The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

Back home they’re marching up and down today in orange sashes and going on about King Billy, but in his homeland they don’t give a toss. How refreshing.

Claudia was over with her small and rather adorable son Ben (who on account of his parentage is fluent in both English and German already, jammy wee prick that he is), and had asked if I had any ideas for child-friendly activities. Now, that kinda rules out quite a lot of things in Amsterdam, but the one obvious option was to take one of these boat trip things around the canals. Quite touristy, I know, but probably worth doing once.

I have to say that it was a good laugh, actually (despite the scorching heat), although after a while one canal pretty much looks like the last. The best bit would be when the thing took a wee punt out onto the IJ (pronounced as in “aye, man”, the kind of river/canal thing that separates Amsterdam from Amsterdam-Noord), and wee Ben went positively over the moon about the huge sailing ship presently moored there. Must be great being able to still get so excited about such things. It’s magic being a wean, so it is.

I was in quite a good mood too today in fact, firstly because of the various bits of good news over the previous few days, and also because we were going to see Dave Clarke (as part of 5 Days Off) at the Melkweg. I was right in the mood for some banging techno, let me tell you.

Before that, however, the Australian girls (Louisa, Holly, and Eliza – sorry if I huvnae spelt that right) had invited us to have dinner in the flat which they were borrowing.

I say flat. I mean more like, really, the inside of Wallpaper & Vogue combined. I kept expecting to see Naomi Campbell glide round the corner in a swimsuit or something. Un-fucking-believable. I’m an interior designer by training, but this was the sort of place that you get to do once in a lifetime;- all white, techno-stylish open plan kitchen/office/dining room/living room, and to top it off it also had a basement which looked like some Roman catacombs or perhaps somewhere where very stylish monks live. Anyway, the girls had made a fantastic dinner, with soup, 3 different kinds of pizza, salad, etc. – all based around pumpkin, which I thought was a nice touch. Apparently it’s an Australian thing, but I’ll have to take their word for it.

The place even had an electric pepper grinder with a wee light on the bottom to light up your soup. How good is that?

Afterwards we sat outside on the banks of the Herengracht and smoked some doob ’til it got dark, which was also nice.

It was around this point that I became aware of a strong desire to own a boat. There were countless small vessels (great word, that) going up and down the canal with groups of half-cut Dutch people all looking quite glamorous, and I have to say that it did all look a good laugh.

The evening was lovely, as I have said, but unfortunately we had made plans to meet Katie and Jimmy (her man) at the Melkweg, so it was with no small measure of regret that we had to take our leave.

I had not been to the Melkweg (it means “Milky Way”, people, but sounds not so daft) before, but I have to say it is pretty nice. Interior-wise it kinda reminded me of the QM for some reason, but without so many goths. Instead there were quite a lot of spangled Dutch people, which is not really all that surprising.

As I have said, it was Dave Clarke we had come to see, but what made my night was that Ellen Allien was also playing without my knowing about it before. Always nice when something like that happens. She is the bees, I tell you, a kind of sassy skinny German electronica princess, and right up my street. Heavily recommended. Apparat who she was playing with is also the shits (in fact his label is called “shitkatapult”, which is I suppose must be the even bigger shits).

Dave Clarke was pretty good as well, but unfortunately by that point I was getting pretty knackered and it was time to take things easy for a bit. Overall a top night, though.

One of the major early headaches we had with the flat is that we could not officially register as living there. Back in old who-gives-a-fuck Scotland, this is not that important (‘cept for buroo and council tax), but here it’s a big deal. Without “inschrijving” you can’t get a SoFi (social security) number, and without that you can’t open a bank account or get a job or basically do anything that natives take for granted. You remain forever a visitor. However, the one good thing that came out of all the hassle with the illegal subletting is that we made a deal with the landlord+lady that in exchange for us being able to stay there legally and register, we would split the extra cost to them of us being able to do so (loss of rental subsidy+higher council tax). It amounts to €35 each extra a month, which I think is probably worth it for an easy life.

Anyways, that finally arranged I was able to go to the “Vreemdelingenpolitie” (foreigners’ police) and register myself. Not wanting to come to any conclusions, but there were two queues, and the one that was going faster and was less full (the one I was in) was made up mainly of white people, and the other one (where people seemed to be waiting endlessly) was mainly non-white. It seems perhaps the Netherlands is picky about which foreigners they would like staying here.

Of course, this is probably a coincidence, since my queue was for EU citizens (who are of course mostly white), and the other for non-EU citizens, but it does make you think.

What really put the tin lid on it was a sign on the wall instructing people how to cough properly (no joke) so as to avoid spreading tuberculosis. I was waiting for the guys in white suits with disinfectant sprays to appear at any moment.

Well, with that unpleasant business out of the way I felt quite elated. I had an official piece of paper saying that I am now a legal resident of the Netherlands, and what’s more I had managed to conduct the whole business in Dutch, much to my surprise. With that and the bike I am beginning to feel properly at home.

Monday came, and I was down on Leidseplein checking my email (we didn’t yet have the internet in the house, and there’s a free WiFi signal there). There was a message from the school I had had the interview with on Friday, where I thought I had performed royally awful. They’d asked me to name some of my favourite contemporary artists, to which due to lack of a sensible answer I replied “well, actually I don’t like any of them”.

So, you can imagine then my surprise when I opened the email and found out that I’d got in. Who’d a’ thunk it? Master of Fine Art! Me, an artist!

Well, that means I’m gonna be in the Netherlands for at least the next 2 years. Madness, eh.

“Come down this Irish pub, there’s a lassie here who used to stay in Glasgow”, says McKenzie.

“All right, then”, I replied, and of course when I got there it turned out it was someone I know – Katie who’s pals wi’ Sam who used to live with Wee Jen who I was at Art School with. Small world, I know. Terrible cliché, but there’s not really another way of putting it. Anyhow, we all got quite steaming and headed down the Leidseplein to watch the World Cup final. I was kinda hoping France would win but didn’t mind too much in any case. Poor old Zidane, though (fanny).

I had got from our house to the Leidseplein by means of my new bike, and so it was that the fateful decision was taken that we would try and get home by means of Andy getting a backy and me pedalling. Our reasoning was that everyone seems to do this here, and now was as good a time as any to get used to it. We were pretty wrecked, right enough, so with hindsight this was a pretty shaky piece of reasoning.

Up the Nassaukade from the Leidseplein was not too tricky, but our troubles started on the home straight along the De Clercqstraat. I was wobbling about something chronic, and gave what I thought was enough room to a pile of bicycles on my left hand side – forgetting of course that Andy was sitting side-saddle on the back. There came a sickening crash as Andy’s right knee and shin collided with the pile of bikes, and I quickly braked and turned around, expecting to see him dead in two halves on the pavement (or at least with a leg featuring an extra knee in it).

Miraculously there seemed to be no major damage done (aside from a huge rip in his jeans), although he was limping a bit for the next few days. He didn’t seem that angry either, which I suppose evens out for the van incident. Nae mare backys been tried since, though.

Friday of the first week was taken up with a trip to Enschede out in the east, where I had an interview for and MFA course. More about that later…

Anyhoos, when I got back there was bad news. Andy and some Australian girls who were staying a few days had been in the flat, and some guy claiming to be from the “Community Police” had been to the door demanding to know whether we lived here, for how long and how much rent we were paying. Now, our landlady had expressly told us NOT to give any details to anyone about our rental agreement, since we were actually subletting without a permit. From what a lot of people have been saying, this is pretty common here, but for some reason they picked us to get official with.

To cut a long story short, the guy demanded that Andy sign a piece of paper stating how much rent we were paying, and also strangely said that we should not tell our landlord+lady. He had a gun, so there was no messing around.

When I got home and found out about this I was naturally quite freaked. We discussed it, but decided in the end that the best bet was to play it straight and come clean to our landlady. Of course when we did so she freaked out too, and it looked for a while like were going to have to move out, but after some investigation it seems that the worst that will come of it is that they will get a fine, which is really their problem I suppose. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, anyhow.

Oh, and on the same day I bought a bike. A snip at €75 – not as cheap as buying a stolen one off a junkie, but more responsible I suppose. My plan is to stay legit ’til someone steals mine, then I’m buying one what’s been nicked. Fair, no?

