Part Three: The Inspiration
Trip Start
Dec 25, 2005
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4
5
Trip End
Jan 03, 2006
Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Monday, January 2, 2006
Every art has its inspiration, every artists is inspired. Holland is no exception. Here the inspiration is intoxicating; both literally and figuratively. People say Las Vegas is "sin city". If Vegas is sin city, then Amsterdam is hell...in a good, happy-go-lucky kind of way. Vegas has the lights and the glitz, the casinos and an occasional street prostitute, but Amsterdam puts all that to shame. Amsterdam has the beer, the pot, the shopping-window-hookers, the casinos, and the lights, all lightly sprinkled throughout the cobblestone streets of history.
Heineken. When one thinks of Holland one often thinks of the green bottle of beer with the smiling 'e'. But like most popular imported beers that we proudly hold out as a cultured status symbol here in the states, it is actually crap in its home country
"Coffee" Shop
. Ok, it tastes great to me, but to be honest, I never stepped foot into a pub that carried Heineken on tap. They each had there own pilsner for sale. Heineken was meant to be bought overseas. I even read somewhere that Heineken was the Dutch equivalent to PBR, which of course means I like it. Being an outsider who holds Heineken beer to a great level of esteem, I had to experience the Heineken Experience.The Heineken Experience is located in the old company brewery. Instead of actually seeing an operational brewery, you visit a beer museum. You start out strolling through a mock old street of Amsterdam, and move on to a short history of the beer and its various advertisement campaigns. The museum also does a great job at giving you a hands on experience (hence the name). You get to become a bottle and go on a virtual ride through the bottling belts, take a ride with the delivery horses, DJ a European club, watch various international Heineken commercials, and, the highlight of the tour, sample THREE pints of Heineken beer; the freshest in the world. And that is not all, you are even given a free Heineken glass as a "thanks for coming" gift.
Of course the beer drinking is not contained to the confines of a museum. The museum is just a warm up to the prevalent beer culture. At least in Amsterdam, pubs are everywhere and there never seems to be a better time to relax with a drink then now. What is different from other beer loving countries I have been to is that the Dutch don't order pints but instead order smaller glasses. Also, the Dutch have a particular way of dealing with the annoying problem of head forming on the top of a freshly poured beer. Instead of constantly pouring out the head, they simply overfill the glass and then, using a special took that looks like a nail filer, simply skim the head off and serve you the beer
Bring that Beer this Way.
. Genius!Most of our drinking was done at a small brown cafe across the street from our hotel, or at our hotel bar, both located next to the infamous red light district. The red light district is another peculiar Dutch creation. Here they have taken the world's oldest profession and simply made it legal. The hookers are business women, and good one's too. No need for pimps, Dutch hookers are self-employed. They simply pay rent for the red lit room by splitting their income with the owner. They spend their working hours scantily clad in a window, shaking their goods for potential customers. When a customer decides to make a purchase, the walk into the room, the girl closes the drapes, and they...well since this is a family site, you can come up with your own story/fantasy of what occurs behind the red curtain (just remember, the more that happens the more it will cost you!) Furthermore, since everything is legal, everything is government regulated. The rooms are surrounded by two-way mirrors where security guards watch everything. What a job, a whore house security guard. Only in Holland...
One night, after a horrible Chinesee dinner, Kara and I decided to go to our brown cafe to get a drink and wash down the dry rice still sticking to our throats. Well, a few drinks turned into several, and after the bartender bought us our final round, we were, well, shall we say, feeling it. It suddenly became a great idea to go next door to the coffeehouse to try a bit of Amsterdam's infamous coffee. We went in, found the menu, lit it up, and made our selection. Who would have known that coffee could come in such a compact state. What were we to do? Eat it? Thow it? It looked like it could pack one hell of a caffeine high. Luckily, a group of Parisians were seated next to us and were kind enough to show us the ways of making coffee out of whatever it was we had purchased
Drinking Beer on the Beach in January
. Just another reason why I love the French. Not all of Holland is so intoxicating. Strangely, some things are nonintoxicating yet somehow inspiringly intoxicating. Take for example, a cool day in January spent on the shore of the North Sea with a good friend from the states. It seems odd. There really isn't much going on, it was cold, and it's only the North Sea. But for some reason it was exactly the way our trip was suppose to end. After the intoxication of an Amsterdam New Year, a walk on the beach, a beer, and a sunset over a foreign land served as an inspiring reminder: This is why we travel.
There's no better way to end one trip then to be inspired to start dreaming of the next.
Visit Klenske, Ink.
