Out of Paradise - Ch. 6 - Europe, Now What? Pt. 2

Out of Paradise - Ch. 6 - Europe, Now What? Pt. 2

I finish my smoke, drink my beer, read the last page of the chapter on Luxembourg in Arthur Frommer's "Europe on 5 Dollars a Day" (trust me, it’s not that long) and wave to the waitress for the bill. I give her the 50 centimes for the beer with the money I had just exchanged from the currency counter next door, hoist my pack on my back and attempt to locate the next bus into Luxembourg City.

After scouting around and eventually finding the dingiest, cheapest hostel central Luxembourg had to offer, I check in and give the girl at the counter 5 Franks for the night. Curfew 10:00 pm. I go upstairs and check out my new digs for the night. There are about 4 or 5 other guys in a cavernous room for about 20. I say "Hola," (the only other word for hello I know in another language other than "Hey"). A mélange of "Bon jour," "Ciao" and "Gutten tag" comes back and deduce that there are a couple of French, 1 Italian and at least 1 German in the mix. We all get to be best of buddies and end up at the bistro downstairs trading stories and beers of where we’re from, where we’ve been, what brought us all here and where we’re all going. There was Detier from Dusseldorf, Francois and Michel from somewhere in France and Fedrico from Italy. I’m particularly inquisitive, grilling each one of them over their native habitat and making as many mental notes as physically possible to be used for future reference. 10:00 pm rolls around and to avoid getting locked out, we make our way back to our digs.

The next morning, packed and ready to begin my odyssey, I bid the lads adieu and strike out on my quest for the Matterhorn. Considering it’s still mid-November, I have another month or so before the snow begins accumulating in the central Alps and decide to head north and take in as much of the continent as I can before embarking on my ultimate mission.

I catch a local bus that takes me out of the central city and drops me somewhere on the northern outskirts of town. “Good enough place as any,” I’m thinking, as I drop my pack at the side of the road and point my thumb in the general direction of Germany.

The crisp mid-November morning chill sends a shiver down my spine – don’t know if it’s the air or the anticipation or both – probably both – but the feeling is exuberant. I’m here, I’m breathing this rarified European air, everything around me is new, exciting, exhilarating, not a care in the world (other than catching a lift to my next unknown destination) – and that notion in itself – my next unknown destination – not knowing, nor particularly caring where I’ll end up at the end of the day – Damn, life doesn’t get better than this.

The first ride of my first morning on my first road in Europe is with a young German auto parts dealer from Trier that takes me breezing through the Luxembourg countryside and into the core of the very same matrix of multi green patches of forested hills and farm meshed plains I had observed the day before from the sky above with the Alps towering in the distance. We’re gliding over the same network of roadways and waterways emanating in and out of the towns and villages that speckle the landscape between Luxembourg and Germany and, after a couple more rides, eventually finds me eating a sidewalk bockwurst for lunch hawked out of a converted VW van in downtown Cologne parked in front of its magnificent cathedral. What a marvel – the gaudy, gothic, centuries old structure with its gargoyles and demons and stained glass windows depicting struggles of good and evil and saints dressed up like bicycle card characters.

I find a hostel nearby, unload my gear and set out to explore what adventures Cologne might have in store. German beer, German schnitzel, German sausages and sauerkraut, German cars, German girls, yup, they’re all here, just as I had expected, but had to see for myself, just to be sure.

The next day finds me back out on the road bright and early hoping to reach Amsterdam before nightfall. The towns of Dusseldorf and Essen pass by in a blur as I cross the industrial flatlands of Germany and into the even flatter terrain of The Netherlands. Whoa, I’ll be damned, windmills, far fucking out, windmills and tulips – It’s true – My first sights of Holland are of windmills and tulips. Windmills and tulips and Van Gogh-esque drawbridges and bicycles – well no wonder – the terrain is flatter than stale beer – Bicycles everywhere – Bicycles and farms and barns and silos and forests and small towns and villages. The scenery carries on like this through the Dutch towns of Arnhem and Utrecht until eventually arriving in the center of Amsterdam itself.

Again, I set off to find the dingiest, cheapest hostel central Amsterdam has to offer. I check in and give the guy at the counter 5 Guilders for the night. No curfew. I drop my pack in its room under its designated bunk and I'm off to explore. The canals, the architecture, the people, the culture, the girls, whoa, what's this? Did I say girls? Half naked girls? In storefront windows? Gorgeous as hell - Sexy as hell - All smiling at me - All beckoning me in - Who me? How much? - I set off to have a beer and get high instead (not necessarily in that order).

Two black guys with broken teeth and Rastafarian dreads approach me on the street - "Hey man," the first one says in a thick Caribbean accent. "Wanna get high man? Wha-chu-wan-man? You want smack, blow, hashish, ganja? Wha-chu-wan-man?"

I ask him how much for some hash. He nods his dreads approvingly and beckons me into a dark alley around the corner. "C'mere man," he says lifting a joint the size of a rugby ball out of his pocket, his sidekick following behind. Christ, the sucker had to be a half foot long, thicker than a bockwurst sausage and tapered down to a cardboard filter that fit the lips perfectly. He lit up and the resulting mushroom cloud nearly choked me to death. "Here man," he says after taking a good long toke and hands it to me. I brush the cloud of smoke away with one hand and reach through the haze with my other to retrieve it. I take a similarly good long toke and immediately a paralytic rush zones through my head like a runaway locomotive and I'm temporarily comatosed. "Whoa, dude," I say as I prop myself up against the wall to maintain my balance and the blur gradually recedes, "How much is this?"

