CHARLIE, COFFEE BARS AND CUCUMBERS....

It was around this time a few years back that on a whim and a Ryanair jet, myself and a mate took ourselves off to Amsterdam. If I thought it was cold here at the moment, Amsterdam was positively arctic. We caught a train into old Amsterdam and from the minute we set foot onto the platform, were asked by unsavoury characters whether we needed 'Charlie'. Why the hell would I want a crappy, cheap perfume from the 1970's I thought until I reached for my 'Urban, Language of the Street Mo-Fo dictionary' and found 'Charlie' also means cocaine. Head down and trying to look shocked that anyone could be so rude as to assume we had similar tastes to Amy Winehouse, we scuttled off to a nearest taxi with the name of our hotel. The driver took us on a 20 minute journey of places of interest ie. the Red Light District before plonking us outside the hotel. With a cute smile and saucy wink, he extracted a wad of Euros from us and bade farewell. The next morning's orientation walk confirmed that the train station was about a 5 minute walk away from our hotel. Good tip no.1 - never trust a winking Dutchman and do your research first. Good tip no.2 - Pre-trip, learn the Dutch phrase 'rip me off you Dutch tosser and I'll remove your testicles using the sharp point of my wooden clogs'   Our first day was spent shopping, trawling round coffee bars and then we decided to take a tram to see the Van Gogh museum. We asked the hugely moustached and smoking tram driver to let us know when we were near the Van Gogh as we were new to all things Amsterdam. Being chattering women, we got carried away in girly conversation like you do before Magnum PI breaks the gossip, looks towards our direction and with a bored expression and pointed finger, pipes up 'You...Fack Off'. Both looking perplexed, I point to myself and innocently enquire 'me?'. He repeated again 'You...Fack Off'. With a pulsating neck and my blood boiling (I have a reputation for a quick temper), I made my way forward through the hushed carriage and said something on the lines of 'now just you hang on a minute mister. Just because we were talking a little louder than usual about handbags, that doesn't give you the right to be rude. I'm sorry that our countrymen couldn't save Anne Frank a bit sooner, but just you remember that Denis Bergkamp and Ruud Van Nistelrooy have made a very good living in English football and you should remember that before pointing your bony Dutch finger at me in that tone'. He took another drag of his cigarette and rolling his eyes upwards, a fellow passenger then intervenes with 'excuse me ladeesh, but the driver ish trying to tell you that you are now outshide the Van Gogh museum'. So with a gulp and a nonchalant turn of our trainers, we mustered a very small 'sorry about that' before alighting to mutterings of 'Bloody English' in the background. Van Go? Van Goff? Evidently not, for it's pronounced 'fack off'. (How to say Van Gogh ?)
The Fack Off museum was brilliant, as was the Anne Frank Museum. Slightly obscured view however when observed through sunglasses and hooded tops so as to remain anonymous in case we bumped into Tramcar Van Driver. That night, we hit the Red Light District and it's as tacky and as gloriously voyeuristic as I'd imagined it to be. Purely for research purposes, we visited every sex shop and giggled our way through trying on gimp masks, asking the assistants 'excuse me, what is this used for?' whilst remaining as straight faced as possible. We headed back to the hotel with picnic food and decided to watch Moulin Rouge on the hotel tv pay cinema view thing. Movie selected, food prepared, beers cooled, duvets and pillows sorted, pj's on in dizzy expectation of a good film. TV switched on and the screen went dead, followed by a snowy and buzzing screen. Muttering 'buggering bollocks' all the way to reception in my comfy pj's and matching slippers, I asked whether someone could come up and fix it so that we could watch Moulin frigging Rouge. Ten minutes later and a young, blond and very good looking young man enters our room and turns a few knobs, points the remote at the screen, adjusts the aerial and we finally get a picture. Unfortunately, not the expected Moulin Rouge but a rather distasteful and couldn't-take-your-eyes-off-the-screen-no-matter-how-hard-you-tried porn film. We're squirming as Dick Van Dyke is doing the business to a grunting bored looking lady and this young Dutch man is still fiddling with knobs to improve the colour contrast. Then he turns up the volume whilst the female porn star brings herself to boiling point. Cue us two sat on the edge of our beds, colour drained from our faces and with heads in our hands. At last, the picture was fixed and we then had to negotiate with blondie that this wasn't actually the film we ordered and pointing at the screen expressed that arse certainly didn't belong to Ewan McGregor. With disbelief and a shake of the head, Rudy tuned us in to the non-porn film channel and I'm sure I heard a vague whispering of 'bloody English'. We missed the first 20 minutes of MR, but were made aware of new and unusual things to do with cucumbers. And I don't mean making Indian raita....
Amsterdam? I love it yet feel uneasy at its in-your-face, all consuming tolerance. Well worth a visit to see its uniqueness but go with an open mind and a sense of humour to laugh at the absurdity. We certainly did (and still do)...