One day freind of mine-for the sake of this story we will call 'tree'- and I decided to go to Europe for a month or so. It was a lot cheaper to go with backpacks and sleep with other cheap fucks from all over the world. We stayed in Youth Hostels and travelled throughout Europe by train.
We started in Amsterdam, Holland. I know what you are going to say..."Amsterdam is where DRUGS and PROSTITUTION are completely LEGAL!!(more or less).
But you forgot something......
We flew to Amsterdam for only $350, round trip!! The guy at the ticket brokerage said we were flying on a subsidiary of KLM. So we bought the tickets. This is what we saw at the terminal.
I do not know if he was pulling my chain, but they certainly packed us in like fucking sardines. Luckely I scored an exit row seat before anybody else figured out how uncomfortable they were going to be. It did'nt hurt that I'm 6'4". I think they loaded the plane a bit too much, because we had to do a little off-roading to get airborn.Five stops later we finally made our landing in a rain storm. I could not help but think if our plane was built before windshield wipers were invented.
We headed straight from the airport to the red light disrict. After twenty minutes in the 'Hard Rock Coffee Shop' I was under the influence of Afghanni hash. They are not affiliated with the real 'Hard Rock".In fact I think the real "Hard Rock" people shut 'em down. Corporate bastards. You walk into the front door, and usually there is a guy-or girl at a table with a menu. This is soooo cool. Whatever you want, they have for really good prices. The weed was really good too. It is'nt like the 'Hard Rock' was the only game in town though, there was the 'Bulldog',the coffee shop 'Free Adam'!(Picture coming soon!),and so on... and so on... It seemed most prudent to keep ample supplies of both weed and hash. It's legal to own, carry,and smoke in private or in coffee shops.
After a day or two I knew Amsterdam RULES!! I can not believe they allow this kind of shit to go on! And where the fuck have I been all these years. I call Amsterdam the original 'Euro-Disney'. A dicriminating adult's haven. The only drawbacks are the weather and the street crime.
First of all, the weather is SHITTY there. They have a summer, sure they do. It lasts a whole month!!! In June it is just getting warm and dry enough to actually walk around without fear of a drenching. Then July is pretty nice, it approaches the weather we get in Southern California!-on a not-so-good day. Then not so soon later, back to fuckville in September. FUCK!! RAIN, FOG, COLD, RAIN, FOG.....JUST LIKE IT ALWAYS IS IN BRITTAIN!!!
In Amsterdam there are criminals and there are the wierdo's. check this out:
The very first day we were there, a Jamaican dude was
"Come on man this is good chit man!" he would say.
"No thank you, we have plentey, we are not interested." we pleaded.
Just then, after about five minutes of this guy fuckin' with us, from around the corner came two dudes in really nice suits. Something changed in the Jamaican dudes tone-immediatly. He started to walk away from us to no avail. They grabbed him, shoved him against the wall and started to search him.
"No man, I was not doing anything man...not you guys....come on man...please..." he cried.
As far as I know, the two dudes did not say a word, and what is even cooler, they did'nt even want to talk to us! In America there would have been a whole inquisition, but not in Amsterdam! Those two guys saved us, we were running out of places to go. We just walked away, nobody said anything!
The only other 'problem' had was tree. One night at about 4:00 in the morning he decidied to make a phone call. Having no phone in the youth hostel, he set out to look for one in the city. I do not remember the entire story but he was attacked in an alley. He acidentally interrupted a group of Haitian drug runners talking over their next crime. They saw him and where ready to pull the trigger when some dude walked around the corner, just in time to scare them off! He probably should not have been out that early/late.
Other than that, the place rules! The food is a stange mix of Mediteranian and American. And yes, they do put mayonaise on french fries. YUK! I thought it was some kind of sperm or something the first time it was put on my plate.
The prostitutes are something to behold also. A quick browse of the alleys reveals the kind of chicks you would love to have as your girlfreind or something. Anyways, it's like-"you mean I can do that chick right now?"
So after we visited the Heineken brewery, there was nothing else going on in the city so we boarded a train to go experience Sweden.
Man, we must have been smoking too much and playing crazy 8's, because we missed a very important fuckin connection and wound up 150 kilometors off course in a little less than two hours. now we were FUCKED!! What are we going to do. Instead of heading to Hannover Germany, we wound up in Hamburg. The next train going our way was more than 2 hours away.
"Fuck it, lets get a beer."
"Eight hours since my last beer, lets go."
So we headed to a cafe. The service was so bad we only had time for one beer before we had to jet to the train station again.
When our train arrived, we had no idea what we where in for. This thing looked like something out of a Star Trek movie. It is the I.C.E. That's the inter city express. It goes 155MPH!! All the doors to different compartments on board open on their own!! Now you can bring an extra bratwurst and beer back to your compartment. We made it to Hannover in time and soon we set sail for Sweden via Denmark.
We only had an hour in Denmark so I do not have too much to say about it. Hot dogs cost about $7.50.
