The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

For those who don’t know, some serious and heavy shit went down at Lowlands this year. To cut a long story short, myself and Andy ended up getting caught with quite a lot of pills, and as a consequence were required to carry out 35 hours of community service each. Nightmare, I know.

The time has finally come around for making a start with it (for me, anyway; Andy has been stalling the authorities). I was obviously pretty apprehensive about this, but also at the same time really keen to get it over with. 35 hours ain’t so much, and almost worth it for the relief that will hopefully come when it is done. Also, to put a further positive spin on it, I was actually in a sense looking forward to it since it would give be some valuable practice with speaking Dutch in a totally immersive way; this is something I have been feeling the lack of quite a lot. Wouldn’t have planned for it to happen in quite this way, but there you go.

Began on Tuesday afternoon with an introductory lecture; this in fact counted for 2 hours of the punishment, so I can’t really complain about that. Especially since I was still pretty knackered after being up ’til 9am from the night before.

The real work began on Wednesday morning, when those lucky souls paying their debt to society (including me) were required to turn up at a drab-looking building in Oud-Zuid at 8am. After handing in our mobile phones and any other electrical equipment we were then x-rayed airport-style; this to detect both mobiles and also of course weapons. We were issued later with a variety of hand and power tools, with which we could have quite easily attacked people/each other, but it did not seem appopriate to point out this inconsistency.

Next, we handed in our normal shoes in exchange for some big fuck-off steel toecaps. Nice one. Finally we were called out of the building in teams and taken in a fleet of minibuses to various work locations all over the city and beyond. It is worth pointing out that all this fannying around, plus the time in the buses, plus the one 1/4 hour and one 1/2 hour break during the day, plus more fannying around at end all counted towards the time, so in reality an 8-hour day consisted of about 5 1/2 hours of actual work. Not bad.

Our first few days were spent in the Amstelpark in the south of the city. The weather was beautiful, the work not too taxing, and the foreman pretty easy-going, so I can’t say it was half as bad as it could have been. The wee canteen at the park depot which we were allowed to use had one big beast of a coffee machine, and free soup in a whole range of flavours, so in fact I would say that was a lot more fun than a lot of real jobs that I have done. Except that you don’t get paid, naturally.

This is the Netherlands, of course, so I suppose none of this should be all that surprising. What really took the biscuit is when we were asked to pull the nettles out between some plants. We had been issued with thick gloves, but all the same a few people ended up with one or two wee stings.

On discovering this, the foreman immediately stopped work, and announced that there would be no more nettles picked unless he was able to source some thicker gloves. What a bunch of pussies, for God’s sake! This is supposed to be punishment! Sometimes they take this softly-softly-cuddly-liberal thing a bit too far. And I’m the criminal here.

I particularly enjoyed (yes, I would say enjoyed) the task that took up most of Thursday; there was a small corner of the park which was tiled with concrete slabs, complete with two benches and a waste bin. For whatever reason, no-one seemed to be using this area, and so it had been decided to dig up all the slabs and the sand underneath, remove the street furniture, and return it to being grassy. Even between six of us it was quite a task to get all this done, but at the end of the day there stood a great fuck-off hole in the ground (see below), a huge pile of slabs, and a small mountain of sand. I’m not ashamed to say that I felt quite proud of what had been done. That’s rehabilitation for you.

So, 26 of 35 hours done. Still a day and a bit to go, but the end is in sight.

Am I sorry? Have I learned my lesson? Not really. That probably sounds unbelievably arrogant, but it’s the truth. I cannot accept that being caught with recreational drugs for personal consumption can possibly be placed in the same category as petty theft, violence and other such activities. I understand that the proceeds from this business find their way into other unsavoury places, and that does make me feel uncomfortable, but we live in one hell of a fucked-up society when people have to go through this sort of thing for having a few pills whilst alcohol, the cause of so many fights, broken homes, broken bones, and early deaths remains legal, taxable, and universally available. Open your eyes, people.

So no, I’m not in the least bit sorry. I’m just damn sure I’m not getting caught again.

Sometimes a thing happens which is so stupid that even if it is making you angry, it can be really hard not to laugh yourself silly, no matter how inappropriate that might be.

I was working in the Sláinte today until 6pm, and one of the small tasks that needed done before finishing was the refilling of the little metal bowls which have sachets of various sauces for people to put on their chips and so on. I was keen to get finished, and no special importance had been placed on this task before, and so I ended up doing it without perhaps the hugest amount of care and attention. I’m talking about wee plastic packets of Heinz ketchup and mayo, people.

All well and good, finished work and was enjoying a few beers, and had popped out for a joint; at this point Ruairi called me back in to explain that the sauces were not properly aligned, or whatever, and that I would have to do them again. To be fair I can’t really blame him for that, since Liv (the bar manager) would doubtless be on his case otherwise, but at the time I took it in totally the wrong way. I got really pissed off with the situation (I had already had to stay 1/2 an hour later than I was supposed to ‘cos Kerry was late), and ended up leaving the wee metal bowls not being too much neater than they were before. Still raging, I sat down and sipped my beer slowly, trying to calm down as much as I could.

Still in the bar a futher 1/2 hour later, and had again popped out for a joint in an effort to calm the nerves. Of course, fate having a good feel for the ridiculous, out pops Liv to ask if I could help filling up the fucking sauce bowls. You see, there is a proper order…

1. Fritessaus (mayo, sort of).
2. Mayo.
3. Tomato ketchup.
4. Mustard.

They must not on any account be mixed up. Apparently people might possibly then keep them neater when they are using them (although not so far as I have seen).

This time around I no longer felt quite so pissed off, but more as if I was in some strange, bizarre psychological experiment, or maybe an episode of The League of Gentlemen. Or perhaps in one of those churches where people throw their arms up in the air and start dribbling and speaking in tounges.

What I mean is, I just could not for the life of me see how anyone could find something like this even the teeniest bit important. We are not a fucking Michelin-star restaurant. We are an Irish pub that serves basic but tasty pub food at inflated prices to drunken British tourists. No-one cares about the bloody sauces.

The world is full of people like this, I am sure, for whom the most stupid, petty things have become the most important and serious part of their silly little lives. Kids are dying in their thousands from malnutrition and wars in Africa every single day, there is still no cure for cancer, and yet it matters how ketchup sachets sit in a wee steel bowl.

Grow up, for crying out fucking loud.

The time has finally come around to start my studies in Enschede (see Google Maps). Of course, things were bound to start with a wee tiny bit of a fuck-up; in this case it was that I needed to bring my bike with me for a class trip around the town (not to be confused with a Class A trip), and only discovered during the evening before I intended to travel that you can’t take your bike on the train during peak times. Although the university were able to organise accommodation, the office was closed by this point and I needed to be there by 10am the next morning (it’s a 2 hour train journey). So, here were the options, in decreasing order of sensibleness;

1. Go the next morning without bike and beg/steal/buy one when I arrived.
2. Leave after peak time in the morning and just be late.
3. Go tonight with the bike and find a room in a hotel etc.
4. Go tonight and take a tent, find a place in the middle of nowhere and camp. Hope that there are no bulls/angry farmers/crazed rapists about.

Which one did I go for? You know me well enough by now, folks. Tent it was.

Everything went more or less according to plan, actually, except for the fact that I was feeling like shit having been ill for the last few days, and to top it off I had ended up with an eye infection. I only have contact lenses at the moment, no glasses, so the only option to avoid constant agony was to have just one contact lens in. I am really quite short-sighted, and so it was in a state of semi-blindness that I reached Enschede just after 1am on Wednesday and began cycling out of town in search of the wilderness. To avoid too much hassle in the morning I picked a spot not far from the university, and after quite a lot of struggling about (of course I had forgotten the torch) I managed to get the tent up and tried to get some sleep.

This was easier said than done, since due to not being able to see every moving shape in the forest looked like something out of Sleepy Hollow and every twig had me wide awake and staring at every nothingness in the dark. Finally got to sleep, however, but did shit it a little bit when I awoke to see a huge bloody digger coming towards my tent!

It was only the international students who were starting this week, and our introduction was thankfully quite easy on the brain in the form of a tour by bicycle of the town and a visit to some museums and galleries before a bit of Indonesian (I think) food and a short film.

Next day consisted of a trip to Rotterdam, which to my shame I had never previously visited. Very enjoyable visit to the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, complete with huge sculpture of Father Christmas/dwarf/whatever holding a huge dildo/butt-plug/whatever.

