Amsterdam Sidebar - Tattoos

I have a question about tattoos. I often see people, sometimes acquaintances, with tattooed letters spelling words I can’t decipher. Is it okay to ask what it says? I spoke with a woman in Amsterdam last year, curious about a hexagram tattooed on her arm, one of those I Ching - - & — things, 6 lines. She had no idea what it meant, something about ‘good fortune,’ she thought. I suspect there are a lot of people wearing tattoos that mean something other than what they think.
I asked some guy at my gym in Sweden where he got his ink—good question, hip. I watch tattoo shows on TV. He seemed pleased to explain.

The whole tattoo thing seems weird to me. What is it when people are convinced ripped jeans are cool, and piercings? I’m eighty this year, maybe it’s my age. Sometimes it seems like I’m the only one without tattoos. Wife doesn’t have one, but our dog does, in her ear.

I’m in Amsterdam tonight; at the Torenczicht Hotel’s bar, watching people, which seems half of what I do here, watching people, noticing tattoos. I’m watching Anna, tend the bar. She’s got the best tattoos I’ve ever seen, these kind of smoky things that go up her arms and disappear into short sleeves. Skulls, strange beings and shapes I can never quite make out— words in script around her neck. I can only see a few of the letters, but they appear to be in English.

Anna’s Romanian, by way of Hungary somehow—but lived here in Amsterdam for years. She speaks 7 languages, English, of course, and Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese . I forget the others. I have never seen her fail to communicate with anyone wanting the get a room, or a drink, or how to get to some location. She rides a motorcycle bigger than I am, and wears the best in leather gear, first class, expensive helmet.

It’s 12:30 p.m. and the place is crammed, standing room only and no standing room left. I count over 50 people. Bars open to the public close close at 2. Anna is working alone. I watch impressed as phantom shadowed arms blur into motion, washing glasses, making change, bantering wisecracks, pouring beer, mixing drinks, checking people in, and telling them how to get someplace. She’s poetry in motion, like Tai Chi, but faster.

In the mist of this there’s now a problem with someone’s change, something about how many beers his table had had—a guy in his middle 20’s giving her a hard time, in a friendly, teasing way.
“Ahh, I’m just messin’ with you,” he finally says. “I have a complicated brain.”

“No, I think it's very simple,” she responds. Those close enough to hear crack up.

I’m laughing before she even speaks. You don't tread on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the Lone Ranger, and you do not mess around with Anna. She has heard it all. Every quip, pickup line, and ‘Oh I forgot to pay,’ line—drunks and stoners. She handles it all with charming expertise born from years of experience.

“I’m going for a nice long ride after work tonight,” she tells me when her shift is near an end. “Then tomorrow do the same thing all over again.”

At 1 a.m. her replacement arrives. She heads upstairs to get her motorcycle gear. Before she leaves I have to ask, ‘What does that say, around your neck?”
“Been here, Done That,” she tells me. We both laugh.

Amsterdam Red Light – 2017 Wednesday – Part 2

Garden Tour

 

Terry was right. Garden tours listed in the brochure are open to the public at any time—if one knows where they are. I was a bit disappointed having expected something a bit more spectacular. They were nice, quiet, peaceful places to get away from it all, but nothing to write home about.

 

 

I only made it to three of them before my bad leg started giving me trouble and I had to give it up. Will try again next year now that I have a list of the addresses.

 

Saw these on my way home. There are a lot these colorful surprises along the sidewalks of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam Red Light – 2017 Tuesday – Part 1

First day: 

I got my favorite room back at the Torenzicht, overlooking a canal that once hosted a never ending parade of small boats filled with happy tourists and locals having a good time, but no more. The circled window is my room. You can see a temporary, steel retaining wall in the canal at the bottom of the photo.

 

 

Reconstruction began in 2014, a major project replacing the canal’s  hundred year old walls. It was supposed to take two years, but is still unfinished.
There has always been a problem with buildings along the canal having a tendency to list. The structures rest on pilings (usually about 16 of them) driven into the ocean floor over a century ago.

 

Some are very slowly sinking into the sand—have been for years. The pilings can be replaced, but the work is expensive, around 50,000 Euros to repair one piling. Much to everyone’s surprise the buildings started leaning faster as work on the canal progressed. To make a long story short, the construction company went bankrupt and work has come to a dead stop. Boats can no longer pass.
There have been many changes in the Red Light district, not all for the best, in my opinion. There has been rampant commercialization and a ‘clean up’ on Warmoesstraat where a string of world famous coffee houses once hosted thousands of happy vacationers. As leases expired they were not renewed. Some were allowed to become bars where alcohol is sold. Most of the coffee houses have gone out of business or relocated to surrounding neighborhoods where they are allowed to exist.
The Baba was a world class favorite, now moved so far away I’ve never had the energy to go and check it out. I have a problem walking for long distances— bad knee, a 1960s motorcycle accident.

  

 BABA 2013

   BABA 2015

      

        What Was BABA – 2017

Now The Grizzly  –  Food & Liquor Company

The Red Light feels uncomfortably commercial now—some good times gone forever, replaced with fast food places, bars, and sex shops. Streets remodeling to make room for tourists who have deeper pockets. An X rated Disneyland promoted by nostalgia for a time and place that was.
My good friend Terry works at one of several Hunter’s coffee shops. What was the best one, here on Warmoesstraat, is now a bar, but Terry works at one in Rembrandtplein, an outlaying neighborhood where marijuana is permitted.