How did we get to Denmark already and how could we set sail to Sweden aboard a train you ask? I want this story to be shorter than the actual trip and they put a whole train on a boat. They break a train in 3 or 4 pieces and load it on a ship. Thank God my travels were before the movie 'Titanic' had'nt come out yet. You can get booze really cheap for Europe prices aboard the ships.
Tree's brother lives in Gothenburg(pronounced YER-TE-BOY--no shit!), so we were going to hook up with him. he had an apartment for us for the weekend.
Now it would have been cool to take the I.C.E. all the way but the krauts have'nt figured out how to hydo-plane them that far yet. They had to pu us on a REALLY SLOW train. Something out of Indiana Jones or something. Going from about 100mph average down to 40mph is a strain. It is like seeing an ambulance with lights and sirens blaring, but only going 3 miles an hour. Worse than that-from Amsterdam to Gothenburg on the trains takes 27 hours. About six of those are on boats or layover though.
So when we got to the front door, Tree says "Hey, check out those chicks accross the street"
Sure enough, two beautiful young Sweedish girls sun-bathing toppless on the grass!!!!
Gawking complete, lets check out our pad for the weekend. I noticed the shower first.
Finally, a long awaited shower. It was harder to take a shower in Sweden than I thought!
Try standing still in a shower after all that non stop motion. You will fall on your ass.
I love Sweeden!!!! Except for the prices and the liqour laws. They only sell what ammounts to light beer at corner markets, oyu have too go to special stores to get beer with an alcohol content above 5 percent.
It is REALLY FUCKING EXPENSIVE THERE TOO. Dinner one night:
Three pizza's.
Two beer's and a coke.
$75.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fuck that. we did not last long there and soon left.
Next stop: EAST GERMANY!!!
East Germany-we wound up there by mistake!!!-was something else. Everything was CHEAP!!! They supposedlty are'nt commies anymore but you can not be too sure. The 'Youth Hostel' in East Berlin had a disco in the basement! The only hostels that legally let you drink-ie. have bars-are in East Berlin and Amsterdam. On a scale of one to ten it gets a 7- based on the ones I stayed at.
One note of caution, if you wind up in East Germany for some reason, be careful when you buy milk. I bought what I thought was chocholate milk. It tasted like chocholate milk. It looked like chocholate milk. It even said 'chocholate' on the carton. I was up all night. Not sick, just amped. Kind of scary.
The rest of the trip was not interesting enough to cronicle extensivly. I think I heard you say "thank God!!", I'm not sure.
Being the fan of nature and the ocean I am, I pursued an internship in marine biology. First, I called 'Sea World' and was told what my tasks as intern would be. Well, I hung up when they told me I would be responsable for cleaning Shamu sized shit out of the bottom of it's tank.I don't need the experience THAT fucking bad. Next I called the 'Cousteau Foundation'. They were very nice but informed me that I could not be an intern for them because I was not a French resident. I replied that all you need to do is prove you are NOT French to become an intern in America.
Distraught, and emotionally wiped out, I did something I would come to regret-and-enjoy for the next two years. I called the 'Austrailian Institute of Marine Biology'. These guys where actually "happy" to get a response to their add! At least, someone was interested in ME!! After some manditory survival training supplied by my local Red Cross I set course for Antarctica, Beejke Station to be exact. It took forever to get there, and once you are there, you wonder if they have the right place. There is nothing there!!
Beejke Flats is one of the windiest inhabitied places on Earth! The wind there averages
30 knots with a temperarure of about 10 degrees C. year round! That will freeze a witches tit!
The buildings there have to be strong so they don't blow over during the most
ferocious winter storms.
You don't get many visitors every year, so you had better get along with the scientists and such that inhabit the station. My first winter SUCKED!! If the sun is even up at all, you can't even see it! Then in the summer the sun is just high enough to fucking get in your eyes. At these latitiudes it is really easy to lose it. Mentally it is something people should not have to be subjected to. I'm sure that is why the Swedes and the Norwegians are wierder than most. What's that whole Bjork thing, anyway.
The most you have to look forward to is the longest day of the year. We have a party with kegs of Salamander wine we made during the winter, and when we are all sloshed, we go outside!!
But what I did not know was that their 'Internship' was not.
Internship my ASS! They just wanted some fresh meat. Ohh, I was doing
their laundry, cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the snow-mobiles, while they were
having all the fun.
One winter, they made me build an entire U.M.S.T.U. (underwater mammal sonar tracking unit)from their garbage. I wish I had a picture of it!
I was doing some cleaning when I heard some of the scientists talking about how they were going to give me a good test. They would send me to the Beejke gorge to take a snow reading.
That is pure suicide. Nobody has ever come back from the gorge. I was so sick of being tormented by them. The decicion had already been made in my mind.
One night I snuck on to a crate of trash that was being hauled to the last ship of the season
in the harbor. Luckily they did not notice I was gone until we were in international waters and I was able to gain assylum on the vessel, and return to my native America.
Lawsuits I filed were thrown out of court for lack of evidence.I have not gone very far from home since then.
