The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

I remember (faintly) being in the Sláinte (an Irish bar on the Warmoesstraat) last Saturday night and asking if they still needed bar staff, since there was a sign in the window. Now, I have been working op afstand (remotely) doing some web programming work for my old boss back home, so I don’t really need a job here at the moment. Unfortunately though, as is so typical here, there is a complication. In order to qualify for student finance in the Netherlands, I need to be working (and thus paying taxes) for a Dutch company for at least 32 hours per month. Clearly my existing job would not qualify in this regard.

What I needed to do then was find something easy and flexible for 8 hours a week, and some bar work sounded ideal. After working on and off in various pubs in Glasgow many years ago I had told myself that I would never do it again, but circumstances are different now. There are a lot of things I would not want to be doing back home which I don’t mind here, because they are a means to an end; the end being sucessfully settling down and being at home in another country.

I was quite pleased then when on Monday afternoon I got a phone call asking me if I could start the next day. In a sense this is exactly the sort of thing I had hoped to avoid here, ie working alongside other foreigners and speaking English the whole time, but since there is a bit of (financial) urgency about the matter, it will have to do for the moment. As it happens, the first few days have been a really good laugh; all the other staff are pretty sound, and when it gets busy and everybody (well, me anyway) starts dancing around like idiots behind the bar it doesn’t really feel like work at all. And at only €6,50 (about £4.60) per hour it doesn’t really pay like it either, unfortunately.

I am getting a bit tired of writing about every night of getting in a right old state and all the consequences that follow, and so from now on I will only do so when something interesting has come of it. This does not mean that I am getting old, though.

Ended up at a really good club night last night (Saturday) at the Westergasfabriek, a large former industrial site not far to the north of where we live. Nothing much to report there, except that it ended up being one of those nights that seamlessly blend into the next morning and then afternoon. Found myself amongst a bunch of randoms next to a canal (Haarlemmervaart), the number of whom gradually decreased until there was just myself and a very nice bunch of folks from Leiden, who strangely enough included a guy from Shetland. The Scots get everywhere, it seems.

Anyway, it occurs to me that as September approaches there will not be too many of these opportunities to let the weekend go by in the sunshine, slowly sipping a cold beer, and talking about nonsense to people you hardly know. This in mind, I intend to make the best of it while it’s still possible before the wind begins to howl in from the North Sea and winter stretches its icy tenticles over Holland’s flat and empty interior. I’ve been here in December, and it ain’t too cosy.

Lowlands this weekend. Loads of great bands, some nonsense, a bit of camping in the sun. Well, that was the plan, but things didn’t quite work out like that. I am not going to try and pretend that any of this is anybody’s fault but ours, but nevertheless I do think we were a wee bit unlucky. Read on, kiddies.

It all started when we decided that an essential part of the weekend was to purchase a very large quantity of class A’s in advance (24 in fact), so that there would be no fannying around inside having to ask folk (although from last year’s experience it wouldnae have been too much hassle). We had taken precautions, having split the stash up into two lots, heavily wrapped in plastic, which were gonna get stuffed doon the old boxer shorts/shoes/etc. shortly before the security check so as to avoid detection.

Where things started to go wrong was when we did the split just in front of the entrance, in the middle of an open field, where of course anybody with a sharp enough eye would have had a good chance of spotting what was going on. Sure enough, just as we had done the swap, two plain-clothes polis sidled up and said to Andy,

“What did you just put in your shoe, son?”

My heart sank. Things were obviously looking bad.

To cut a very long, boring, and jobby-inducing story short, we ended up at the on-site police station for about 3 and a half hours, during which time we spoke to god-knows-how-many polis, prosecutors, and parole officers, before we discovered our fate.

We each have to do 35 hours werkstraf (community service). The alternative was a €540 fine, so on balance I would say that’s not too bad. We were also banned from the festival for 24 hours, but allowed back into the campsite, which was pretty generous in my opinion. None of that back in the UK, I tell you!

And the irony of it was, I still had 12 pills down my pants! Fannies! I guess cops are equally dumb everywhere (but then I’m not one to talk).

OK, so things were looking up again. A day hanging around the campsite worked out not too bad actually, since there was a big crowd of folk we know from Amsterdam getting steadily more wellied by the minute along with us, and of course we had a great story to tell. Laura turned up around tea time, and for some reason didn’t seem all that surprised by what had happened. Hmmm.

