Dutch condiments

Day 1.5 in Amsterdam


After a nice train ride/tram trip to get to our flat in Amsterdam my brother and I set out on a town I once visited back when i was 22. Just about his age actually, seeing that he turns 23 on Saturday. When we first walked out of Amsterdam central station I was eager to see the main square I remember walking out on. Flanked with massive multiple-level bike lots and little tram and bus stations, I remember looking out at huge government buildings, the hotel Victoria, heieneken and amstel signs everywhere, about to set out to find our hostel at approx 8am. This time, things were a little different. There was a massive construction zone directly in front of the station, which definitely changed the aesthetics considerably. When I travel, I am constantly moving. Something I've come to not about myself more this trip than any other. I suppose part of that is due to the fact that I'm traveling this time with someone who can't keep up (nameless).

Note to self: always travel with able bodies.



Once unpacked at our flat, the brosef and I set out to check out the sights and sounds of this crazy city, hitting my former first stop, The Bulldog, for some good coffee, a bite to eat, and some Dutch condiments:)
We then walked around town for probably about an hour or so, just walking for the sake of being in a foreign land and relishing in it. Also, maybe because of the potency of these said Dutch condiments and the fact that I haven't been putting too much on my sandwiches anymore (still with me?). We finally dragged our wanderings back to the flat and crashed.


This morning we strolled down and got some coffee in the midst of the morning commute of bicycles and cars alike. This cat was hanging out in the coffee shop too, so we made friends and decided we could inhabit the place together for a bit.
Later we went to the Rijksmuseum which was nothing short of epic. I got chills on several occasions when you pass by a partition and turn to look at what's hanging on the reverse side only to find yourself looking Rembrandt's "Jan Six" dead in the eyes. Or you stumble onto Vermeer's Amsterdam street corner. The Night Watch? Really? And all this before the Van Gogh museum? And lunch? Jesus age Christ, I still have a couple dueling giants in Paris to deal with (the big L, d'orsay).



Oh yeah, I think somewhere in this whirlwind the heineken brewery tour was thrown into the mix.



Needless to say, already it's been a long day of walking, drinking in art, drinking in beers, sights, sounds, bike bells, chirping walk signals, Dutch, French, German, Italian. I still have to go out tonight with little brother so he can see the red light district and so we can hit up the grasshopper and broadway (comes highly recommended). Im chomping down for a second wind right about now.


Tomorrow we're back to Germany and then to Paris for a birthday dinner and another day filled with art walking, good thing Amsterdam doesn't have an eiffel tower, I'd be fucked.

Location:78 Constrastraat

Planes, trains and...trains

Train travel in Europe has so much more appeal than in the states. Maybe because I don't look at the grime on the platforms or random puddles in the same way. At home clearly it's piss and clearly its a disgusting smelly metro ride on the orange line to Malden. Here it's all still categorized in the feelings of wonder about every new space I encounter. So weird eh? That just because I'm abroad and not home that something that is undeniably gross could get shrugged off as easily as a cold wind with a winter jacket.

I swear I smoke more cigarettes waiting for trains than any place else, save a long car ride perhaps. Add a cup of hot coffee in one free hand and its an inevitable result.


Even though I'm not traveling alone I still get to steal some moments by myself which tend to be quite exquisite. Not that I don't enjoy the time spent with my brother, quite the opposite actually. He and I could thrive together here if that became our situation. It is, unfortunately the polar opposite wi my aunt. And again, to forego any confusion, I love my aunt dearly and would never want to trade her with any other aunt...however travel with her when abroad can be quite difficult. I think to keep this lighter hearted in general, we'll skip a discourse in the "why".



I think half the fun of travel in Europe, especially in a non-romance language speaking country, is the whole "puzzle" aspect of the endeavor. This whole rush of getting there, figuring everything out on the fly, asking helpful (and not so helpful) natives for a little bail out advice. It's just plain exciting. We know where we're trying to get to but its the process of figuring out that how that's really great.

Maybe thats another part of the whole intrigue of travel in Europe. In the states it's so easy and routine that it takes as much thought as a morning dump to get from A to B. I could get to Boston from Rockport if i was in a coma. So that would make euro-travel just shy of being on the level with amphetamine-induced mania.



Sounds pretty much like my day-to-day.

Location:Dortmund hbf, duisburg hbf, Amsterdam

Germans love sparkling apple juice

Seriously!

But with good reason it's goddamn amazing!
I pounded one of these bad Larry's on the metro in seconds and it was outstanding .

Now I'm eating emanthaller Swiss with this apple delight




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Location:Dortmund

Too early for pints?

So after four heinekens a half a Xanax and a vikatin later, I arrive in Dublin a bit groggy but feeling over all well rested and ready to go. After going through some confusing security points and winding halls with bulletproof glass flanked passages, I finally got to my gate for the connecting flight to Dusseldorf. When passing through the passport checkpoint where I got my newest visa stamp, I asked the friendly Irishman if I could in fact get a pint of Guinness somewhere in the airport. He laughed and said it was a bit too early he thought...

Too early? Even for the Irish?

I don't know if it's the pharmies but that seems strange to me.

Next stop, the land of bratwurst and weinerschnitzel.





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Location:Dublin Ireland

And now for something completely different....

2 month long trip to Europe for life seeking/finding art-filled adventure

[Insert manic, life changing job shift here]

So now I'm the GM of a restaurant? I have a salary? A "stabilized schedule?"  Things should be getting pretty sweet right about now eh?

Curious I don't have a snap YES answer for that question right now.

Back when I worked three completely separate and unrelated restaurant jobs and had a crazy all over the map schedule driving here and there on this night and another place that night and yet another place on yet another night, splicing together days off into a night here and a morning here and there to never actually have a legitimate FULL DAY of self preservation/reconciliation/relaxation...I actually had tolerable stress levels and comfortable finances...odd.

Now, I have one job, with one restaurant, with one schedule (that actually has two consecutive days off each week), and one salary.  But what wasn't mentioned in the finest of the fine print was the fact that my hours would increase exponentially, as would my responsibilities, as would what the expectations of my performance, only thing that didn't increase based on an algorithm that uses a positive curve is my financial compensation for all of these factors.  In fact, when its all said and done it looks like an ax murderer got a hold of my pay check with all the slashing thats been done.  So now we've got job based stress going on, financial based stress reaching fever pitch, on top of that whole cyclical self defeating conversation I have with myself from time to time involving the trapped nature of being an artist who needs to eat but can't rely on his work to feed him.......

Life can be so fucking ironic sometimes it should seriously take a break and hit up some old three stooges routines instead.  

The whole process of doing one thing to fuel another thing which is done again to fuel something else and then trickle more down the line until the thing at the end that you really want to fuel gets but a drop.  Why?  I mean seriously?  If most people live their life this way (and by most people I mean those pretty much who are in the work force not by choice but through necessity) then who out there is really happy?  If everyone's doing something else they maybe...well, lets give it the benefit of the doubt and say its tolerable to the point of sometimes even being enjoyable/fulfilling, but otherwise might not like just to give them the means/hows/ways/ability to do what they really love, how in the name of Whoever is that a win-able process???  There are the few who are lucky and hit some hammer at just the right time to resonate and fuel their brighter flames, but for the masses its pretty grim I would surmise.  

This is all quite pessimistic and negative, and typically I'm an optimist, but I'll be fucked if not a pragmatic one at times.  

Remember that suitcase full of money surrounded by bullet-riddled pickup trucks and dead bodies/dogs in that movie with Brolin and Bardem?  Well why not me!? Fuck I don't hunt but I walk in the woods enough.  And at the very least I'd be smart enough to take the goddamn tracking device out of a suitcase filled with money.  How do you not look for something like that in a bag     fulll     of     money.  "Oh yeah no just grabbed my gym bag before I went to the bank and took out 9812943871298471 dollars."  

Anyways, I think I could put it to good use...probably so could a lot of other people.  

Whatever, not holding my breath.  I'm a working man...I keep telling myself.

