So, yeah, I got back today.
Um, very odd place. Was nice to skin up legally in a coffeeshop, although quite a few are very dingy!
Possibly may have been fortunate and unfortunate in equal measures, but it was a good trip.
To paraphrase;
_I stayed in a truly terrifying hostel.
_Bicycles - no-one warned me about them - or dickheads on mopeds in the cycle lanes without crash helmets doing 50mph or about...
_Trams - Instant harbingers of pedestrian doom!
_Crossing the road - see the above but add in two lanes of cars on the opposite side of the road to that which I'm used to, and the Dutch equivalent of the pelican crossing - a real time, real life game of Russian Roulette with wheeled transport instead of guns and bullets!
_Weed - available in coffeshops - certainly more than I could smoke! Didn't like most of the small coffeeshops I went to, most felt like being locked in a gas chamber. But a strangely happy gas chamber...
_Smoke report - Smokey's Palace had sold out of White Window and White Rhino. Had Blueberry, was fruity. Went out skool and had some Sweet Skunk. That was stronger. Had some Afghan and some Zero Zero hash. My travelling companion rolled an embarrassingly bad spliff with the hash - it burned like a malfunctioning mariners rocket and reduced vision in the aforementioned gas chamber to near dangerous levels for all the clientèle.
Observation - those tiny coffeeshops don't appear to really do fire exits - surely at some point there is going to be a nasty situation...
_Had a few beers in some interesting bars, did like the 'Doors/Jim Morrison' themed bar.
_The red light district. I'm not a moral authority - but I didn't go to partake. It's a regulated industry, and a visual tourist spectacle - but I found it a bit macabre. I did see one of the girls object to a very dumb tourist trying to take her photo. She literally came storming out of her booth and tried to beat him to death with a giant black dildo. He looked very afraid, and rightly so!
_Crime - sadly, I saw a bit of it;
As with any big city, especially with a regular supply of tourist trade, there will be crime. Who is doing it is more complicated to get into, both socially and politically - that's a whole other situation and I won't go into it here, but I witnessed what I think was a mugging in the middle of the Damrak. There was a guy being fleeced by two guys pretending to be police. This I've read is quite a common scam on tourists. As I was stood more or less behind the victim I think it's only because he had more expensive trainers on that they went for him and not me. I have to confess that I carried on walking and I could hear the guy protesting very loudly for quite a while. I was reluctant to stick around to see what the outcome was, I was still slightly shaken by the events of the previous morning;
While myself and my travelling companion were walking into town from our hostel, a guy on a bicycle swerved toward me on the pavement. He swerved back out at the last moment, just enough for him to brush past me. I briefly apologised, assuming it was my fault (and I was already nervous about the bicycles!) but he started to take umbridge and began cursing me in multiple languages. We continued walking - and he began to give pursuit on his bike. Naturally he caught up so we both turned back around. He gestures to me angrily and waves this crackpipe at me, and announces he's just spent his last 10 euros on some crack and I caused him to spill it. Hence, he is claiming I now owe him 10 euros. Then he makes a threatening gesture toward the very heavy bike chain on his shoulder. My travelling companion is something of a scholar of self defence and exotic martial arts, I did wonder if he'd suddenly spring some kind of crazy batshit ninja move on him, but instead he calmly said, "He's a crack-head, mate, run.' And so we legged it. He did briefly give chase on his bike, but thankfully, despite being on drugs he was no Lance Armstrong and gave it up when he realised we weren't slowing down! I give much Kudos to my calm and quick thinking friend. He said he'd considered taking drastic action but he held true to the mantra that in a fight the best place to be, if at all possible, is somewhere else!
Both things - could have ended quite badly for me, but that really is how life goes sometimes. You get action in a city like that. I was fortunate in both cases.
I do wonder, though, how many stoners wonder out of the happy gas chambers and stumble right into the path of the bikes, mopeds and trams. Statistically, it must happen a bit I reckon.
So - yeah, it was pretty full on!
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