This, folks, is when the story gets really dumb.

24 hours had passed, and it was now 1am Saturday morning. We headed down to reception to get our crappy plastic wristbands exchanged for proper ones so that we could get into the festival itself.

But of course I. Still. Had. Pills.

In.

My.

Pocket.

Yes, I am a total, unrepentant, fanny. There’s nothing more I can say about it.

Suffice to say, they got found, of course (security couldn’t actually believe it), we got arrested again, and back to the police station. This time there was no niceties, just some harsh words and a €270 fine (it’s €45 a pill, but thankfully quite a few had been necked), then an unceremonious dumping by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere without our tents or indeed anything.

“Come back on Monday if you want your stuff”, they said, before speeding off like the KGB down an East German autobahn. I screamed after them that I was going to go home and pray for their worthless souls, because the Lord God had surely forsaken them.

Of course, by this point there was nothing to lose. It was decided that we were going to get back in to this damn festival come hell or high water, and so after a number of hours that I really can’t remember we eventually managed to sneak in under the fence – a stone’s throw from our tent, no less! (Laura’s Scottish flag on the end of a long broken tent pole was a lifesaver in this respect).

The folks back at the camp couldn’t quite seem to decide if we were the worst idiots in the world, or legends made flesh and blood, but it didn’t matter. Soon we were back into the swing of things, and even the torrential rain wasnae too bad thanks to the fisherman’s gear we had bought before leaving (so that was one sensible thing, at least).

The next day or so is a bit of a blur, but come Sunday afternoon we had our next bit of luck. Obviously it was looking like we were never actually going to get into the festival site itself, but just as we were walking around in a bit of a daze we saw a kind of fire exit route that seemed to be open and not really guarded. We then just sauntered on in, with Andy distracting the poor girl manning the entrance to the site by shouting “DO YOU KNOW WHERE I CAN HIRE A BICYCLE???”. It worked. We were in! Ya dancer!

So, we did get to see some bands after all. Belle & Sebastian were amazing, Artic Monkeys were no bad, and even Muse I could deal with. Highlight for me was the lot of us in a strange shed-like thing in the sky doing karaoke (I cannae sing), then wandering about in our yellow overalls staying dry while it chucked it down. That’s what festivals are for, I say!

So, criminal record, werkstraf, fine, missed half the bands (or more), but overall quite a laugh. Cannae wait ’til next year!

Was in the pub today and a guy who said he was an artist wanted to take a picture of me sideways on. He said that I was “the perfect likeness of St. Jacob”.

Now, I’d never heard of old Jaekie-boy before, but apparently he was quite famous for wrestling an angel. Make your own mind up whether I look anything like him, ’cause I don’t really think I do.

Arrived back to find a letter informing me that my new Dutch bank account had finally been opened, and that I could collect my card. I have gone on about most of this before, but here is a brief summary of the shite needed to be gone through to get to this stage;-

• Find Vreemdelingenpolitie (miles away on the other side of town), discover that further documents were needed.
• Get photocopy of landlord’s passport. Return to Vreemdelingenpolitie and fill out form.
• Wait 5 days.
• Receive letter confirming registered status.
• Phone Belastingdienst to request appointment to get SoFi number.
• Wait 2 days.
• Belastingdienst phone back with date of appointment.
• Wait 3 days.
• Go to Belastingdienst. Fill out form.
• Go to bank, stand in line for ages only to find that if you are foreign you cannot open an account at this branch, only at a larger one in the city centre.
• Find larger bank, stand in line again. Fill out form.
• Wait 5 days.
• Receive letter saying that bank card + PIN are available for collection at a branch of the post office which seems to have been chosen at random (not a major branch, nowhere near where I live).
• Collect card + PIN.
• Done!

It’s not as if it’s ever gonna have any money in it, though.

After a lot of fannying around waiting for buses and then a train journey that never seemed to end we arrived back in Prague. I was personally feeling like a sack of shit after the previous night’s lack of sleep and from having the runs, so decided to hit the hay early. Slept the clock around, so it was probably the right decision.

Still not 100% on Saturday, but managed a wee wander ’round the streets nearby. Wasn’t really in the mood to go visit things, but saw some interesting bits and pieces anyway, including the city’s TV tower, complete with babies crawling all over it.

Martin took us to to a bar later on which involved descending what seemed like a endless series of tunnels under the ground, until we were probably in danger of running into flowing magma or something, but pretty nice nonetheless. You’d be fucked in the event of a fire, though. Best not to think about that.

