The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

I had received an message on this website a few months ago from my old school friend and former flatmate Sinclair, whom I had not seen for, oh, the best part of seven years. Of course I was really glad to hear from him, but even more pleased when I got an email last week saying that himself and Suzanne, who I have known just as long, would be in Amsterdam this week for a wee break.

Unfortunately I need to be myself in Scotland from this evening until Friday doing some work, so Tuesday night was the only time we could meet. Obviously I was very curious as well as looking forward to seeing them, since it has been so long. Of course people can change a lot in all that time.

As it so happened it was just as if we had seen each other last week, and it was great to hear that life is going well with them. Sinclair tells me he cycles to work every day, which although obviously normal here is quite unusual for Scotland; I was impressed, and hopefully as more people see what a good idea it is it will become more common.

Apparently there was a school reunion recently, which of course I didn’t know about, and it was funny to hear that half the people in our year have kids by now. I feel so un-grown-up. In a good way.

I felt like I should really have done my best to show them the sights of the city, but as it happened we just ended up having a few (rather potent) Belgian beers and chatting away ’til about 4am.

This afternoon we met up once again, nursing sore heads, to see Bodies. This is the show with bits of plasticised dead people which has been touring Europe and beyond for several years now; I have been wanting to go for a long time, and this is its last week in Amsterdam.

Due to this it was pretty crowded, and not cheap at nearly €20 a ticket, but definately worth the visit. Despite what you are seeing it is not gruesome at all, and we agreed that we’d probably learned more in 2 hours than in all the Biology lessons we’d had at school. Did you know that the skin is the heaviest organ of the body, or that the intestines are altogether 6.5m long? And dammit, people are just so complicated inside! I don’t think I would have been much use as a doctor.