Here he is again, from behind.

After this we enjoyed some delicious Surinamese takeaway atop some multicoloured metal turds. The folks in this photo are the other international students (Polish, Georgian, French, Swiss, South Korean and Canadian – quite a mix).

Finally, visited a few galleries in Witte de Withstraat; it’s kind of the centre of the art scene in Rotterdam (or so it appears). A nice touch is the temporary covering of the whole street in pink spots.

Well, that was enough culture for me for one day, and so back it was to Amsterdam – but not before getting a lecture from some NS (Dutch Railways) wanker about trying to take my bike on the train before 6pm – yep, that damn peak hours rule again. Fuckers.

Katie (whom I know from Glasgow) has been living in Amsterdam for over a year now, and so obviously knows the place quite a bit better than I do. She also seems to have a very good instinct for where and when there might be good club nights, and so I have taken to following her advice quite closely on this matter.

When I was working in the Sláinte the other night she had mentioned a night called “Microdixo” at a place neither of us had heard of (Studio 80 on the Rembrandtsplein) which involved some guys making music with GameBoys and Amigas, etc.

Of course, when I heard this I just about wet myself and said, “count me it, robot master!” or something stupid like that. Or maybe I didn’t, but I should have.

Anyways, Thursday came around and I popped round to Katie and Jimmy’s place for a few beers + Jaegermeisters before heading out. As it so happened, Katie had a friend named Jo visiting from England for the weekend. Lovely girl as it turned out; in fact we ended up getting on very well indeed…

Back to things that I am actually going to write about, and the retro-electronica night at Studio 80. Absolutely brilliant – even the guy on the cloakroom was using an old Nintendo controller as a belt! When we arrived there was a guy DJing (on normal records, how boring) while some folks were making visuals on some very bashed and worn looking Commodore Amigas, but what really made things was when this Swedish guy called Random came up on stage with a mixer and a couple of GameBoys. He looked kinda nervous, it must be said, but he more than made up for it with some frantic dancing about while stabbing buttons on the machinery. The sounds were really good, and not just in a this-is-cool-because-it’s-using-fucked-up-old-equipment sort of way, but because it really was the bees. If the same night ends up being on here again I’m definately going. Tops.

Well, one good night like that is nice, but two in one weekend has to be something special. Turns out there was a guy from Glasgow called Alex Smoke playing at a place called 11 (pronounced elf or elif in Dutch), and of course you’ve always gotta go support the home side.

11 is something else. It has that name because it’s on the 11th floor of a building next to Centraal Station, and of course in a city which doesn’t really have a lot of tall buildings that is quite high up. After wandering around over steel bridges around the docks you finally get to the entrance, and then following a long, narrow corridor you enter a large industrial lift (anyone who has ever used Covent Garden tube in London will know what I am talking about). This lift (which had a small crappy stereo playing very good techno in it, nice touch) takes you to the top of the building, and a sensory experience if ever there was one. Fantastic views across the city on all sides, huge projections on the walls above the windows and on horizontal screens above your head, and pounding, pounding techno beats from the sound system at the far end of the room. Before that you pass through a kind of bar/chill-out area which serves as a restaurant during the day and evening, which with tables right next to the huge windows was a great spot to just sit and stare at the canals, churches, and streetlights in the distance. Amsterdam looks even prettier from the air.

The music was excellent when we arrived, but when Alex Smoke came on it got even better. We were right down the front like a bunch of daft groupies, and I have to say that there is something quite engaging about watching someone staring intently at a laptop and twiddling some controls. I know I am getting a bit over-enthusiastic here, but it really was the business.

Went up to him at the end of his set and said, “You fae Glesga? Aye? Well, so am I.”, which is of course the sort of thing that will make a lot of people think “aye, fuck off, wanker”, but in reality he was really cool about it. Goes to show that you can be a great DJ/musician or whatever and still have time to be a decent sort of person. Gave me his email and promised us guesties if he was ever back in town; nice one!

Oh, and as Columbo would say, just one more thing; when we got back from the pub the other night, I came out of the bathroom to find Andy wearing a pair of MY pants on his hied. Looks a stunner, doesn’t he?