Not much time to do things on Sunday (and ran out of money, anyway), but we did manage a visit to an excellent little veggie café/restaurant place, with the biggest portions you could ask for, and damn tasty too. Certainly a very nice way to end the trip.

3/4 hours delayed on the flight home (and having ran out of clean clothes I stank like a tramp), but after the disaster of the outward flight I could live with that. Back in the ‘dam, clean clothes and a shower. Perfect.

Well, the first days on the river went pretty good, actually. My slight nagging fear was that I would be just unforgivably bad at it, but this didn’t seem to be the case for anyone, which was nice. There’s not too much more to say about it than that, except that were was plenty getting drunk and falling in the river, and quite a lot of this fried cheese thing that they seem to eat a lot of here. The options for veggies were of course a bit limited, but if it came to it I could live on this sort of thing if nothing else. Day 3 was quite short, and we arrived early-ish in Čheský Krumlov, the main town on our route. It’s a bonny wee place, with little cobbled streets and a large castle of the type that the word “picturesque” is likely designed for. The Vltava snakes through it in a double-S pattern.

After some food at a wee random restaurant and some wandering around we had a few drinks at a place selling the most enormous cocktails imaginable (see pictures).

Apparently there were some dancing bears on show but I was feeling a bit paranoid at the time and so didn’t go out of fear that it would send me over the edge slightly, although I wished later I had gone for a look. It’s not really the sort of thing you come across in western Europe, so you gotta see them really.

Later on a gypsy band (with real, live gypsies, I think) were playing in a hostel in the centre of town. They reminded me of the band I saw in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, and produced about the same sort of reaction – everyone was jumping around like mad pieces and having a great time of it. Magic stuff.

From then on things were a little bit downhill, though. By the next morning a few people had already begun to develop the runs, and to make matters worse it had decided to start pissing it down no end. There wasn’t much to do though except give it laldy anyway and motor down the river shouting maniacally at the heavens all the time, which is what we did.

By about lunchtime we were all pretty much soaked through, especially dipshit me who had not thought to bring any waterproofs or a jacket (they’re all back in Scotland, anyway), and so it was obviously with quite a sign of relief that we saw a small collection of huts by the riverside with a barbeque going and a counter selling strong spirits.

We huddled together like penguins at feeding time underneath a small tarpaulin roof, and it was by total luck that they had a CD of the cheesiest 50’s/60’s-style rock ‘n roll hits on; perfect for this sort of weather. Even Cliff Richard sounded good.

It was decided that a large bottle of rum should be bought and passed round, which it was, but since this did seem to be having the correct effect of warming folk up a bit it was then decided to buy another one for the road. Of course the consequences of this don’t need explaining.

About an hour or so after this myself and Roddy were paddling along, pissed out of our nuts, and I stupidly pointed out that we were about the only ones who hadnae capsized yet. Of course about 2 minutes later we were in the water, and it looked for a wee minute like my bag had got lost. In the last half an hour or so after this ’til we reached the campsite we had to help fish out another canoe from the murky deep, and capsized ourselves again going over a wier (or as Roddy had taken to calling them, a “yes!!!”). Canoe sunk to the bottom and almost getting carried away halfway to Germany, Roddy’s tent and my watertight barrel already almost out of sight in the distance.

By some miracle both were picked up by some folks on a raft up ahead, and we all managed it to the campsite pretty much in one piece. Unfortunately my barrel was not so watertight as we had been lead to believe, and so I did not have a single dry piece of clothing on me, which meant quite a lot of scabbing off of people so as to avoid hypothermia.

The general agreement at this point was “fuck camping”, and Martin arranged instead for us to sleep in an old school hall in the town. This seemed like a good idea, but because I hadn’t brought a rollmat and the floor was timber, it made for about the most uncomfortable night’s sleep I can ever remember. At about 5 in the morning I went wandering round the depths of the old Soviet-era building and eventually found a cushion just big enough to crawl on top of in a foetal position, which in the end was better than nothing. I suppose it was a bit like the TV pictures you see of people camping in gymnasiums after hurricanes or whatever.

After a journey of about 3 and a half hours (which seemed to cost about £3/€4) we arrived at our starting point way up the river near the Austrian border. As I suppose can be expected there was quite a lot of hanging around not really knowing what the fuck was going on, but we finally got (slowly) underway.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves…