Life

Part II

So the gang was all here. I distributed everyone’s gift bag which included their Olympic tee shirt and Kodak Olympic watch that I had gotten for everyone (at their expense, I wasn’t made of money). We synchronized watches and were off on a tour of London. We had no game plan and didn’t even know when we would leave London but who cared? I’ve never been a big fan of getting on a bus and touring a city. But a double-decker bus seemed to be something we should do and for the next couple hours we rode around, seeing the sites. We eventually made our way back to our hotel, picked up our things and decided to get on a train, head to the Channel for a ferry over to the mainland. Not much time in London but what the heck? Next stop on our adventure: Amsterdam.

The ferry over to the mainland was nothing to write home about but the price was right and they had a bar on board. I believe the drinks of choice were 16 ounce Carlsbads, in fact I know it was because we have a photo of Tony and a couple that we befriended and there are five cans in front of him. I’m not sure where that ferry even dropped us off but I know we had a good time on board. Seems to me it was in Belgium and when we got there Tony and I rode some conveyor belt that was for luggage a long way to a terminal. I jumped off and ripped my butt and shorts up. That felt good. It was time to validate our Eurailpass and get on to Amsterdam. This is where the first argument began. I told everyone that we couldn’t get on the train until we validated our passes, which was correct. But a couple of the drunkards thought they would just procrastinate and validate them whenever they wanted. Getting six guys, all of whom had been drinking and some who had not slept much, to do the right thing isn’t easy sometimes, there’s an old saying about herding cats that comes to mind. But good sense won out, guys got their passes validated and we got on the train.

Amsterdam has a reputation that is deserved. We pulled into town, found a cheap hotel near the Red Light District and started exploring. I was shocked that Red Light was different than Red Stripe, which is a great Jamaican beer that I enjoy. We stopped in a theatre to see a movie (I think we tried to see “A League of Their Own”) and got another shock. These theatres were not PG. As you can imagine, we quickly got out of there! We decided to do some sightseeing and actually went on a tour of the canals in a boat, which was hot and boring and why in god’s name we didn’t visit the Heineken brewery instead I’ll never know. That evening, we found a decent restaurant with an outdoor patio where we ate and sampled the Dutch national drink: Jenever. Now I was never much into spirit alcohol growing up and still prefer my beer. So when our waitress delivered the ice cold drink in a glass and everyone lifted their glasses and threw it down, I almost threw it up. I simply couldn’t drink it.

My friends are all pretty artsy so everyone wanted to get dressed up and see a show. Well, we didn’t have any nice clothes but we did find a show. And what a show it was, we sat in the back row while it finished up and then moved into the first row for the seven act play. It was very enjoyable and some in our party actually got to go on stage and participate, quoting Shakespeare in “Lady Macbeth”.

The Red Light District has a little something for everyone. I was astonished at the girls in windows that people could actually “shop” for. And yes, they did have hashish bars with menus listing different varieties of marijuana. But it wasn’t for me, I’ve never smoked pot in my life. A little trivia factoid, I’ve never even smoked a cigarette in my life.

Eventually, we returned to our room and crashed. I'm sure there is a story about BG and two Swedish girls in there somewhere but not in this blog. The next morning, we walked around town a bit more and decided it was time to move along. We got on a train and headed to Paris.

Geo brought along a little tape recorder and every once in a while he would pull it out and just record what was happening. Some days he would talk about what we were doing, a recorded diary of sorts, but most times he would just tape us talking and arguing. One of the best ones was us arguing about the greatest baseball players of all time and trying to figure out who they were and the different positions. I nominated a Cincinnati Redleg for every position but only won out one time. Here is the list we came up with that evening:

C Johnny Bench
3B Mike Schmidt
1B Lou Gehrig
2B Ty Cobb
SS Ozzie Smith
LF Ricky Henderson/Ted Williams
RF Babe Ruth
CF Willie Mays

No spot for Pete Rose? C’mon. The other great “discussion” on our way to Paris was the value of money. I could listen to that tape a hundred times and still not understand the arguements about the value of a gelding. Isn’t a gelding a castrated male horse? I think we meant gulden?

Ah Paris. We arrived late at night. We found a bar near the train station and got our second wind. We met some girls from Malta that probably wished we hadn’t. We ended up behind the bar before closing it down. On to greater things, we walked and walked because no cabs would pick us up. In our minds, it was because they knew we were American. I found out later that cabs can only stop in designated cab zones in Paris but who knew? So, where else do you go in Paris? Of course, the Eiffel Tower. Not much of a view in the middle of the night but we all saw it and proclaimed our gratitude to the French for being such strong allies to the U.S. We tried to sleep on park benches, in flower gardens, anywhere we could but none of us actually slept. Where was the security?

When morning came, we went to find some croissants and BG decided to take a short nap on a bench next to a busy road. We tied his shoelaces together, got behind him and yelled, causing him to stumble off the bench and run into a metal door before collapsing on the ground. A lot of the details of the trip are fuzzy but I remember this slow motion event like it was yesterday. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. BG still to this day says we could have killed him had he run out into the street.

Tired, hung over, mad at the French for the perceived taxi slight, we decided it was time to move on. We went back to the train station where we arrived to get a fast train to Barcelona. While there, someone told us that we needed to go to another train station across town to get there so we hustled over in cabs and just made it on a train. It turned out to be the slow train there and I swear it took us 24 hours. We stopped in a tiny little town in Spain (Irun) and we ran out to get some food. We were starving and getting to our destination had taken much too long. We eventually made our way through Pamplona and got to Barcelona.