Amsterdam Redux not Carnaval Den Bosch.

I'd been to Amsterdam before so this trip was redux. There were six of us; my best friends for my Best Friend's Birthday. We were all seedy characters, looking for a cheap and sleazy good time. So we took lodgeings within walking distance of the red light district, meters from the flesh-for-sale and a few streets over from from the back-doors of back-street coffee shops.

It was only for three days, but from the moment we landed, the clock had stopped at two tokes passed stoned. The temptations were all there, inside and outside of peep show windows, clawing at your eyes in glorious colour, seductive, scent zephyrs slipping up your nose as I sauntered passed coffee-shop doors. You shouldn't miss these pleasures in Amsterdam and none of us had the resolve to resist, least of all I. It was a certain as the Amstel flowing to the Zeiter Sea. To not take part in this Dutch heritage would be a disservice to the Dutch themselves.

Naturally, I declared "We simply must go to the tulip market."

I have a beast of a friend in the Netherlands, a real giant of man, and in any other country he would be; of course in the Netherlands he was just tall. Menno Van Dewaterbeemd is a real stand up chap. By a vagarie of life I, an anglo korean had met him, a Netherlander at a St. Patrick's day party in Singapore. I'd set my eyes on a beautiful bar maid, who I self-indulgently thought was firing a salvo of charmed smiles at me. Of course it was a Vintage SDS moment; hopes dashed on the rocks of reality, she was of course seducing the Hercules beside me. Pathetic. It's been much of the same since.

I told him we were coming and he'd given me the heads up on a Dutch festival, Carnaval Den Bosch. To my mind, to miss it would be as bad form as passing by on the tulips. I said me and my pals would be Channel hopping in the morning and he'd fired back 

"Drinking starts at around 12 in the afternoon and you stop when your body forces you too".

This was the kind of cultural experience I liked. A sledge-hammer to the senses, and drink always slips down easier than a royal palace or art museum. I gulped at the idea as if it was Dutch Ambrosia.

We were flying into Amsterdam in the North, a city hunkered down on whats left of the bottom of the zeiter sea. Den Bosch is deep in the interior, at the South end of the Netherlands so across this vast and expansive nation it was an hours commute.

For information regarding the festivals history I turned to Menno who is an overflowing font of Dutch heritage. So whats this Carnaval about? I asked.

"Lent and frogs. They rename the city Oeteldonk for three days; Frog hill. The prince comes. Its a party."

Thanks Menno.

He was right. The fesitval celebrates preparation pre-Lent, Den Bosch was once a marsh and had lots of frogs, there's something to do with a mayor becoming a mosquito too, but I dont understand Dutch and Menno just didnt understand. But, the prince does always attend and it is a real party. With clyspo beats outside, samba girls before your eyes and a beer in hand, I ask you what more do you really need to know?

Well actually I don't know. Because I never actually went to the festival. I never even met my good friend Menno. You see Amsterdam really took me down. I went to one coffee shop and never left. I did what everyone does, got stuck in that tranquil calm haze, consumed by the fog and bogged down in a lethargic mud-mood.

Nevertheless, we were tourists, and I wanted to do some tourisiting. I asked one of my friends if he fancied the Royal Palace.  He gave a beautiful British answer. "Come on Stu, we're only here to see the Hookers, The Coffee-shop and Mc Donalds".

We went to a coffee shop and played some Chess. I was charging up the board, my pike men pawns had carved up all the whites out there and I felt like Wellington at Waterloo, I breathed in the muddy ambience but what I needed was a lung-full of fresh air. I desperately wanted to hire one of those dutch bikes, one of those ones with a big wooden barrow in the front. In Amsterdam you see beautiful young mothers cycling their beautiful children in them. I couldn't find a place to rent one, or to steal one for that matter, but soon it didnt matter, my attention was wavering and I couldn't stop thinking about food. I wanted a Mc'donalds but I thought after such a great series of victories that would be as crass as sleeping with the Hookers, so strolled into FEBO.

FEBOs a dutch fast food chain, for a euro you can buy a crochette. Its like a fish finger, with the fish sucked out and replaced with warm dairylea ham dipper. They are really bad for you, a cardiac arrest snank. They taste sensational though; I'd imagine they taste just like a deep-fried dairyley ham dipper. I brought a fistful of them and got them covered in a peanut butter sauce, which must be a finger linking legacy of the Dutch the Indies.

I took a stroll along the canals and dug my way deep down into warm womb of the red light district. There are girls in the windows, down those alleys, pressing flesh against body length glass. Beautiful women in high heels and lingerie.  They sit on bar stalls and from their long legged perches, call to the prozzy-punters. You'd be a liar if you said their wasn't a shadow of glamor about some of them, but you'd be a fantasist if you said it was anything more than shadows. They tempt you and entice you in the red light district but it is all fake nails tapping on perspex.

The whole city is so beautiful, its romantic but the relight district is something different. The glow of Vices wraps its dull warm light onto hundred of swans in the canals, it pedestrianized streets are just right for a hand in hand evening stroll. It would but the purr-fect place to take a girlfriend. Unless of course she didnt like the idea of hookers but most girls like swans.

They made cats-calls at me, pushed up their breasts between fake nails, rouged-red, it was a masturbatory, ego boost. They made cat-calls to the man next to me, pushed up their breasts between fake nails, rouged-red and it felt like I was the objectified piece of meat. I had to get out, I was drolling, the smell was getting to me and I just couldn't resit it. I'd already had too many but as they say, 'boys will be boys'. I took a bite of another peanut butter covered crochette. Filthy.

I needed to calm down so I went to a Peep show. For two euros I watched a girl grind away. In the top corner of her revolving bed booth was a TV, she watched a game show and  we were both devoid of a passionate libido. From the recesses of my wank box I peered deep into the other open booths. I could see the silhouettes of my friends outlined in the glass. The industrialization of masturbation is a horrible thing to be part of.

On the other hand, The history of sex museum is a triumph of predictability. Unsurprisingly fucking today is still the same as fucking an era ago. There's an abundance of hair in yester-year but there is still enough in old fashion porn to give you the horn. My friend thought it was fake. I didn't understand what he meant. You didnt have to be experienced to know the revolving women with seamen covered bare breasts, was not a real women with seamen covered, bare breasts. I never got to the bottom of it, I think he couldn't get over the exhibits of the museum juxtaposed to the exhibitionism of historical fucking. It was all rather a turn on, for four Europes you get a half-lob. To my mind that's well worth a peep.

  
Amsterdam was all a bit depressing really. I smoked to much, drank to little and to top it all I couldn't look any of the Vice women in the eye. Actually, thats not true, I looked them right in the eye, waited for them to lick there lips and flick the tip of their index figer with their tounge and then looked away. Pathetic.  No mother would ever want her son in these alleys and no father, his daughter in a booth. I was on edge all the time. I kept thinking my old school matron would find me and give me a good thrashing for being a despicable boy. Besides, I was out of the crochettes and I felt a bit sick. The peanut sauce had turned nasty, the deep-fried dairy lea dippers had made my mouth clammy and the sluts were arousing my conscience it was all too sickening for the senses and to little sustanence for the soul.

But, like all Vice I love it and Ill be back next year tragically doing the same again.