Hampster Dam

Anyone I'd mentioned to that I would be visiting Amsterdam had unanimously cheered at this choice for a mini getaway weekend vacation, that me and several university friends had decided upon. Most people would go onto an extended description of Amsterdam as a kind of a European Vegas where everything is allowed and where no one comes to stay longer than for a few heavily drug-ridden weeks.

TO THE WINDOOOOOW, TO THE WAAAAALL!!!
The Dutch be so rowdy they're well known for their museums, and their ubiquitous use of bycicles!

What I expected: 

• hookers on every corner. Having in mind a cartoonish sort of prostitute, eager beyond belief to snatch all the cash from their easily persuaded clientèle here. We were warned beforehand that if you try and take pictures of the women, they throw bottles of piss at you;
• droves of hopelessly inebriated youths screaming a European equivalent of "SPRING BREAAAK!" like in those dumb American frat comedies.
• dealers on every street and nook. I was told I would get offered all sorts of substances of dubious quality and warned not to buy it! Also that everyone is high and off their tits on Ecstasy, or Speed, or LSD or newfangled fancy stuff no one's yet heard about like dried rabbit nail dust mixed with toothpaste, and you're supposed to rub it into your scalp, and it totes chills your brains, yo, like spaced out and like cool and all. Yo. I'd call it Ruthmeric. Because I'm just so random, and besides that was the name of the first rabbit that lost its nails to the commencement of all this imaginary production so... in its honour really. Or Tuptoosh. That sounds like a nice name for a rabbit.

Anyway.

What we actually saw:

• A few discreet streets with curtained floor-to-ceiling windows, with a few ladies in bikinis in some of them, smiling awkwardly and looking like they might just be trying out some new public tanning facility booth where people get to see if you like it or not. Most passers by were politely looking around, moving along, and didn't stare. No one took pictures though either, so the piss cannot be confirmed or disproved; case deemed an X file.

30% more lamps for that perfect chocolate skin tone, with new generation UVA and UVB lights!*
*No tanning lotion, but a shiny swimsuit and an apathetic countenance are required.

• Tourists, some self-sedated locals, more tourists, staff in catering spots who were either overly stressed or much too relaxed for their line of work, yet more tourists, and Carl Barât from the Libertines (and later Dirty Pretty Things) - so that was quite an exciting exhibit, and felt really local and belonging to the environment.
• A few coffee shops, and several "coffee" shops - where you can't even get a cup of coffee - that sell marijuana. That's pretty much it. Nothing shocking or intriguing at all except for the sensationally overpriced soft beverages in said places. Yes, you have the sloppy bracelet abusing tattoo addicts drowning in reefer smoke in dim-lit bars and such, what's the big difference in terms of chasing simple pleasures between them and Englishmen clutching their 6th?... pint that day, guffawing at how great that last pool shot was just then, before they have to head back to work after lunch, haha.

Yeah, of course we smoked the weed. And had the Space Cake, and the Space Cookies, and even some really mild herbal pills, which did the work of a half a can of an energy drink. Disappointing if anything. What all the marijuana did was make us all seem like a bunch of bored overfed hampsters, half-laying around our table some place, or strolling the city like it's just a bad habit at this point, you know, to want to move around and see things. Luckily, all that in a truly wonderful light-breezed, blossom-snowing and sunny Spring weather. Never have I felt 68 years old more than in Amsterdam. 

Sooo lazy, kind of sleepy, but generally just, really kind of... "meh". No one even got the munchies, let alone saw, heard, or otherwise experienced anything unusual. Say, I would love to have hallucinated some magic over my reality, like me and Tuptush, or Rutpickins, or what's-its-name my best friend's pet bunny rabbit, flying over the canals of Hampsterdam, floating solely on clouds of spliff smoke, and partly maybe on expectations a little too high.

Hihi.

[Picture sources:
http://www.caedes.net/Zephir.cgi?lib=Caedes::Infopage&image=Paul_Gerritsen-1185207602.jpg
http://www.apalog.com/asahina/monthly/201308/]