Over and out 10 4, don't come back

The Edge

Something about long car rides, they get me thinking.  It seems that hurtling along a freeway at 80 mph is the perfect catalyst for brain activity.  No matter if its driver, passenger, full car, or just me, it seems I always slip away into my own head for however long the ride takes.  Not saying I'm just a mute for a whole ride, no one would drive with me.  I chat and make jokes and entertain conversation but I feel a disinvestment in it.  Its hard to fake not being completely immersed in my passing surroundings, save for the fact that my one excuse would be "this is my first time in the desert."


We left Tempe and Phoenix and traveled through a wide open urban/suburban sprawl that seemed to reach for miles, until it subsided to trailer parks and vast empty lots with "for sale, 5000 acres" signs and evidence of some vague preliminary construction.  Little bright green grass farms tapered off into unfilled irrigation ditches and parched sands.  It seemed the desert was the only thing surviving the journey westward towards Joshua Tree.  Soon after we left the city and its withering stretched out fingers we entered complete wilderness.  The road was the only sign of civilization aside from large telephone and electric lines traveling along with us.  It was as if the further we went the more the sand crept up against the shoulders of the interstate, the mountains loomed larger and more comfortably on the horizon, and the more I felt like I was entering a space that was not my own.  


There was a strange comfort in it, unlike an intruder crossing a forbidden threshold.  I felt more like I was being welcomed into the outstretched arms of big sky and big country.

The only sign of man out here is the staccato tick marks of rumble strips. 


While we were at Joshua Tree we had the interesting and pleasurable experience of meeting a couple other fellow climbers who we cooked a fireside dinner with and talked over cold tecates.  Apparently Arizona is crossing out calendar boxes until the day they literally run out of water.  All the while, cafe and sushi-goers in Tempe and Scottsdale alike enjoy misting devices while they dine on outside patios simply to cool them off in the thick of the summer.  Everything in the city limits is so well developed it seems its gotten to the point where its reached a fever pitch of non-sustainability.  While dry cracks and barren lots seem to edge closer inward rather than be stifled and stretched further, the city-goers enjoy water waste in a blissfully decadent and unabashed manner.  To boot, while this waste goes unchecked and seemingly uncared for, the Dept. of Agriculture and the US Gov are buying up water rights for large ski areas, allowing them to use reprocessed water rich in birth control hormones leached from surrounding water waste systems, this disrupts reproductive processes in surrounding ecosystems, most noticeably with amphibians and reptiles in the area.  All the politics aside (something I really want to steer away from), it seems as if nature is slowing creeping back to claim its right on the land.

The sign next to this one said "Reserved Parking Only"

The brink seems like quite an interesting place.

Help! I'm in an Airport

When I was still an adolescent I had this grandiose and romanticized view of flying in airplanes.  Just the sheer idea of flying is exciting enough for an 11 year old.  You hop in the car with mom and dad and a bunch of your stuff in big bags and drive to some big glass building with lots of people and noises and announcements and all of a sudden you're on a huge winged beast hurtling over the earth thousands of feet in the air to some far away land that usually had palm trees and large mascot like characters.  


They say as you get older you gain a certain perspective or wisdom about things.
Flying fucking sucks.


I am currently hanging out in the Gate 7 "lounge" on my computer surrounded by what appears to be a group of equally disinterested and disconcerted people, trying to busy themselves with whatever electronic device they have (for instance there's some kid a few seats down to me with an ipad...this is matt's raging jealous heart).  To make matters worse, at least for this traveler, on my past recent bouts with flying I've endured some mind numbingly painful sinus migraines that have brought me to the brink of my pain threshold.  For this trip I have armed myself with afrin and some type of hardcore headache medicine to hopefully thwart these vomit inducing skull fucks of head aches i've had.  To boot, its 12:03 and my flight doesn't leave until 1:20...


On an up note, when the flight reaches its destination it will have plopped me into Phoenix where a couple of certain friends happen to reside.  Even though now I'm wrought with angst over this pending potential airborne fiasco I'm pretty sure that the end result will be well worth any pain endured or fluids lost.