Interrail Europe 2002

Day Eleven (Thur 24th) - This could be Rotterdam, or anywhere?

Woke up around 8am, managed to get to breakfast this time – very boring, very Brussels. The hostel seemed to be bigger than I first thought as there were loads of people down for breakfast, quite a large proportion of wierdos too. I know it’s not in the spirit of travelling to refer to people as wierdos but if you know me well you’d know I’m tolerant of all kinds of people, unfortunately some of the people in the hostel fell way outside my usual boundaries. People who have read my South Africa journal may remember references to ‘The Monkey’, some of the people in the hostel were at least as weird as that. The particular stand-out guy was an almost exact replica of Harry Enfield’s Apologetic German, although I think he was Scandinavian.

After breakfast we packed-up and headed once more for Brussels Nord and got on the 09:55 train bound for Amsterdam, unfortunately the train kept stopping though the announcements seemed to say it only affected passengers for Schiphol Airport. Whilst the train was stopped at a random station somewhere Barrie got off the train to go for a cigarette and asked a woman if she knew what was going on with the train, in amongst her response he heard her clearly say that the train was ‘fecked’. In the end the train terminated at Rotterdam which had apparently been announced but neither myself nor Barrie had interpreted the message correctly, thankfully a friendly Dutch woman let me know what was going on. It felt good to be in Holland, the Dutch are such a friendly bunch.

There was a little bit of chaos at Rotterdam where we changed platform several times and got on and off of the wrong train but in the end we got it sorted and eventually arrived in Amsterdam at around 2pm. Having been to Amsterdam before it was a nice familiar sight entering the city across the harbour – it also felt good to know that we were at the end of the journey, the last city before going home. Having no accommodation prearranged we headed towards the place I stayed before, simple rooms above a pub called Old Nickel, there were no rooms available for two nights so we enquired at a pub on the opposite corner which had rooms above called ‘Hotel International’. A twin room was available for two night so we took it, dumped our stuff then headed out into town in search of pancakes.

We ate in a small place just off of the main shopping area, introducing Barrie to pancakes in the Dutch style – big, thick and savoury. After food we did a little bit of shopping, I bought more CDs but Baz resisted. We continued our shopping by heading for the Red Light District where we went in various shops selling smoking paraphernalia to buy as gifts for friends back home. We went on a self-guided tour around the Hash Museum which is really only worthwhile for the novelty, there’s not really much there unless it’s your primary hobby in which case I guess it provides background info.

After the lure and temptation of the Hash Museum Barrie finally gave in to his urges and found a coffee shop, bought some Thai weed and got steadily monged. Smoking really isn’t my scene so I hung around for a bit and then made several trips to and from the hotel to pick-up / drop-off bits and bobs – it was here I saw a little more of the grubby side of Amsterdam. During my previous visit I hadn’t really noticed this aspect of Amsterdam, obviously there is a lot of seedy business going on but the part which concerned me was that the begging and drug dealing on the streets meant that you couldn’t take a five minute walk without being interrupted by one or the other. I am very liberal in my views and I like the way that the Dutch have such a liberal outlook on drugs but I really think that the local authorities in Amsterdam should do more to control what happens on the streets. Part of the idea behind legalisation is to get drugs off of the street and into regulated premises where things can be controlled, maybe this needs to be extended further with regard to harder drugs.

In the café we saw one guy have a total white-out after his first time smoking, quite amusing for us but less so for him, if he remembers. After Barrie had smoked his fill we wandered around the city, found an English-language bookshop (a Waterstones) and ended-up eating in an Indonesian restaurant called Aneka Rasa. The food was marvellous, I had never eaten any speciality Indonesian dishes before and it was very enjoyable. After food we went back to the hotel to read, write and chill-out.

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