On and on he went as I walked away trying to blend into my surroundings like the invisible man. I’ve never been good at being the center of attention, and this guy was turning us into a Jerry Springer showcase. Luckily for me, he didn’t give chase, because I really wasn’t sure what to do next otherwise. For all I knew the cops in this town might bang both of us up, and that would be a shitty way to start this particular journey.
I did get directions from a decent individual once I had crossed the main road to safety, to a place called The Flying Pig Hostel, which was only about 5 minutes walk from where I was. Fantastic I thought, that sounded exactly like what I was after. Looking back now, I’m sure I only stayed there because of the name of the place, and not any other reason. It would make for funny stories to tell the mates back home. I headed down Niewendijk in the direction I was told, and on the way passed the Porno Supermarket. Holy jezuz… there was more porn in the window front than I had ever seen in Australia in any one place ever before, including some perverted mates private collections. As I stood there gawking at the collection of teenage arse fuck titles at eye height, a family walked past me and the youngest daughter gave me a stern look. I felt a welling up of conservative British bred shame at being caught looking like a dirty perv at huge cocks up young girls bums, but try as I might, I wasn’t able to look away from the window. The funny thing though was that noone else apart from the little girl seemed to care. I may as well have been looking at the mens colognes in the next shop over – which just happened to be a chemist – for all the interest anyone else gave me. It was my first insight into the European attitude toward sexuality.
I found The Flying Pig hostel without any problems thanks to a big well lit sign with the picture of a happy pink pig on it. I was at the door trying to open it with some real manly force because the bloody thing wouldn’t move, when a girl behind me said in a strong germanic accent, “Push ze button”.
“Err… sorry, what”?
“Push ze button… you must push ze button to get inzide”. She was looking at me like you would a monkey in the drivers seat of a car, while pointing to a buzzer panel on the adjacent wall. On it was one big button, with a label underneath saying, PUSH TO GET INSIDE.
The Welcome to Amsterdam. Do smoke too much! The story of my first day and night! by Mentalechoes, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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