I’m sad at how tired I was in Amsterdam. I was so looking forward to the city, but probably only saw as much as someone that was there for a few days, yet I was there for a week. Thank goodness I booked myself in to one of the best hostels (if not, the best) I have stayed at on this trip. I’ll post a couple of photos, but it’s called the Lucky Lake Hostel and is located just outside the city (they shuttle you in for free every hour). It’s made up of cabins and old painted retro caravans and strung with pretty lights and of course, smells overwhelmingly of all kinds of substances. It’s a 15min bike ride on a path through farms to the nearest town and a 10 min walk from a pretty lake. such a great city escape! (http://www.luckylake.nl/)
What I did manage to see of Amsterdam, though, I loved! I spent a good deal of my time foraging through flea markets and vintage stores (and spending a little too much) and wandering down lanes of great shops, cafes and ‘coffee shops’. My favourite purchase was definitely a striped pair of winnie the poo short overalls that look like something I would have worn when I was five (that makes 8 in the overall collection..). I would post the name of the shops if I could remember them, but you will stumble upon so many that it wouldn’t matter.
I never really got a good feel for the orientation of the city, which made it difficult, walking around in circles and not being sure if I had necessarily seen that canal before. I decided to get 24 hour passes for transport which meant I could use the trams as much as I needed to to get me back to the station or somewhere I could recognise (it’s pretty expensive to do more than 2 trips in a day otherwise, including the metro which i needed to get to the hostel shuttle)
Amsterdam has a HUGE number of museums and galleries. I’ve seen so many at this point though, that I decided to only go to three. The Van Gogh Museum, The Body Works Museum (which I didn’t make it to in the end :( ) and Museum Vrolik,
I did a really great tour of the Red Light DIstrict whilst I was there because I didn’t really want to explore that area at night on my own. I am fascinated by the legalised sex work and love the attitude to it being a respectable profession. It means a safe environment is created without pimping AND everything is on the girls’ terms. Now thats girl power if I’ve ever seen it (I saw a price list). I was surprised when the tour leader told us all that we would get to experience a live sex show in Amsterdam.. uhh I did not sign up for this? We all walked in to a seedy looking dark room with an octagon in the middle with a door on each edge and queued up behind a door. I had to muster myself a texan asian male partner for the adventure so I only had to pay 1 euro and not 2. when the green light came on above our door, we squeezed ourselves in to the tiny compartment and put in our coins. BAM the screen in front of us dropped and not only was I in a tiny black box with a stranger, I was also watching a very mundane sex act occur on a rotating bed. First of all I want to know who’s idea it was to make it able to see other people faces in the other windows- verrrrry awkward. Second of all, I want to know how that man kept himself so hairless- very smooth entire body, I’ll sign up for whatever he’s having. when our two minutes was up and we squeezed ourselves out of our box, I decided I had been changed forever and got a photo with the neon sign outside to commemorate.
Museum Vrolik was NOT for the faint hearted. I have been to my fair share of surgery and specimen museums in my travels, but good golly is this a brutal one. The majority of the collection is made up of babies in jars- some cut to reveal certain organs, some with crazy birth defects, some with conjoined twins or the remnants of a partly formed twin (etc etc). I was the only one in there at the time and the walls are lines with human skeletons and I FREAKED. I felt like that girl you yell at for being a dumb bitch in a horror film, and I think only lasted about 40 minutes in there (it’s small but I could have spent at least a half hour more). Also, it was pretty dark and I do not do well in the dark (especially surrounded by at least 200 dead humans and babies).
The Van Gogh museum was amazing- it’s not very often you get to see that many artworks by one particular master in one place, especially one of your favourite artists!
* the rest of the post is me ranting about a stupid ableist security guard- feel free to leave you’re reading here if you couldn’t care less *
Unfortunately I had a bit of a run in with a security staff member here who told me I had been sitting down for too long and needed to either get up and keep walking or leave the building. I had been sitting there for about 10 minutes, on a communal gallery chair where others were also sitting, admiring the artwork. I alerted him to my illnesses that meant I couldn’t stand for as long as everyone else and meant I needed rest (it’s a 4 story building) and he told me I needed to either take my medication (that he assumed I had?? and that was rapid acting??) or leave. After he refused to give me his name, I went down and put forward a formal complaint against the man. By this stage I was in tears because its the first time I have been blatantly mistreated regarding my disability (even though it shouldn’t have mattered whether I had one or not, everyone is allowed to sit on a godamn communal gallery chair) but the manager handled it so well and told me she wasn’t surprised and that that particular guard likes to make up rules to abuse his authority and was just so understanding. She said how hard it must be for me looking well, let alone when people invalidate what I’m going through. She also kept saying that it shouldn’t have mattered whether I needed to or wanted to sit down and for 10 minutes or 30 minutes- he was totally out of line. So I was really grateful for that, but sad that I was too shaky and filled with anxiety to really pay attention for the second half of my visit.