He pulls a fig newton sized brick wrapped in newspaper out of his pocket and says, "25 Guilder, man." I exhale, take another long deliberate pull on the overweight spliff, reach in my pocket and pay the man his 25 Guilders. I exhale, slip the fig newton sized brick wrapped in newspaper into my hip pocket and bid my 2 Rastafarians vaarwel.

After two titanic tokes and a good buzz going on I entrench my hands firmly in my pockets, go inside the café next door and order a Heineken. With a smile on my face, eyes agape and dilated to the max, a pervasive aura of wellbeing permeating my body and an icy gulp of lager slithering down my throat, I think to myself, “Damn, life doesn’t get better than this.”

Amsterdam, 1972, Christ, everything's going on here. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Stephen Stills and Manassas, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, The Who, The Moody Blues, Ten Years After, Johnny Cash, Poco, Al Stewart, Jerry Lee Lewis, Captain Beefheart, Leonard Cohen, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers had all been playing in different venues around town in recent months - and with all the storefront women, the sex, the drugs, the general aura of decadence and debauchery permeating the atmosphere – And here I am, smack in the middle of it all – There is no place on Earth I’d rather be, nothing else I’d rather be doing, right here, right now – Damn, life doesn’t get better than this.

On my way back to the barracks, for some unknown reason, like a cosmic force, the hand of destiny reaching out and placing me, like a pawn on a chessboard, in this location, at this point in time and continuum and telling me emphatically, imperatively, "YOU MUST GET LAID," I end up back in the window shopping district.

"Oh my God," I'm thinking as I retrace my steps back past the neon lit shop windows filled with all the carnal delights of a drunk and stoned 19 year old vagabond footloose and fancy free in Amsterdam at midnight on a mission to get laid.

"Whoa, what's this? Did I say girls? Half naked girls? In storefront windows? Gorgeous as hell - Sexy as hell - all smiling at me - all beckoning me to come in - Who me? How much?"

I continue my inspection, up and down, like a drill sergeant inspecting his troops. "Damn, sweetheart," I'm thinking as this stunning redhead in a pink see through negligee sitting in her storefront window display looks me in the eye and lowers her right shoulder just enough to let the shoulder strap slip over her arm allowing her breast to slip gently to the side. She beckons me in with a nod of her head. I follow.

Back to my barracks and ready for another spliff, I unpack the fig newton sized brick wrapped in newspaper from my hip pocket, a pack of zig zags from the other and begin twisting the tobacco out of a perfectly good Marlborough onto a magazine on the top of the footlocker next to my bunk. I take a couple of papers out of the pack of zig zags, unwrap the newspaper from around the fig newton sized brick and begin shredding bits of black tarry goo into the tobacco twisted out of the Marlborough on the magazine. “Damn, this shit’s unusually gooey,” I’m thinking as I continue shaping the concoction into a sausage sized cone. I retrieve my lighter from my shirt pocket and ignite the tip. "What the fuck’s this?" The resulting cloud of smoke resembled the smell of rotting eggs and smoldering retreads. The mother fucking Rastafarians have given me a brick of chopped up straw meshed into a hard gooey glob of black shoe polish. The Motherfuckers - The Motherfuckers!!!

Resigned to the reality that I had been fucked out of 25 Guilders and, even worse, had no more weed for the night, I tuck myself into my sleeping bag and moan myself to sleep. The next morning, my half opened eyes peer blurrily down from my upper bunk vantage and notice my bunkmate, a seemingly mal-nutritioned scarecrow of a guy, rifling through my toilet kit which had been lodged somewhere deep within my backpack. Curious to see as to what in fuck's name he might find so precious in my toilet kit, without saying a word, I continue watching as he unscrews the top of my shaving foam can and begins dissolving a brown powder in it. He rolls his left shirt sleeve up past his bicep and with his teeth and one free hand ties a foot long length of surgical tubing around his bicep just above his elbow joint. He reaches for a syringe he had readied on the top of the footlocker, fills it with the mixture he had concocted in my shaving foam cap and injects the contents into a protruding vein just above the inside of his left elbow joint.

"Good Morning Amsterdam!!!"

He looks up at me and says, in a hoarse half whisper, "Sorry mate, I was just..." His voice sort of trails off as he begins reassembling my toilet kit and replacing it somewhere deep within my backpack.

"Ah, that's cool," I say. "Sure, I'm used to seemingly malnutritioned scarecrow kind of guys, rifling through my toilet kit and mixing up fixes in the top of my shaving foam can first thing in the morning," I was thinking. Ahhh, Amsterdam, November 22, 1972. I know this because tomorrow’s my 20th birthday.

I spend the day with a couple of fellow Americans I had met in the hostel who had just bought a 2nd hand VW van in the Amsterdam 2nd hand VW van market. Amsterdam has, among other things, developed into the 2nd hand car Mecca of Europe – A used car trading depot that guarantees buy back of a vehicle, 3 or 4 or more months later, after cruising around Europe in it. VW Vans are the hippies’ vehicle of choice.

We decide to give it a test drive the next day and end up on a road trip up north to a blustery beach on the desolate Island of Texel somewhere in the middle of the North Sea. It’s cold and bleak and blustery and here we are, three American dopers, getting high, drinking Heinekens we had just bought at the last kiosk down the road, celebrating my 20th birthday in the middle of the night on a blustery beach up north on the desolate Island of Texel somewhere in the middle of the North Sea. Ahhh, life doesn't get better than this.

Out of Paradise - Ch. 6 - Europe, Now What? Pt. 2