After a very well behaved early night last night, I have met my deadlines at work, so can catch up on the everyday stuff which lies under reams of paper on my desk. I left my Camera at the dinner last night, so I meet Miss Argentina for a coffee. It's good fun having a chinwag without alcohol, and makes a good relief from a very empty office.(Everyone is on holiday or at conferences). Coffee was at the closest bar to my work, Cafe Molenpad:
It's a great little bar. A lot of character, I've had a lot of good nights, afternoons, mornings, terrace sessions, beer sessions, coffee sessions and tea sessions here. It's a bar which is very good at multi tasking.
Tonight I'm triple booked. I had planned to have a Guitar Jam, but then I got offered Steak, Beers, and Pool with The Kiwi and the Pool lads. While it's not going to be the same level as Sunday's steak, so good relaxing conversation sounds like fun. Later in the afternoon, I get a phone call from one of my Bulgarian friends, He tells me that they are having a party at their new house. I can't pass this up as I want to see the new house and they are pretty good friends. I decide that I can reduce myself to double booked by getting a steak with the lads, and then heading to the party.
We meet at Coco's on Rembrandt plein:
It's an Australian theme bar which boasts warm beer and lousy food. The bar is popular with Australian and New Zealand ex-pats and it's full pints of cold beer, large portions of food and large screen football/rugby/cricket mean the English don't mind it either. We meet up with a Dutch colleague of The Kiwi's and have a pint here before heading off to one of the touristy Steak Restaurants on Rembrandtsbreestraat, It's an Italian steak restaurant. which is in the touristy area of Rembrandtsplein, so I don't expect much. When we go in, we have a little old Italian man who does the bad service act. It soon becomes clear that the bad service act is really just a clever ruse to hid the fact that the service is pretty bad. We ask for pints, half litres and he pretends he doesn't understand, we order them in several languages and he "Yeah, yeah, yeah's his way off to the kitchen. He comes back with Litres. It's just a trick to get more money out of tourists. Although the steak is pretty good, everything that surrounds it is cheap and crappy. Five portions of chips amounts to one larger than normal portion in the middle of the table, the steak sauces are packet mixes etc.
We have fun anyway, the conversation is pretty good. We even get onto discussing the differences between the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt" and the Nine Inch Nails original. An expression of pain or a very good tune. Johnny Cash takes away so much of the original's darkness, but you can see what a great song it is in terms of melody and structure when Johnny Cash does it. Basically Johnny Cash trades some of the pain and darkness to make the hooks of the song more obvious.
By the time the bill comes the table is so full of empty plates that the waiter hands it to us on a tray. The Dutch guy is the only one with free hands, but is hesitating on being handed the bill in case he has to pay it all. One of the English guys notice this and a says "C'mon at least hold it - it's only a piece of paper". This is in reference to the Dutch being tight.
We head off for a quick game of Pool. A few cheeky doubles and some nice long pots mean that I can still hold my head high in a Pool hall. After a few games I have to get going to get to the Party.
The party is in Diemen-Zuid which is south-east of Amsterdam. It's about a 20 minute bike ride away. I should probably take the tram, but living in Amsterdam you never really want to be away from your bike. It keeps your options open for getting home. It's quite exciting getting out of the centre. Going to a suburb, to a real house. I'm greeted at the door by their very excited kid. He insists on running around the house and showing me everything before I'm allowed to speak to anyone. By Amsterdam standards the house is Huge!!! There's three floors and three bedrooms. It's hard for people to understand this excitement when you haven't lived in Amsterdam, but Amsterdam living is very cramped. Houses are small, and Amsterdammers are experts in making the most of small spaces. So being in a house with so much space feels great. The garden is a good size as well. To give an idea of size, it's big enough and dark enough that if you wanted to you could hide in he bush and wait till people pass and jump out with a light sabre, you could.
The kids are playing with Light Sabres in the garden. They decide that I should be Darth Vader, cos he loses his legs. It's funny watching kids worship Ewan MacGreggor in the same way I used to run around the school playground pretending we were Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. The difference is the toys, we used to just imagine we were holding light sabres(Or hold sticks if we were outside the playground), whereas no kids have things with lights that vibrate. I explain that Darth vader has a heavy dry breathing because he is thirsty and that he needs a beer. While Obi Wan MacGreggor goes to the fridge, I go and say hello to my bulgarian friends and introduce myself to people I haven't met.
I've arrived quite late, so the party's winding up, but it was good to see this set of friends, some of who will be in Bulgaria next week. The new house has a great feeling, and theres a garden. I look forward to Barbecues here next summer(I think the good weather is finished for this year.)
I really enjoy my night time cycle through the countryside - no cars, just me and MellonCollie and the infinite sadness:
