Man, We couldn’t have had shittier digs…

Let me preface this post by saying I am alive, well and back home in London. Despite the horrifying events that happened to our group of seven, we all survived the weekend, so please- no sympathy. Before I set a completely negative tone, I want to make it clear that with the smallest bit of hindsight, Amsterdam was one of the funniest, scariest and most ridiculous weekends of my life. That being said, I believe that the law of entropy was the only constant in our entire weekend. Onwards.


Thursday 9/20/2007. Heathrow→ Schipol. Delayed several hours.

Even though it’s only a 40-minute flight from Heathrow Airport, we are delayed so long that we arrive in Amsterdam after midnight. Not brave enough to attempt the trains so late at night, we hop into a cab that gets very lost trying to find the “hotel” cough hostel. I’m not gonna lie, I almost wish we hadn’t found the hostel and had to conveniently crash at the “plush and ritzy” Ramada Inn, down the block. Our hostel, the Hotel Orfeo, is actually the shittiest place in the entire world. Noah described it well- a Dr. Seuss house whose owner became a meth addict. It was a narrow house with an 8 floor walk up (yes, we were on the 8th floor). The man who ran the hostel was this dirty, unshaven Dutch man- overall it set the tone nicely. After we all paid... cash only (classy joint, eh?) we stepped outside to make fun of our hostel and just laughed about how funny it was going to be sleeping in this “den of iniquity” when, I kid you not, the creepiest man in the entire world approached our circle. I am certain I jumped and I know a few of the boys did too. This guy looks like Van Gogh’s crazy younger brother. Huge orange beard and chest length matted orange hair- the creepiest dude alive. Caveat, I will probably overuse the word “creepy” in the next sentences but it really is the only adjective to describe this man. Anyways, the man proceeds to ask us all our names. With trepidation, we go around and introduce ourselves. He manages to scoff or make some biting remark at all of our names so then Mel pipes up and asks what his is. With this air of importance, he tells us that his name is Nameless. Being immature we joke around and say how happy we are to meet Mr. Less. Unfortunately he doesn’t find this funny. He tells us that he is an outdoor educator from Texas, and gives us this sob story about how he actually is staying in this hostel but he left his key at a café that had already closed for the evening. Creeped out, we say auir voir to Mr. Less and run into our “hostel” but snag in the plan- Nameless follows us in! We grab the “night guard” who informs us not only is Nameless a guest at this crap hole, he is staying in our room! This blog is already getting long so abridged version: Nameless becomes the sole topic of conversation for the next few days. Example, do you think Nameless is here? What kind of childhood did Nameless have? What kind of doodie ball calls himself Nameless? Oh wait, is Nameless going to kill us in our sleep? Turns out he was just a creepy dude named LESLIE. Yes, we checked the hotel register. Leslie, in all of his creepy glory was just the icing on the Hotel Orfeo experience.

Our three day jaunt in Amsterdam is a blur of fantastic Dutch Pancakes (we would all split sweet and savory- they have cheese and mushroom pancakes here! Magical!), Dutch pastries, Van Gogh Museum, the Reijks Museum and trying to go to Ann Frank’s house twice but due to Yom Kippur and a 2.5 hour line not making it into her annex. And of course, the red light district. The RLD, now a tourist destination, felt like "It’s A Small World", the Disney ride, for very, very bad people. You walk up and down the different windows and the ladies wave at you. We were all laughing at how Euro Trashy it was! Despite wanting to gouge my eyes out after walking through the RLD, as with the rest of our trip, we all had the most fun whenever something was weird and out of the ordinary.

Amsterdam is a really fun city to explore but the group consensus was that we pretty much had the city down in about eight hours. But, we also walked everywhere! Canal to canal, pancake house to pancake house we ended up walking the entire city. Echausted,we were all SO excited to return to London and leave the grossness of our hostel behind. Brendan, randomly in the middle of dinner announced that we had some “shitty ass digs” I dont think I have ever laughed so hard I mean the kind of laughing that brings on the tears. In fact, we all agreed that sleeping on a park bench would have been cleaner and more comfortable. That being said, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay anywhere else. Amsterdam was absurd and we all had the best time just goofing around the city and scheming up stories about our new friend, Leslie, or Mr. Nameless.

ps- we went to The Decemberists Concert in Amsterdam. It was SO MUCH FUN. The reason we went to Amsterdam this weekend was to see them in concert. It was at a small venue, the Paradiso, and they were great. amen.