Sunday Morning Comin' Down Part 2
Sunday Morning Comin' Down Part 2
Amsterdam.
After the son of the Narvik hostel keeper screamed at us like a frickin Nazi and ordered us to leave his prison-like abode for having brought dishonor onto the name of his shitty little hostel that you had to walk about a mile into town from to find anything interesting...we decided to make the best of it and spend the night on the long long train ride and across the North Sea to ...I dunno...how about Amsterdam?? We didn't know jack about Amsterdam.
Stats and I both had books we'd brought. He was toying with the idea of becoming a photographer and had a pretty good 35 millimeter camera and he had this huge, I mean huge coffee table size book on photography. He lugged that book around Europe for 4 months. like an albatross. I had brought a copy of Frommer's "Europe on $25 a day".
Once we are on the backpack trail we learned that "25 a day" was SQUARE. nobody used it. The Cool kids all had "Let's Go Europe". This pos book was edited by ..you know...rich harvard and yale kids who had back packed Europe and compiled their own guide. It was actually a very similar format to my book but oh so much cooler. Having 25 a day was essentially the equivalent of wearing tube socks to the knee with sandals and shorts. But, that's what I had. Bastards.
As it turned out, Amsterdam didn't need much of a guidebook for 20 yr old males. Stepping out of the train station...there was the Damrak and as if by instinct...our noses...or something just naturally took us to the seediest and gnarliest section of town the red light district. Even in mid-morning there were whores in storefront windows posing in lingerie (or less) working on 'bidness'. Interspersed were the hash bars. Then there were the amusing little 'live sex shows' and porno shops with wares on full display. It was 'colorful'.
"Fat City" was the name of the youth hostel we chose. It was one street..or canal over from the RLD and perhaps our education truly began here. A few days into our stay, one stoned eyed bloke from Britain commented, "you can't just check out of this place....you have to plan your escape".
Street level was a bar/club geared towards us..the young. Beer was cheap and the music-- rock and reggae. On the second floor was the men's dorm. A large room packed with metal bunk beds. Hang your gear on a bedpost and you're on the honor system. Seems like they had place downstairs you could lock up stuff...but why bother? Third floor was a cafe. Fourth floor was the women's dorm. I never saw it or the couples dorm on the fifth floor. It was a cheap place to flop that included a decent breakfast. As you can see...there was actually no reason to ever leave the place. When we first checked in the men's dorm was only about half full. But as the weekend came it got near full with a bunch of German guys come up for a holiday. The first morning after their arrival I awoke to a German fellow rolling the biggest fattest spleef joint I had ever seen. It was probably about 8:45 am. Yeah.
We fell in with a couple guys. Canadians. Though the one I recall clearest was a dual national. His dad was Australian and his mum was Canadian. He looked like a scruffy James Taylor and he was just a few clicks more 'worldly' wise than Stats and I, who, after all, only two weeks before had been spending our days and nights in Sellersburg and Hamburg Indiana. James took charge of leading us on an extensive tour of the bars and 'coffee shops' aka hash joints of the town. He steared us clear of junkie alley and wound us up in an upstairs bar where we spied a pool table in the next room. Our gravitation to something that seemed familiar took a quick shock when we entered and found a couple engaged in an irregular sex act on the other side of the pool table. Yes. It was like that.
Eventually we planned our escape. I didn't know a lot then...but I knew that Paris was supposed to be cool in some way. With our Eurail passes all we had to do was pick a train and hop on. We chose usually to travel by night. That way..we saved money on a hotel room. It's a funny kind of life measuring out your day in 'how much did I spend' and trying like hell to keep the sum under ..say...25 bucks a day. So by sleeping on the train you save probably 10 bucks for that day. We slept in the seats. We sometimes got lucky and scored compartments and could spread out. We slept on the floor. We were bums. When we got to Paris we learned a new trick. After lugging our bags around all over looking for a cheap hotel..we learned it was smarter to lock up the bags in the station...THEN find the hotel. We walked everywhere. We did not take a cab. We did use the Metro. We found a very cheap joint on the Rue St. Jacques just across the river on the edge of what I learned was 'the latin quarter'. Europe style it was just a bedroom w/ two singles. There was one bathroom on the floor. It was fine.
If you are 20 or 21 in Paris in November in 1978 your world has just expanded exponentially. First there was the magnificent beauty of the city. A joy...just from standing on a bridge over Seine and seeing all THIS and realizing...human beings MADE this. You either get this feeling or you don't. But the grace and beauty of it got me. As a kid me and Stats just wandered around finding our adventures. There was one on every block it seemed like. Saw everything.
As you might imagine, at that age most our mind was on the ancient task of 'cherche la femme'. But, for some reason we had NO LUCK. I mean brother...NONE. This seemed to run contrary to the legends we had heard about the french and particularly french women. I suppose it somehow dawned on us that we, perhaps, could do with a bit of freshening up. We hadn't washed our clothes for a couple weeks now and showers had been somewhat scarce. I see us now...wandering down the Boulevard St. Germain...two hoosier boys...one wearing a ridiculous puffy down jacket, dirty blue jeans ...scruffy work boots and needing a shave and a hair cut. Add in the odor. Why didn't the french girls want to flirt or somethin??
So we learned to wash our clothes. You take 'em all into the communal bath. You fill up a sink with hot/warm soapy water. Then you dunk in the clothes article by article and, with a bar of hotel soap, scrub it the best you can. One by one. After that...empty the sink and fill it with cool clean water and rinse. One by one. Then you wring those bastards out as much as you can and return to your hovel like room and decorate the place with your wardrobe to dry out. This remained our, perhaps, weekly routine for the next 3 months or so.
Well, we didn't actually have any better luck with our quest in Paris. But, at least we didn't fricking Stink. We figured out our other necessary routines. We ate (included in the price) the hotel breakfast which was bread that came with a bowl of chunky butter and a pot of wonderful jam or marmalade. Milk and coffee. And grab a fruit from the basket as you head out for the day. We bought sausages and cheese and bread and stuck these in our pockets and this was our lunch. For dinner we splurged and bought either cheap street food or cheap chain fastfood. We had nary a fine dining experience during this stay. But it was fine. We learned to have a Cafe au lait and watch the people go by. And read. And we discovered at the street cafe's they didn't charge us as much if we sat inside...and not out on the street where we provided an embarassment to the management for having such ruffians as patrons.("keep those Americans out of sight!! LOL. )
And now it was easing into December and we began to think about what our destination for Christmas was gonna be. Like Joni says in her song about Paris
Sitting in a park in Paris, France
Reading the news and it sure looks badThey won't give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had
Still a lot of lands to see
But I wouldn't wanna stay here
It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here
That was it. That was just it. This was when Iran had taken a bunch of Americans hostage and it looked like it was going to be another war. Winter was coming soon. So we began to look south.
End Part Two
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