Amsterdam: Part One
Every so
often, though not as often as one would like, I feel that I need to get away
from it all. Call it silly, an
anxious reaction to everyday life, over the top, avoidance. It’s probably a bit of all these
things, but a break? No, a break is okay.
It’s the break away from everything and everyone that is perhaps harder
for people to understand. I am not
anti-people, far from it; I just sometimes need my own space, and recently I
have needed it a lot. After a
rather claustrophobic Christmas, and an exhausting time both professionally and
personally since the end of August last year (2013: a date which seems so close
right now, but will feel like a lifetime ago one day when reading this back), I
needed a break: and so I decided that I would go on holiday, by myself.
I’d always toyed with
the idea, but it had never come about.
I had been away before without family, of course, but always either with
other people or to meet other people.
No, I wanted to be completely alone, with no-one but myself, to put me
in a place where I was able to reflect, relax and hopefully get my head into a
better place than it had recently been.
I mulled over where to go for a long time, with Berlin, Prague,
Edinburgh, Paris and New York all entering the mix, America sadly dismissed due
to price almost straight away, but my heart from the very off, really, was
settled on Amsterdam.
I had been
there a few years ago with a few friends from University (the first time
around, back when I did my degree at UEA (the University of East Anglia) almost
ten years ago now. Ten years? Blimey) and enjoyed it a lot, and if I was going
to do the scary thing, bite the bullet, and go somewhere on my own, then I
figured that it should be somewhere that I was at least vaguely familiar with, and
that I had enjoyed in the past.
That, and it was cost-effective regarding accommodation out there if I
plumped for a very cheap hostel, which I did. I booked flights from Norwich Airport straight to Amsterdam,
paid my extra £10 in airport development fees (still no signs of actual
developments two years since I was last year and paid it, but what do I know?),
and then twiddled my thumbs for a few weeks until the day of my holiday was
finally here.
I had a few things in
mind that I wanted to do: go to the Anne Frank house; visit the modern art
museum (the Stedelijk Museum); and go exploring, hiring a bicycle to do so. That was my plan, anyway. Most people seemed to assume I’d be either getting high or
having sex with prostitutes, the latter kinda implying that I can’t engage in
sexual acts without paying for them.
Suffice to say, I did not get high and did not have sex with a
prostitute. Oh, and that I have
never paid for sex either, though getting to the point where I engage in sexual
acts is something I am not exactly good at.
Anyway, with that
lovely thought in mind…
I had been to the
Anne Frank house the last time I was in Amsterdam, but had vowed then to go
again. I had decided that I wanted
to read her diary in full, having only dipped into passages of it before, and
return to see it in a whole new light.
I had gone to the gift shop at the end of the house tour to buy a copy
of her book, and been quite shocked at how expensive it was. I must have done this louder than
intended because a few people looked daggers at me, as if to say, ‘This man! My
word! How can he complain about price for Young Anne after being here: here! Of all places! Oh my!’
My guilt kicked in, I
immediately purchased the book and a follow-up detailing her life in
concentration camps, and slunk out of the building into a light rain with a
sense of feeling a bit crap. Truth
be told, I’m very good at treating myself like crap, or thinking about myself
in such ways, so this was nothing new.
I was just two books up and several Euros lighter this time around.
I booked tickets to
both the Anne Frank house and the Stedelijk Museum beforehand online, thanks to my
brother who very kindly paid for them as a birthday present to me. The Anne Frank one came with the option
of an English-language lecture beforehand for a bit more money, so I purchased
that and started to read Anne Frank’s diary soon after: beautifully and
frustratingly adolescent at times, absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking at
others, and staggeringly historically important continually.
With all this out of
the way, and flights and accommodation and insurance definitely booked
(checked, double checked, triple checked), it was down to the important matters
of the day: what to read?