    

   Rembrandtplein

Drugs are not legal in Amsterdam, they are permitted.  A sort of ‘don’t ask-don’t tell’ thing. Should be a fifteen minute walk from where I am, I’m told, but I’m not into walking. I attempt to take a pedicab and learn the cost is 15 euros. This exact same trip cost 4 Euros last year. The pedalers and their rigs are now a company—set rates and rules for what was not so long ago, independent and individual operations with negotiable prices.

 

15 Euros is a little over 16 U.S. dollars, for what I’m told is a 15 minute walk. But I got lost. Streets here are not in grids. They’ve been laid out in rings with crooked turns and twists between. I arrive at Hunter’s 80 minutes later. My leg is killing me—damned knee.

“So what you up to this time, mate?” Terry asks me.

“I don’t know for sure. I thought I’d go and see the Open Tuinen Dagen, Open Garden Days. A tour. Costs 20 Euros.”

“It’s a rip-off man. You can see all those places free. This place has gone commercial. All about the money. Tourists pay outrageous prices for most ordinary things.”

“I know, but don’t know where any of these gardens are. The tour guide’s being sold by Amnesty International, so maybe not such a bad thing.

End Of Part 1

Part 2 – Wednesday Next

Amsterdam Shop Cats – 2017

           Amsterdam shop cats keeping and eye on things.

 

 

Amsterdam Red Light – 2017 Sunday – Part 1

The Happiness Project

Went to see Body Worlds today.    €18.oo

Fantastic display on six floors of one of those traditionally narrow Amsterdam buildings, each floor with a different subject. One starts at the top and works their way down. The theme was “Happiness.” A clever idea as the show could easily be a bit morbid, after all these are real, dry frozen bodies of very dead people. There were a lot of teenagers passing though, having an excellent educational moment.

 

Dry frozen, plastic covered bones, each floor dedicate to a particular area: muscle, organs, etc. Some of the displays were a bit embarrassing. Young girls giggled. Do women always giggle when embarrassed? There is a woman’s tour that goes to the Casa Rosso live sex show across the canal from my hotel window. The lines waiting to get in to the one hour show are long. Giggles echo between the buildings on either side of the canal as tourists wait for admission. I often hear laughter and female screams and shouts coming from inside the show. I have never seen it myself, maybe someday – or not.

A girl called her boyfriend over to look at cut away parts of a vagina and I recalled a line from Cormack McCarthy’s, The Counselor.  “Seeing a thing like that changes you.”
I took special interest in the body parts that worry me, knees, and back, arthritis—all that stuff that happens to us as we age. A prostate gland was on display. It seemed so tiny and fragile to be able to cause so much trouble. I learned its original purpose was to help create sperm. After that it spends its days making men miserable. A number of displays dealt with injuries and illnesses. Alzheimer’s for instance – plaque happens. Scary.  There was a sliced-in-half, long ways penis with a prosthetic implant. Ak! Another of a broken bone with one of those metal plates screwed into it—almost a foot long with 13 screws to hold it. Ouch. An opened up pair of smoker’s lungs was scary.

There were ongoing movies —blood rushing through veins and arteries—clots.  There were free blood pressure test machines. I scored 86/135, a bid high but in the acceptable range.  It was that kind of a week.

One various floors there were sidebar comments on happiness, and what causes or prevents it. ‘50% of our availability is hereditary,’ one display read, ‘40% based on decisions we make, and 10% by environment.’ Interesting.

The bottom floor display was a series of photos, 15 international families posed before a table holding a week’s worth of groceries. A placard below informed viewers of the cost. 12 Euros in India, €275 in Netherlands. America was near the top, but not the most expensive.

Sunday Part 2 Next – I think.

Leaving for Amsterdam

By the time you read this I will be far away.

Postcard From Ellie - Out of luck In Oslo - 12 June 2017

 

Out of luck In Oslo

Well, as the nun said, “This is not good.”

It was raining in Oslo, of course. It’s raining everywhere in Scandinavia. It never stops. It never really rains, it just sort of pisses down intermittently—you never know. If you go out of the house there’s a good chance you will get rained on, but like I said, not too hard. I really don’t mind it on our neighbourhood walks at home.

Well anyway, I was at the contest—ready to go, and it wasn’t raining, but there were a lot of other bitches waiting to go on ahead of me. My turn finally came, and with it—Rain. I could not believe it!  My new hairdo was perfect, combed to perfection, bushed to a golden, copper sheen. Ruined in 2 minutes! I looked like I was trained hard and put away wet. I was so humiliated. Needless to say I didn’t make the cut list.

I’m home and feeling fine now. It’s good to be back and playing with Smoothy, our house cat.  I have my pink ribbon and my little trophy from the other contest—my first trophy. I could do worse.

There are a lot more contests coming up, I just hope the Hollywood gossip rags don’t hear about my Oslo incident . Probably not. When’s the last time you heard about something that happened in Norway?

‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’, one of the older bitches told me. Whatever.

It’s still raining in Sweden.  Don’t come to Scandinavia unless you were born with gills.