Drug use is on the rise in Amsterdam. I was in a souvenir shop the other day and stopped to look at a complete smoker's kit. It contained rolling papers, roach papers, a joint case and a lighter. This didn't surprise me - I was in a souvenir shop in Amsterdam. What was next to it completely blew my mind. Sold in the same 'kit' style was a mirror, razor, spoon and crack lighter. Are you kidding me?
Kristin, one of my old friends from high school, is visiting Europe right now. In high school we took a class (Model United Nations) solely because there was a week-long trip to the Hague every year. For old time's sake, Kristin and I made a power trip to the Hague. The whole way there we reminisced about fucked up high school stories. And our high school was very fucked up, so there were a lot of stories. I want to tell one. It has nothing to do with Europe, other than the fact the school was in England, but it's really funny.
My chemistry teacher senior year told us about a prank he pulled in college. He stole a chemical, methanol blue, and put a few drops in someone's socks. When the guy wore the socks, the sweat made the blue dye run and when he washed his feet, the water made the chemical set. (Vinegar and lemon juice are the only ways to get it off.) So this poor guy had blue feet and ankles for two months until it finally faded.
I told Kristin I had a great idea. We should put some methanol blue on this guy, Roy's, dick. He was one of those guys who slept with everyone. He had like six kids and kept a log of women. I figured we could get him real drunk at a party or I could make him think I was going to hook up with him (he always tried) and then put a few drops on. Then we could write a warning, supposedly from the school nurse, and slip it in the pile of morning announcements. It would say something about a new STD where your dick turns blue then falls off.
Two hours later, Kristin came up to me in the hallway giggling. She had just finished Physics class and in her backpack she had: methanol blue, methanol orange, methanol green, methanol red, methanol everything. She stole one of every color.
It would've been hilarious had we followed through, but unfortunately this story is very anti-climactic... Kristin had a really big mouth and told a few people. I didn't want Roy to know it was me - we were friends. So all that happened was I spilled it in my backpack, got chemicals all over me for the next couple months and wasted bottles and bottles of vinegar.
I don't think using drugs is that bad. Okay, I should clarify: using soft drugs is not bad... not the hard stuff that turns you into a crackhead like the people I saw in Amsterdam this time.
At 1:00 am everything shuts down in the red light district and everyone gets out quickly. At 1:15 the only people on the street are the ones who sleep on it and the the ones who deal to the ones who sleep on it. At this time of night you look back on your D.A.R.E. classes and understand why they tell you to say "No." You don't want to end up like the lady on the corner with one eye begging for a rock or the guy who's so whacked he can't keep his balance and falls standing still.
"Hell" is what one local called it. At 1:20 am when we were standing on the corner waiting for Meghan (who was God only knows where) a guy asked us what we were doing there. First thought was - beats me, we shouldn't be. But rather than going into a lot of unnecessary information I told him we wanted to see what it was like. "You want to see what hell is like? Take a look around you, it's not good."
It wasn't pretty, but 'hell' is a little harsh. Yeah we were targets for everything, but I didn't feel unsafe. A guy selling tapes asked us to buy something. I told him to go away rather harshly and he said, "Sorry, I'm just working." I felt terrible for brushing him off so badly and was glad when he passed again. I called him over and asked if I could buy something. He was pleased. He offered me coke, heroine, ecstacy, crack, whatever I wanted. I asked for a tape. Apparently no one has ever bought one before.
Every female should walk through the red light district in the middle of the night alone... once. Four of us were wandering around and just before 1:00am I realized I needed to call my mom. I left the group in some bar saying I'd be right back. Well, I wasn't right back - and then I got lost.
After 1am the red light district is a new place. The bars and coffee shops close and the only stores left are prostitute windows, porn shops and live sex shows. They're around all day, but after 1am there are 800 times more. And everyone on the streets is either a hooker or a junky... or a male harassing the hookers and junkies. And then there was me - in a dress. I had so many interesting encounters and offers. The most unusual (for me) was being offered sex by a woman.
For some reason I started running through the streets. I felt the need to exercise and I was in a hurry, so it made sense. A woman stopped me and asked where I was going. I was looking for my friends. She said she'd help and walked with me. I couldn't remember the name of the bar... Dead Rock or Dread Rock or something with a stolen Hard Rock emblem. She said they were bad friends and they had left me. Then she ran her fingers over my hair and stroked my back. She told me about the good time I'd have with her.
I blushed and released the most nervous, uncomfortable, handicapped chuckle I'd ever heard. The sound could've only been made by someone with a hunchback and severe overbite, but somehow it came from me. I had nothing clever to say, which is funny because earlier that day I told Erin I wanted to ask a prostitute how much. I was curious about the going-rate for females with females. Then when it came down to finding out, I had a hunchback laugh and couldn't speak.
All that I know about prostitution rates: Last summer a blow job cost 50 fl ($20). Now with the advent of severe inflation (courtesy of the euro), it's 50 euros ($50). And when you have sex with a prostitute, I'm not sure how much it costs, but I do know she has a timer. You pay a certain amount to have sex until the timer goes off. If it takes longer, you get charged more. I'm not sure how this compares with prostitutes in the states, so if anyone has insight, please share.
Sometimes a certain word or gesture can change a situation or a person's attitude from bad to good. Take for example, the lady at Kinko's who made our American Girls Are Easy business cards. She acted like a total bitch for no reason at all. I complimented her on her nail polish and she warmed up considerably. She apologized for having a bad day and then hooked us up with free internet. This type of thing I understand... I was nice and the kindness was returned. But what happened at McDonald's the other night remains a little unclear.
In Germany there is some law that states that you can't bring food from one establisment into another. (It's hard for me to believe that any country would have such a problem with this that they need a law to enforce it.) In München there is this great little two Euro lasagna stand. It's fast, it's cheap, and it's damn good but there is no place to sit. Fortunately, there is a McDonald's right next door.
I saw a clean table outside of Micky D's and tried to sit down. I think I got to the point where you pull the seat out to sit in it and I was stopped. The guy working told me we couldn't sit down because we weren't eating McDonald's, so we ordered three cokes and a beer. Now we were customers and you don't kick customers out. The guy still wasn't having it. I fought with him for another ten minutes and somehow my fork ended up on the ground. The guy muttered something about me being a typical blonde and walked away.
He wasn't gone long... he came back and handed me a clean fork. Then, I don't know what got into him but he started to hook me up profusely. I had ordered a beer to begin with and then, I swear to god, he brought me a fresh one every twenty minutes for like three hours. I used to work at McDonald's and I never got hooked up like that... I think I even have a date on Saturday.
When you are traveling around Europe with negative $50,000 you find ways to make money. Going out is expensive, but it's one of the necessary parts of life and must be done. Last night we did really well with our frugalness and actually came home with more money than we left with.
We started off at the Hofbrauhaus. Unfortunately it was late and the bar was closing, but we snuck in past the bouncers. Sneaking into a bar that's closing doesn't do you much good if they're no longer serving drinks. But that's the beauty of the Hofbrauhaus: the beers are so big that people drink a third of them, then leave them on the table. We can't stand to see good beer go to waste and they weren't giving us any of our own, so we helped ourselves to the two fullest we could find. It's a little... okay, very... ghetto, but it saved us approximately $12.
We headed to Kunstpark Öst, the home of 40 of the shittiest, most fun nightclubs in the world. Three discos into it I was feeling pretty nice and when all I'm buzzed up I do things I wouldn't attempt sober. Behind the bar they had bottles of wine. I like wine and I love free wine, so I helped myself. When the bottle was kicked, I helped myself to another. I'm not sure how much they cost but I'm sure I couldn't afford it.
After discovering how easy stealing was I helped myself to the first bottle of liquor I could reach: tequila. Good, something we could shoot. I passed the bottle around to whoever would take it, which turned out to be nearly everyone. I realized I could make money from the deal, so I walked around the dance floor offering shots for one euro. I made five. I should have started earlier.
In total, we spent zero euros on drinks, I made five euros, Meghan found 10 on the dance floor then some guy bought us food. We also got three job offers. So if selling stolen liquor doesn't work out...
We looked through the German classifieds for an apartment in Munich. Since we only needed it for a month, we decided not to be picky and just take the first one we saw.
The entry that caught our eye said: "Two bedrooms in Schwabing, kitchen, balcony... but no lights. 500 Euros/Month." The price was great, the location was exactly where we wanted it and no lights was a great excuse to lure boys back to an apartment full of candles. Erin called the number and said she was interested in looking at the apartment. The guy said he was interested in looking at an apartment too. After a brief conversation we reread the newspaper. It turned out the guy was searching for an apartment, not renting one out. What kind-of a weirdo searches for an apartment with no lights?
No matter. There were several listings in the paper so we had plenty of backups. We made a few more phone calls but people kept hanging up on us. Actually, everyone hung up on us. In Germany it's too much effort to say: "I'm sorry, it's taken."
We finally got a hold of someone who didn't hang up and he invited us over at 6:00pm to check it out. It was absolutely brilliant. It was within walking distance of the main train station and had a huge room disconnected from the rest of the apartment. I had visions of serious profit. Youth hostels are always overbooked in Munich - especially during Oktoberfest - and we could comfortably fit 10 people in that room. At $10 a head we'd make bank. The problem: we arrived at 6:05pm and the lady who showed up on time had first dibs. Since it was the only apartment available in Munich and a gem at that, we had no hope. We tried offering more money, but no luck.
We checked the student bulletin board at a German university and a language institute. All of the ads were for a single room in someone's house. We didn't want a room; we wanted an entire apartment. After two days of searching we came up with nothing. The guy we're staying with right now is so awesome that he offered to let us live with him for a month. It was very generous, but we figured we'd drive him crazy so we had to pass.
We couldn't afford a room in Venice, so we left our luggage at a hotel in Vicenza and took a late train to Venice. We figured we'd party all night, see the city in the morning, then pass out on the train on the way back.
We wandered around Venice aimlessly for what seemed like forever. We covered so much ground and nothing was open. We passed a lot of people on the streets who looked like they knew where they were going but when we turned around we passed them all again walking the other direction. There was nothing to do in the city.
We remembered reading in our shitty 'Let's Go Europe' book that there was a disco called Casanova open until 4a.m.. As luck would have it, it was right by the train station and easy to find. To give you an idea of how cool this club was, it was also an Internet Cafe. Don't get me wrong, I love email, but an Internet Cafe with a night club is a little lame... and that's being nice.
Entrance into the club was "free." They gave us a card that we had to exchange for our first drink that cost 10 euros. With the drink, you get an exit card. No way were we going to pay 20 euros for two drinks to dance in a club with computers. There had to be a way out. We scanned the exits for future reference and they were guarded by bouncers, some with pit bulls. We decided to just dance and figure it out at 4 a.m..
We could have run relay races between the people on the dance floor, it was that crowded. We couldn't have been dancing for more than two minutes before we were pushing dirty guys that couldn't dance off of us. Apparently a good shove and walking away are not good enough hints.
Dancing to bootleg Yugoslavian discount music and fending off horny guys gets tiresome so I decided to sit down and drink. I left Meghan alone on the dance floor so she could pull Clark Kent and I could get drunk. Alone doesn't last long at Club Casanova and soon I was joined by some guy from Croatia. I talked with him until the wine was gone and the club was closing. When the lights began turning on they finally started playing music I could dance to. Go figure. They played one song that reminded me of last summer and I missed Mexico.
We remembered we hadn't come up with an exit plan and I decided to play ignorant and just walk out. It didn't work. The bouncer asked for the exit ticket I did not have. I saw some guy hand his over and I realized it was the same ticket they gave us to get in only smaller so I just ripped mine in half. Could they make it any easier?
A few people who sent comments about our webpage seem to think we're not enjoying ourselves. We've gotten a lot of apologies and empathies, but please don't worry... we're having an amazing time. In fact, we've decided to extend our trip indeterminately. It's just that it'd be a bit redundant if every entry read: I partied here, drank this, hooked up with him, drank that, hooked up with him, hooked up with his friend then slept here. The bad things are more out of the ordinary and more entertaining. Just know that we aren't bitching when we talk about the bad things (ie: getting robbed) . we think it's funny.
I'd prefer to write about the last time we were robbed because the tactics these people used blow my mind, but I'm trying for something more peppy, so I'll tell you what I did last night. It may be a bit long and dull, so if you've got a short attention span, don't bother reading...
Erin and I bought a bottle of wine and we were about to drink it when the restaurant staff outside our hotel insisted we hang out there. They gave us a bottle of wine, so we drank that instead. Then we met up with a friend of a friend and two Turkish girls. We went to the classy end of town and sat outside at a bar with live Turkish music. It was a chill evening and we were all tired, so around 1:00 Erin and I went back to our hotel.
We had been trying to get in touch with the two English boys we met in Romania . they had arrived in Istanbul that morning. On a whim we checked email at our hotel reception desk and saw they had written with their hostel info. Erin and I planned to leave Istanbul the next day, so we decided to go over. We remembered we had a bottle of wine and started drinking to wake up.
When finally began walking to the guys' hostel, everything in our end of town was closed and deserted. Then we came upon a bar with three guys sitting outside. They offered us a beer and after we accepted, insisted we go upstairs with them. It seemed rather shady so we chugged our beers and left. We weren't more than 100 meters down the street when one of them pulled up in a black car and tried coaxing us to return. He followed us for a while then gave up.
A little further down the road we saw a narghily (shisha) bar with a few people sitting outside. We stopped in for a little while and this is where things start getting hazy. We drank more wine and hung out for an indeterminable amount of time. When we left we walked about a block and who did we see but the three guys from the first bar circling around in their black car. They called for us to come over but we ran across the street. All of the sudden a white car pulled up with three guys in it. The driver was identical to the one in the black car. He asked where we were going. We said Hostel Istanbul and he told us to get in. We weren't sure where exactly the hostel was, so it sounded like a good idea.
The driver asked why we wanted to go to Hostel Istanbul and we told him we were staying there. He said, "No, you're staying at Hotel Akcinar." God, how did he know that? We insisted Hostel Istanbul and he drove to a taxi driver and asked where it was. Then he drove us in circles around the block and said he couldn't find it . all the while the three of them were trying to coax us to go to the beach. Erin tried to get me to jump out of the car while it was moving, but it came to a stop soon after. We hopped out and started walking. The three guys tried to get us to come back, then finally pointed to the hostel. We had been circling around the corner from it.
We knew which room the English boys were staying in, so we walked into the hostel as if we lived there. We didn't fool the staff . they stopped us before we got to the stairs. They said it was four in the morning and too late to wake them up. We sat outside with the hostel men and bullshitted for a while. I can't remember what we told them, but it was mostly Erin talking . she was incredibly drunk and couldn't stop lying. Every sentence began with, "For the love of God..." Somehow we convinced them to wake the guys up. They let me go upstairs because I was "the sober one."
The English boys came down and after they finished bitching about how tired they were we walked around the city. We hung out in front of the Blue Mosque and the sun came up. A few local vagrants stared at us . sometimes they rambled in Turkish, laughed and gave a thumbs up.
We went back to Hotel Akcinar and our friend at the front desk wasn't too happy. He told me to read the sign. It said only hotel guests were allowed upstairs. I said thanks and kept walking. It wasn't too long before the phone started ringing. Someone unplugged it. Not too long after that I was asleep . only to be woken up by pounding on the door. "Meghan! Open the door or I'm coming in." Why Erin wasn't in trouble, I don't know.
I opened the door to half of the hotel staff and they were displeased. They guys were escorted out. I remember worrying for a second, then hearing one of the English boys laugh outside our window and falling back asleep.
The next day when we saw the English boys we asked what had happened. Apparently there was soft knocking on the door for about an hour. Then when the new shift came on at 8 the knocking got violent. When they threw the English boys out, it was quite literal. And the staff told them nice job and asked if we were good.
The hotel staff must think we're huge sluts. The maid sure did . when she washed our clothes she said her husband would be mad at her because he didn't like that kind of clothing. Every time she saw us she shook her head. But as I told Olcay (the guy at the front desk), we're not those kind-of girls.
If you're going to be a girl in Istanbul, be a blond-haired blue-eyed girl. Apparently Turkish people have never seen one before, so Erin has been a valuable commodity. Here's how we've spent our entire trip:
We walk down the street alone for three seconds then some man (of any age) approaches us. He says: "How are you doing?/What is your name?/May I look into your eyes?/Jiggy jiggy?/May I hustle you?/You come to my carpet store?/We drink tea?/etc." Whatever the line is he says it to Erin. If there are two men approaching us, they fight over Erin until one gives up - typically the more obnoxious, loser one - and I'm stuck fending the reject guy off until we're able to ditch them. Then the cycle repeats. We're on our third day in Istanbul and I swear to God we've seen at least 500 cycles.
Don't get me wrong, Turkish people are great. They've gone out of their way so many times to help us. If we pull out a map on the street (during the three seconds we're not being followed) someone is quick to make sure we know where we're going. But by the middle of the day, my energy is drained. It's difficult fending off men and carpet salesmen. They come on so strong and don't accept no, even after the hundredth time. Last night I told some guy to stay the fuck away because he was a pathetic loser and he still smiled and followed us, trying to drag us into a disco. I'm sure he understood my English, if not he had to understand the tone of my voice or the fact that I slapped him.
One guy explained to us that Turkish women don't have sex until they're 22 so the men are all wandering around super horny. The rationale doesn't satisfy me though, because men of every age followed us around - from teenager to grandfather. There is something very horny about this country. And somewhere along the way they lost their sense of pride.
Here's how shopping in Turkey works: you walk anywhere in the vicinity of a store and you hear: "Hey lady, you like tee-shirt/carpet/purse/random piece of shit trinket?" Then you enter a store and they start throwing everything in their shop on the floor. "You like this?" (Toss something on the floor.) "This?" (Toss more things.) "This? This? This?" And suddenly you're surrounded by a whole pile of junk and you feel guilty that someone has to pick it all up when you had no intentions of buying anything in the first place. They ask you where you're from to gauge how much to charge you. (America = multiply the price by three. Canada is a bit less. Romania is where you should be from.) Then they give you tea - and if you're extra special, freshly squeezed orange juice. Then they tell you how much they like you. They like you so much, they give you a special friend price. They paid $X for the carpet and they'll sell it to you for $X+50. You're the first person they've ever disclosed their buying price to. You're just that special. When you get to talking a little more and they realize your current income is negative $50,000, they open up. They tell you stories about how dumb Americans are (because of course you're from Canada or Romania) and how easy it is to rip them off. Once they paid $36 for a carpet, threw dirt on it, walked all over it, called it an antique and sold it for $1050. When you finally leave the store, one hour and six apple teas later, you're fending off marriage proposals and dinner dates... hopefully without a new carpet.
We are still puzzled by how a Will Smith song became synonymous for sex in Turkey.
About a half hour after we checked into our hotel the phone rang. "Jiggy jiggy tamon," a man said. We weren't sure what it meant so we told him we spoke English and hung up. Approximately 45 seconds later there was a knock at our door. On the other side stood a skinny little man stroking his chin (We later learned this is sign language for give me sex.) saying "Jiggy jiggy tamon." We shut the door. It seemed like the appropriate answer.
Thirty seconds (no exaggeration) after we shut the door, the phone rang again. "Jiggy jiggy tamon." We hung up the phone and there was knocking at the door. Damn this guy was fast. We answered the door... sometimes you just have to. "Jiggy jiggy tamon." This time he showed us his room key. We shut the door and the phone rang again. Jesus, this guy was persistent. Apparently no is not an acceptable for "Jiggy jiggy tamon."
At this point we had had enough and called the front desk to find out what the hell "Jiggy jiggy tamon" meant. The hotel receptionist came to our room immediately. He didn't tell us what it meant, but went to find the guy. The phone rang again... more "Jiggy jiggy tamon." The receptionist came back and when we told him the guy had called again, he said he was going to his room to fight him.
Five minutes later the "Jiggy jiggy tamon" man was standing in front of our door, apologizing. The receptionist kicked him out of the hotel... without any jiggy jiggy.