I’m in love with it already. In fact, I’ve yet to take any buses or trams, it’s just so easy to get about, what with it being so absolutely damn flat.

Of course, nothing in this life is ever absolutely anything, and there are wee, wee slopes, but nothing to break a sweat on. In fact, although my bike has gears it took about a week before I got ’round to trying them out, only to find out that they don’t work. No loss, though.

As I mentioned before, we had 3 Australian girls staying who were put in contact with us by Martin in Prague. Stunning girls, it has to be said (aren’t they all over there?), and really good fun, too. On Friday night it was decided that an essential part of their visit to the ‘dam was to eat some space cake and get royally wired to the moon, which was duly done. We sat in Hunter’s bar in the red light district (one of the few places where you can buy weed and also a good beer), where some lassie was playing absolutely fantastic chilled-out techno at about 8.00pm.

By midnight we were all no’ really quite with it at all. What was keeping me going was this old guy at the table next to us who looked like he had probably arrived in Amsterdam in about 1973 with a rucksack and had never left. Come to think of it, there’s quite a lot of old stoners like that around. Peace, dude.

That was about it for the rest of the weekend, until I got a phone call from Andy on Sunday afternoon…

They say that when you go somewhere new you aren’t really there until you sleep a night there (and that you’re not really home ’til you spend a night in your own bed), and I suppose it’s true. When I woke up around 11am on my first full day I definitely felt a bit more with it in the heid. Sun was shining and the view from our balcony was fantastic, with hunners of herons and ducks and things traipsing around the canal opposite (Kostverlorenvaart), which for its own part was positively buzzing with wee boats and also quite massive boats chuggin’ up and doon.

Andy and his da’ arrived about lunchtime and suddenly the sweaty heat was not so nice as it became time to unload a van-load of furniture and vinyl and bits of computers up 3 flights of stairs. Andy was up for leaving it ’til the next day, but the thought of the whole business was just making me ill so I insisted we do it there and then. Best out of the way being the idea.

That done, and once again pissing with sweat, it was time to crack open the first of the consignment of Bucky that Andy had brought over. Needless to say, by the time it was getting dark outside the whole lot had been tanned and nothing had been unpacked. Got to be done though.

On the subject of Buckfast, there is something of a dark cloud on the horizon; this has been the one toxic substance it seems well nigh impossible to get a hold of here. Andy did some investigating and was told by the proprietor of Arkwright’s British Food Store on the Rozengracht that a good point of contact might be de Bierkoning on the Paleisstraat, but the guy there was very dismissive (“we only sell beer”). This is not true, since when I went in there I distinctly saw big plastic bottles of Strongbow cider. Extensive Googling has not delivered any further leads, so it looks as if we are relying on plebs bringing over suitcases full of the stuff from time to time.

Day one was hectic, naturally, and basically revolved around me running around Partick buying things and getting laundry done. My careful plans were of course screwed up totally by the fact that I was expecting Andy to turn up with a half-empty van ready to pick up my carefully chose pile of “essential” items (basically clothes, guitar, laptop, portfolio, tools, passport), but with an hour before I had to leave for Prestwick there was still no Andy, no van, and no answer on the phone.

The only thing for it was to carefully work out what I really, absolutely could not do without (not a lot really), and take that with me. Arriving sweating like an overweight rapist at the airport (wild guesses going through my head about the amount of excess baggage I was carrying), I eventually reached the check in desk and held my breath. 45 kilogrammes, for a limit of 20. That’s more than half my body weight, and it clocked in at £100 on the fuck-you-for-travelling-on-a-budget-airlineometer. Get tae fuck, was all I could think, except of course for how I’d be well up for stabbing Andy in the eye with a shitty stick.

Luckily for him, however, I had calmed down quite a bit by the time I got off the plane at Schiphol and finally received a text from the boy. Suffice to say that the whole business is too long a story to go into here, involving numerous incomprehensible fuck-ups, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. I certainly wasn’t up for spending my first few days in Amsterdam in a sulk, and so it seemed best to forget about it. Didn’t stop my stuff from still being in a pile in the middle of my room back in Glasgow though, but never mind.

Well, that was the first day, and by the end of it I was ready just to pass out on the floor (a mattress had been provided for this purpose by our thoughtful landlady). Out like a light.