Once again the Esperanto bitches (I can´t be nice anymore) woke me up at 5 am by talking. I really don´t understand this. I´ve stayed at notorious party hostels and gotten better nights sleep. I would think that by the time you reach 110 you would learn to respectful of the others sleeping around you. I had had 4 nights now where I hardly got any sleep. It was just frustrating and I was exhausted.
The original plan was to leave my stuff at the hostel and go check out the museum in The Hague. I was just too freaking tired for anything like that. As it was it took just about all of my effort to get my bags packed up and get to the train station. I was headed to Amsterdam, party central, and I was so tired that all is wanted to do was sleep for 6 days straight. Thanks Esperanto.
I did managed to get a bit of fitful sleep on the train, but as the train didn´t terminate in Amsterdam I didn´t want to miss the stop and in up in, well, I don´t remember so we will just say Djibouti. It took me some effort to find my hostel, mostly because I wasn´t paying attention and walked the wrong way down the street. I was staying at the legendary Flying Pig, one of the best hostels in all of Europe. Actually, I don´t know if it was really the best, or perhaps just the most notorious. Rumor has it that they used to have a coffee shop inside of the hostel, but if this was true, it wasn´t there any longer. It was still morning and I had a few hours before I could get into my bed and take a nap. I ended up wandering around and reading in squares, really wherever I could find some shade. It was a bit hot out. Bill Bryson really is a good way to ward off a nap. By the time I had finished the book I was able to go to the hostel and move into my space for the next two nights. I took a little nap and then a shower. I felt much better at this point and went looking for dinner.
One of my thoughts with coming to Amsterdam again was to do the whole legal weed thing here. Then I realized that I had absolutely no idea of what to do. I mean, I could walk into a coffeshop, but by myself? That just seemed a bit sad. And really, what do I do when I get there? What did I want? All those years of just saying no were catching up to me. I decided to consult my guidebook. Let´s Go had a few pages on the legal drug scene in Holland. When I got through reading it suddenly stuck me how silly it seemed to be reading about how to get high. Who reads about these things in a book? I decided to give up the whole idea, smoking just isn´t for me and I think that shooms would be even less so. I went to the bar and got a beer, it´s best to stick to what I know.
I ended up meeting another American at the hostel bar. He hadn´t seen the red light district yet and wanted to check it out. I tagged along. In some respects it was the same as it was 6 years ago. There were still women in their underwear hanging out in window´s with a bed in the back. The whole thing seems way more tame then it was my first time there. It also seems to have gotten smaller. We stopped in a bar for a minute and the bartender told me that every year the red light just gets smaller and smaller. It´s both good and bad I suppose.
I was still pretty tired and headed back to the hostel before midnight. I knew that if I was going to get anything accomplished the next day that I would have to get myself a good night sleep.
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