I know it must be difficult to believe, but I am bored in Amsterdam. This happens on all work trips. I get stuck sitting in the Internet Café doing my best to make sure that the conference attendees can get to their email, while life in one of the coolest cities in the world continues outside. Wednesday night I set up the Internet Café in the middle of the night, not getting back to my room until 2:30 AM. I was restless and didn’t get to sleep until 4:30. I rose at 6 in order to get some breakfast before I needed to be back at the venue to make sure the computers were ready for the first day of the conference. I don’t usually run around on only ninety minutes of sleep and there are several reasons why that is a good thing.
The first major reason is that I lose all sense of humor and become really difficult to get along with – especially if you are a stranger – more especially if you are a stranger who wants something from me and are trying to get it in a manner that is less than polite.
This one lady sat in the café for two hours bitching about how slow the computers are. I will admit it. My company sends me out in the world with a bunch of clunky machines with the processing power of your average Speak and Spell and they are slow. I have been instrumental in the movement to change this and we are purchasing new machines soon. This is not helpful to me now and I must endure the bitching. I can almost sort of see complaining quickly, acknowledging that I either cannot, or will not improve the situation and moving on with one’s life. I don’t understand sitting there, continuing to live with the source of that which makes you bitch and continuing to bitch for two solid hours. Or maybe I can. I continued to live with the woman I am legally married to for far longer than I really should have…but I digress.
So this woman bitched for two solid hours and several times it occurred to me that I wanted to invite her out for Thai food just for the opportunity to plunge a chopstick into her eye. I’m thinking the left one. I’m thinking I would hear a satisfying POP followed by some squishy sort of sound.
When 4 PM rolled around I was thinking I was about free and began to pick up my stuff. One of the boss’s pals came around and asked if he could use my machine to show a friend something on his USB drive (the Speak and Spell machines won’t recognize a USB drive). As it was one of the boss’s pals I acquiesced and hoped it would be short. It was not short. It was long. It was vacation photos from Guatemala. I almost invited the man out for Thai food. Get a fucking Flickr account, you savage.
When I finally got back to the room I realized that I have only a few nights left in Amsterdam and that my plan to catch an early dinner at the hotel and go straight to bed was a bad one. I pulled out one of my guidebooks and tried to find a cool restaurant. I began to nod off almost immediately. I changed my clothes and went downstairs to the hotel restaurant where I found a bar full of the dudes from the European Forklift Convention. I saw no host type person who could seat me quickly and there was no getting anywhere near the bar. My internal processor couldn’t move as fast as a Speak and Spell so I needed to pause and think for a bit about what options I had. I was considering muscling up to the bar, ordering a glass of wine and asking what one had to do to get some food when I saw a short, round man sitting on the edge of a stool to my left. He had his back to the bar, putting himself on display. This man gave off a vibe that told me he wanted people to look at him. He smoked like people in French movies - I’ve never been to France so I don’t know if people actually smoke this way there – cigarette clutched between thumb and forefinger, palm up. He smoked with the face of a man getting a really good blowjob. He was ecstatic. I knew that if stood there and watched the man much longer I would end up hurting him. I returned to my room.
I gathered my things into my man purse (camera, notebook, something to read) and ventured out, past the convention center, up Ferdinand Bol Street until I found another little Italian-type café. The women that helped me were Dutch. I had mediocre lamb chops washed down with a couple of glasses of mediocre red wine. I ate outside, watching all of the shiny happy Dutch people ride by on their bicycles and I loved every second of it – except the woozy drowsiness that set in after the salad before the lamb came. I had to catch my head before it crashed into the tabletop.
After dinner I walked back to the hotel, stopping at the Night Store for a candy bar and a fizzy citrus drink. A pretty black and orange cat lounged around by the candy bars and I squatted down to pet her. She rubbed herself against my hand and legs, seemingly enjoying our little encounter as much as I did. She (Anna told me that all cats with that sort of coloring are female – I didn’t investigate further) wore a little red string for a collar and I wonder if she isn’t some sort of Kabala Kitty. I don’t even know what that would mean.
Back at the room I read three lines and fell asleep. It was 7 PM. I woke at 10:30, read for an hour and went back to sleep, rising at 5:00 to shower and call Anna. I’ve endured another day in the Internet Café and am about to leave to prepare for dinner at Café Cobra near the Rijksmuseum. Afterwards maybe I can take the tram into the city proper to find a coffee shop and perhaps stroll around the Red Light District for some proper Amsterdam people watching. I think I’m done being bored in Amsterdam.
Thanks for playing.
Photo Credit: I stole this from The Personal Web Site of Heidi Valtonen -- apparently she took it in Amsterdam (Ms. Valtonen: If you stumble upon this and would prefer that I not use your work here, please let me know and I will remove it promptly. Thanks!)
