Amsterdam (Centraal Station - part 3)

Okay, so I’m sitting in this coffeehouse chatting with this other American that strolled in and waiting for the rain to let up. I’ve got a train to catch back to Germany at 3:12pm which gave me about 3 ½ hours or so to kill. The rain stops for a bit and I once again journey out into the streets of Amsterdam.

To my surprise, as I step out onto the street, there, directly across the street from me, is Conscious Dreams! And unlike the night before when I finally arrived there to find them closed, they were now open for business. I quickly crossed the street and strolled on inside.

It was an interesting shop in that it really looked like they weren’t selling anything. There were random items scattered around (don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t messy or anything … it just didn’t look like what I was expecting) and the focal point appeared to be this glass display case in the middle of one wall that had a girl behind it talking with a guy in front of it. I walked over to have myself a look at what was on display in the case.

Sure enough, sitting there in the display case was somewhere on the order of five varieties of shrooms for sale. (Shrooms, in case you didn’t know, are mushrooms that give a rather euphoric experience to anyone that’s brave enough to eat them … but I suppose if you’ve been reading my blog that I most likely don’t need to explain that to you…) I asked the girl behind the case how much these were and she explained something like they were all €12.50 but that bought you different amounts of each. You know, 0.8 grams of one variety and 1.3 grams of another – you get the picture… I asked her what she recommended and then informed her that this would be the first time I ever did shrooms and I might not want to go all out while popping my cherry. She then asked if I wanted the lightest ones and I said I could go for pretty much mid grade and was sold some of the Mexicana (if memory serves me correct).

Okay, so now things are starting to get interesting. Here I am in Amsterdam walking around with 3 THC brownies, 2 hash joints and about a gram of Mexicana shrooms. “No big deal,” I thought; however I was going to be getting on a train back to Germany in slightly more than 3 hours. What am I gonna do with all this? I know, I’ll get myself something to eat.

So I head back over toward Centraal Station and find a restaurant nearby, pop in and order myself a steak, fries and a coke. When the coke arrives I figure now’s as good a time as any to start eating the shrooms and that is exactly what I start doing. Now, when I bought the shrooms earlier, the girl that sold them to me made a point of telling me twice, in fact, that I only needed to eat half the bag. Well, I was due to be boarding a train to Germany in a few hours and really didn’t want to get caught with shrooms on me, so I ate ‘em all. Along with my steak, fries and a coke, I ate about a gram of Mexicana shrooms. Now it was time to head to Centraal Station, find out which platform my train was leaving from, walk over to that platform and wait the 2 ½ hours before my train was scheduled to depart. Simple enough, right? Well, for some I guess, just not for me.

The funny thing about shrooms is that they creep up on ya slowly. As I left the restaurant and headed over to the station I felt fine. I mean as fine as a guy who just smoked a couple of joints could feel. The thing was that the shrooms hadn’t yet kicked in and I was still fully capable of making reasonable decisions. I headed on into the station and found my train on the schedule. It was scheduled to leave from platform 11 A-B at 3:12pm (or 15:12 in European time…). Cool. I headed over to platform 11 B and grabbed a seat near the end of the platform.

It seems to me that I once read somewhere about somebody else’s experience in European train stations, but for the life of me I can’t remember who that was or where I read it. I’m thinking it might have been Dave Barry, but I’m not really sure. Heck, maybe I’m just thinking that I read this as that’s been happening a lot to me since I’ve been in Germany; some interesting situation occurs (and there are a lot of them) and I almost always immediately think that I had read about this somewhere before. Who knows, maybe this is just my subconscious trying to tell me that I need to write about these experiences. But I’m not a writer…

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that sitting in a major European train station for a few hours is a very surreal experience to us Americans. Well, at least it was to me – I’m sure the shrooms had something to do with the oddity of it all, but even without I would still find the happenings there amazing. I mean, here you are, sitting still on a bench and you’re basically taking a virtual tour of Europe. You’re sitting there and people are gathering around. The thing is that the people gathering around are pretty much all from the same country. At one time you might be getting surrounded by Italians, a train will arrive, everyone will board and the train will depart. About a half hour later, the experience repeats itself; this time with the French (or the Polish, or the Spanish, wherever…). It’s a bit much for a guy that just ate a gram of Mexicana shrooms. My train wasn’t scheduled to leave for something like 2 ½ hours so I got to experience this strange phenomena whether I wanted to or not … but I wanted to … it was pretty cool.

Another interesting thing that you quickly learn while traveling around Europe is how to spot your home country’s trains. You see, all the trains are painted in rather vibrant colors. I think I saw trains that were purple, yellow, green and I know I saw red trains. The German ICE (Inter City Express) trains where white with a bold red stripe down the sides. I was sitting there waiting for a white train with a bold red stripe…

Another side note here is that in Amsterdam, at least, the announcements coming over the PA system were completely useless for me. They were only made in Dutch – unlike Germany where all the announcements are also repeated in English. And if you happen to be an American who just ate a gram of shrooms that were beginning to kick in a bit, I have to say that although the announcements were meaningless to me, they sure were pretty funny! I remember thinking to myself that this was a perfect secret code as they had apparently created a complete language out of sounds that could only be described as white noise in the English language. Now I’m not trying to belittle the Dutch with these statements, but I was completely unable to stop myself from cracking up each and every time the lady would make an announcement over the PA. I wish I could have recorded it and let you hear it, or perhaps it was just the shrooms … who knows?

Well time was passing and I was sitting there, embarrassingly cracking up whenever the female made an announcement (yeah, that’s another interesting thing … the man making the announcements wasn’t funny at all) taking my little journey throughout Europe by sitting still. 3:00 was approaching – at least I believe it was as reading the time off my watch was becoming more and a more of a choir for me. Those shrooms can be a bit wicked at times. Another group of people began gathering around and I could tell that these people were German. Mainly because they were all speaking German and that’s usually a pretty good give away. This one lady, however, caught my eye and just wouldn’t let go.

And yet another surreal experience begins… When I was attending college many years back, I had made friends with this beautiful girl there and actually spent quite a bit of time with her during the last couple years of my schooling. This woman that caught my eye here at the Centraal Station in Amsterdam looked exactly like her! And I mean identical! It’s funny, because when I first met Karen (I don’t think she’ll sue me for using her real name) back in college I thought that she was most likely from Mexican descent. She had the long dark black hair; dark eyes and what appeared to me to be rather Mexican looking characteristics. Apparently she’s of German descent – from northwest Germany, somewhere around the city of Rheine, to be more precise. I vaguely remember a couple instances when I was hanging out with her that she mentioned that her family was from Europe but, being the close minded American that I am, I always assumed it must have been somewhere in or near Italy. Nope, I’m pretty darn certain that her family is from somewhere around Rheine, Germany. Go figure… (Now I’m sure that that last little tidbit didn’t mean much to you, the reader, but oh my god did it have an impact on me…)

Anyway, back to the trip. The Germans were gathering around and from as best I could tell by trying to decipher what the things on the face of my watch exactly meant the 3:12 departure time was quickly approaching. At this point, another announcement is aired that meant nothing more to me than another reason to start giggling uncontrollably and the people that were gathering around all started heading off toward the other side of the platform – towards 11 A. I know this now, but at the time it just never really occurred to me. I continued to sit there and wait for the white train with the bold red stripe to arrive.

3:12 came and went but this didn’t startle me too much. My train leaving Braunschweig was a half hour late so I was thinking maybe something close to the same was happening here. I think it was around 3:15 when I finally saw a train coming down the track at platform 11 heading toward me; but the engine was red (if I remember correctly … whatever it was, it wasn’t white with a bold red stripe…). I thought this was peculiar but quickly noticed that this was merely an escort engine and I saw the German ICE train behind it, heading my way. I was thinking, “cool, the trip back can now begin” as the train came driving up toward me. The funny thing is that it wasn’t slowing down and in fact appeared to be picking up speed. I was contemplating this unexpected observation as I stood there and basically watched my train leave the station right in front of me. I missed my train! (Well, to be more precise, I should have easily been able to make the train if I could have only understood the announcement that was saying that it was leaving from 11 A only and not A and B as I had earlier gathered…)

I then walked back down to the main station and walked up to an information booth that was there. I showed them my ticket and asked if the train that had just left was mine and they confirmed that it sure was. Luckily for me, there was another German bound train leaving in two hours. This one, I would make.

Well, folks, it’s now about 8:00 in the evening here in Braunschweig and seeing as today is actually my birthday, I think it’s time to head on over to Braunschweig’s red light district. Yeah, here’s another interesting factoid – prostitution is legal in Germany. Perhaps many of you knew that already, but I sure as hell didn’t. Even here in the little town of Braunschweig they have a red light district which is basically an alley behind this peep show where, on either side of the alley, women are gathered in small little rooms all lit up in red trying to make some cash with the world’s oldest profession. You gotta love Europe…

bis später,

Coriolis