to go to Europe for vacation. Her friend Penne was going to Ireland for a wedding and was going to meet us in Belgium. We were going to go to Amsterdam for two days, travel for two days, possibly go to Germany, maybe Denmark or whatever, then come back through Holland on our way back to our flight in Brussels. It was a good plan. Too bad it didn't turn out that way. I should have known when my forty-five minute flight from Reagan National airport in Washington D.C. to Liberty International in Newark, New Jersey almost crashed. The stewardess had just brought the drink cart around, and we were cruising along nicely. I was looking out the window, and we were coming up on this huge patch of clouds. I looked at my friend Pig and was like, "Dude." And she was like, "Whoa." You could hear everyone talking about it. All these clouds. But suddenly, as we flew into them, we hit mad, crazy turbulence, yo! Everyone turned into John Lithgow in that "Twilight Zone" movie in a heartbeat. I looked at Pig and was like, "Dude!!" And she was like, "Whoa!!" I heard the kid behind me scream, "I have to shit! Oh, dear God, I have to shit!" I was so surprised by that I stopped screaming.
Eventually everything righted itself, and we were back on our way to Brussels, Belgium after a short stop in Newark to use the lavatory. The flight over the ocean was long and uneventful. We tried to sleep, but to no avail. Six and half-hours later we landed in Brussels and things started to suck. It was almost nine o'clock in the morning, but where we came from it was almost three in the morning. We hazily shuffled out of the airport having changed our dollars to Euros and dragging our luggage. After a short fifteen-minute escapade trying to figure out how the elevators worked, we somehow managed to buy train tickets to Midi Station in the city of Brussels, where our hotel was. We got on the train and rode. Not too long after we got on the train it stopped. We looked outside and saw lots of signs, but none we knew how to read. We weren't sure if we were supposed to get off, so we did. We eventually discerned that we shouldn't have gotten off. We will do this twice before we get to Midi Station. When we got there, the signs were no easier to read, and there was a great deal more of them. We had the number to the hotel that supposedly would pick us up, free of charge, from the station. We finally found a phone and, you guessed it, the stupid Americans could not figure it out. We put money in it; doesn’t take. We tried to dial out; it won't. All the while, a small LCD screen flashes some message in… Belgian I guess, mocking me. Finally, this old man walked over and tried to help us, but, of course, we had no idea what he was telling us. Suddenly, he reached out his had and grabbed the phone. As he pulls on it, the whole front panel of the phone swings open to expose the inside that has clearly been torn out. Apparently, the LCD was flashing "Out of Order". I'm an idiot. Somehow, by the Grace of God and a taxi driver that could do stunts for "The Fast and the Furious", we made it to our hotel and slept blissfully.
 We met up with Penne later that night and left for Amsterdam the next day. Another adventure in the wonderment of navigating in a city we utterly could not comprehend, and we were in Amsterdam. To get there we had taken a four hour bus ride to get to a train station so we could take the train to get to another station to get a bus that would take us to a place close enough to walk to the campground where we were going to stay. We were at the campground for approximately three minutes and twenty-six seconds before one of us scored a bag of weed from a Jamaican Rastaman. What happened during the course of the rest of the evening, as you may have already guessed, is not entirely clear to me. I do remember sitting on an outdoor patio with he Rastaman, a used bicycle salesman, and a dwarf named Archibald. I woke up the next morning in a tree wearing nothing but my socks and desperately clutching a bicycle seat. After collecting ourselves, we journeyed into town for our first full day in Amsterdam. Much to our liking, almost all of the people in Amsterdam speak American! Praise be to the Dutch God of Sympathy, we could communicate! We got a map and did some sight seeing. Amsterdam is an old, beautiful city. That have street signs older than our country. It was an amazing thing to see: the buildings, the canals, the homeless vagrants. We were having a wonderful time. It was about this time while in search of an Internet café in a place called Dam Square that we were attacked by no less than sixteen Dutch Samurai. We fought valiantly, but they had taken us by surprise. One of the three who were still able to walk made off with Pig's lighter, my bicycle seat, and Penne's wallet. This lack of funds would prove to be the end of our traveling in Europe. Damn Dutch Samurai. We will meet again.
So, thanks to the violent interlude, we were stuck in Amsterdam for the majority of a week. But there was some good news: We were stuck in Amsterdam for the majority of a week! There was plenty to see. We went to the Rijksmuseum where they had paintings from all the Dutch Masters. There was a self-portrait by Van Gogh, "Night Watch" by Rembrandt, and lots of old paintings of naked women. It was fantastic! Across from the "museumsplein", which is Dutch for "Big Fucking Park Behind the Museum", from the Rijksmuseum was the Van Gogh Museum which was also an amazing thing to see. We went to see Ann Frank's house, but she wasn't home. We took a canal tour at night that took us through the Red Light District. No, we didn't stop. But I did wake up the next morning wearing nothing but my socks and desperately clutching something that was most definitely not a bicycle seat. Many pints of Dommelsch and many more fun times later we were back home in the States. We got our luggage and made our way to the Economy Parking Lot where I had left my car. Just as we arrived at the car, three Dutch Samurai parachuted out of the sky!! One of them was brandishing an all too familiar bicycle seat. This is all true, I swear, but if you don't believe me, e-mail me at thefootnote.com, and I'll tell you what happened next …
|
