Below Belief

We take advantage of our hospitable accommodation and sleep in late but my toothache and both our hungers eventually force us to rise and head for the big city. We enjoy a large lunch at a pizzeria close to the centre. Chris can’t convince the bank to give him any money on his Cirrus card, so he settles for some of mine instead. We relax and watch the strange world go by.
At 2pm we meet up with Sandra and Christian, who have spent the morning enrolling at University. We thought they would make good tour guides but they manage to get us totally lost and are blatantly making up all the stories they tell us about the places we see. Leaving the Dam Square we move into a singularly less salubrious area of the city without which no visit to Amsterdam would be complete. Young black women wait impatiently for their fare behind glass doors for men with money and crazy desires. It’s all a bit clinical and reminds me of a zoo or a rehabilitation centre for unwanted dogs. Amsterdam, it seems, has a thriving second hand dog trade.
We take a trip around a market which, for the traders, seems to involve trying to sell the contents of your attic spread out on a very large rug. We all agree that some of the items – carved statues, african clothes and jewellery – look beautiful in their native market setting but would be regrettably and rather awkwardly out of place at home. Besides which the start of the holiday is the most inappropriate time to start collecting heavy souvenirs however ethnic they might be. Tired of the entrepreneurial bustle we manage to escape without buying anything and go for a beer in the Vandal park. It’s late afternoon, the sun is warm and the company nice.
At the station where we book couchettes for the night train to Berlin, I put my foot in it by making brash comments about Americans being shallow and superficial. We laugh at our own ‘Gee honey, is that cute?’ impressions, but the smile is entirely on the other side of the face when the couple sat next to us start talking and it becomes obvious they are actually American. Time for a quick exit. The rest of our time is spent eating a meal in the flat and watching some strange and dislocated Dutch film punctuated by Falko’s loud telephone manner.
At the station, feeling ready to make the first real step on our journey, we join four other British travellers waiting on the platform and while away the time trying to get rid of beggars wanting our last Dutch coins which, as we try to explain, we have already carefully invested in the chocolate industry.Two of our fellow travellers are Natasha and Stuart, Geography graduates from QMW who will share our compartment tonight and seem to be following a broadly similar route to us although they have deviated through Brugge and Brussels. Rain has accompanied them so far but they have plenty of stories to tell. We play cards and swap tales for a while before crashing on our bunks.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 31st, 1996 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.