Oh yes, holidays and
reading. No holiday for me is a
holiday unless it involves writing a lot of postcards and reading a lot of
books. Take my holiday aboard a
cruise ship a couple of years ago: some people look back on all the wonderful
places they went and things they saw and people they met and foods they
tasted. I do that, but measure my
time in books read. So, my holiday
looked an awful lot like this:
Oh, and just to prove that I really did go away, here are a few scenery shots thrown in for good measure.
This time around, I
was only travelling was hand luggage, so book space was limited. After much debating with myself, I
restricted myself to:
- · The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (as gifted to me by a rather lovely and beautiful-inside-and-out friend).
- · Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (which we were due to read at abook club I attend at my local branch of Waterstones).
- · Time and Relative by Kim Newman (a Doctor Who novella I have been planning to re-read for a while now).
- · Alice in Tumblr-Land: And Other Fairy Tales for a New Generation by Tim Manley (which was fantastic through and through).
The day of
the flight came, and with it the usual over-priced cooked breakfast and hanging
around the stubbornly-undeveloped airport in Norwich. I boarded the plane, found a seat, listened to the emergency
exit announcements and read the safety card in the seat in front of me (which I
always do, despite knowing it backwards by now) and spent the flight mostly
sleeping. The last time I flew to
Amsterdam, it was after a rather rough bout of gastroenteritis. I had slept the entire flight and not
realized we had ever even taken off, when a crane flew past my window and we
passed a river. Gatwick Airport
has much, but it draws the line at cranes.
I was less
disorientated this time, which made what happened next all the more irksome and
worrying: some utter asshole tried to steal my passport. There I was, leaving the plane. I put my jacket down and passport on it
as I retrieved my hand luggage from the overhead cabin. I turned my back for two seconds, and
when I swivelled back round it was gone.
“Ummm, excuse me?” I
said to a passing hostess.
“Yes?”
“Someone has stolen
my passport.”
“…”
“It was here. It is
now not here.”
“Are you sure you
haven’t dropped it?”
“Yes. I have checked.
Someone has stolen it.”
“Where were you
sitting?”
We return to where I
had been sat, checked all over the chair and neighbouring aisle for it, and
concluded (as I knew) that it was not there. I pout and frown.
A host comes up to us both.
“Ummm, sir? The
shuttle bus from the plane to the airport has got to leave. You need to get on
board.”
“I’m not going.
Someone has stolen my passport.”
“Oh. Hang on.”
He scuttles off and
then back on board; no passport is with him.
“Are you sure you
haven’t just dropped it, sir?”
“Yes. Yes, I am
sure.”
“Are you really sure?”
We get on our hands
and knees and do another full plane search. By now, it’s clear that I am going nowhere until my passport
makes a miraculous re-appearance and comes back into my life. Once that has become clear, something
truly amazing/magical happens.
“Someone’s just said
that they have your passport and have given it back over.”
“Oh?”
“They say they… found
it.”
“Found it?”
“Found it.”
“Atop my belongings?”
“Ummm…”
“And thought, ‘Oh!
How odd! That looks like it’s been abandoned! I’d best keep a hold of it, just
in case, but tell absolutely no-one about it. No-one at all’, right?”
“Well…”
“Mmmm.”
With passport and Nick
reunited, and the shifty-looking passport-returner looking shifty, I boarded
the shuttle bus and we travelled to the airport where, after about ten minutes
of walking down the wrong corridors, I eventually made it to the correct office
to get a train ticket. The airport
in Amsterdam is situated far away from the main city itself, and so you need to
travel there, via car or taxi or,
most cheaply, train. Confusingly,
the railway station you need, Amsterdam Central, is preceded by another one
also named ‘Amsterdam’. You always
see one or two people disembark early and look terribly confused, realizing
their mistake just as the train departs.
One of them this time around managed to knock me over and give me a
nasty bruise on my back as they did so.
We finally pulled
into Amsterdam Central. I had
books, my passport, a warm coat to protect me from the wind and chill, and the
slight satisfaction of knowing that the git who bruised my back had a long walk
to the city ahead of them.
Amsterdam! I was
inside you!
To be continued…
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