Dutch entertainment in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – OK, I know I haven’t written for a long time. It’s been kind of easy to forget to write a column in the middle of your summer vacation. First of all, I’d like to apologize for a mistake in my last column regarding band names. It turns out that Mayonnaise really is a band after all. And they rock, too. Thanks to the Ashtray Girl, my cousin, for lending me the CDs. Now for the actual article.

Day 1

The Belmonte clan, excluding Mayor Sonny Belmonte, arrives in Amsterdam amid great partying and smoking of pot.

A 14-hour flight to Amsterdam from Singapore sure doesn’t seem long when you’ve got 60 movies to choose from. And I’m no Lanz Leviste, so don’t expect me to write anything about the ones I watched. In fact, I think I’ll fast-forward about 16 hours, after we had all piled our bags into our hotel rooms and taken the train to the city proper. Anyway, we got off the train and the first thing we saw were people – a whole lotta them. All of them were celebrating "Queen’s Day," in the usual fashion of blocking the streets, dancing to loud R&B music and drinking like there was no tomorrow. But one smell rose up above all others: The sickly, sweet-smelling odor of secondhand marijuana. The City of Ps – pot and portable toilets. They weren’t smoking in the main streets, but in the little side-alleys. You could really see the fumes drifting up above the narrow, tall houses of Amsterdam. It gave me a headache. One by one, the Belmontes with children decided that the hotel would be the best place for the kiddies, so in the end only myself, my two cousins Mikey and Ethan, and my Auntie Joy and her husband Ray were left in the middle of all the drunken, happy Dutch clasping beer bottles and weed. This was truly a day of madness. A teenage girl was beaned on the head with a Heineken bottle and passed out cold. Some dumb ass, obviously high, said something in Dutch and started poking me in the side of my head. I quickly disappeared into the crowd. Another drunken fool hit someone he didn’t know with a sausage balloon and started a brawl. A young woman was flashing her panties from a barge floating along one of the numerous canals. And a mad ambulance drove into the crowd at around 60 miles per hour, almost killing several people in its way. We were walking around Amsterdam for five hours with little rest and we had an occasional Fanta to help keep us going. On the way back, I lost my hotel key on the train and had to have it replaced. We got back to the hotel at around 9:30 p.m.

Day 2

The Belmonte cousins – Paolo, Mikey, and Ethan – get stuck in an elevator and miss seeing a Dutch model pose nude in a museum.

A wake-up call by the reception roused us all at 7 a.m. We took a tour bus to a small, sea-side town to have our pictures taken in traditional Dutch costumes. It’s pretty hard to describe how they look like, but I’ll give it a shot. The guys wear this red jacket tucked into some baggy black pants, and a black hat. The whole thing has a lot of buttons. On the other hand, the females wear a checkered skirt, with a white blouse and hat. Both wear clogs. But no one wears these anymore. To see a Dutchman wear a costume in the streets is as rare as seeing a Filipino wearing a barong tagalog to bowl at Rockwell. Only one member of our clan refused to have his picture taken: Santi, Mikey and the Ashtray Girl’s little brother, who taught himself how to use a Gameboy before the age of six. His ground for refusal went like this. "I will have no time to use my Gameboy! I will have no time to use my gameboy! I will have no time to use my Gameboy! Please! Please! I don’t want to have my picture taken!" I was strolling around the shops with Mikey and Ethan when I noticed out of the corner of my eye this pretty little Dutch girl looking at me. She was wearing a miniskirt, a denim jacket, and flip-flops. She was behind a counter. She also had these incredibly slim legs. I made up my mind to have a chat with her. After a few scouting runs pretending to look at items in the shop, I was approaching the counter when all of a sudden she walked out disappeared around the corner. I discreetly followed her, noticing her sashay into another shop a few meters away. When I got in, she was behind the counter again. Seemed like her parents owned both the shops. Another few scouting runs. I found a shirt I liked, and sauntered up to the counter. I bought the shirt, then attempted to engage in some small talk with her. Our conversation went something like this:

Paolo: Hey, how ya doing? You seem pretty tired, walking back and forth all day.

Chick: Yeah, it’s a pain in the neck.

Paolo: Well, I’m visiting Amsterdam for a few days, and I’m giving away once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

Chick: Like what? Sounds interesting.

Paolo: You bet. This is your once-in-a-lifetime chance to have a date with a real, live Filipino. If you can just step outside with me for a moment, I’d be happy to provide you with a sample.

Chick: Really? I can’t leave this counter. I’m the cashier for both my parents’ stores.

Paolo: Parents? Are they here?

Chick: That’s my mom over there in the corner.

Paolo: Oh, shit. Nice to know ‘ya.

Chick. Yeah, you too. Will you be staying around here for a while?

Paolo: Nope, I’m leaving in 30 minutes.

Chick: Oh. OK then.

I grinned lopsidedly, and swaggered out of the shop with my shirt. I also bought some clogs in another shop. In 45 minutes, we were back in the city. Off to the museums it was, for us. The whole clan browsed through about a gazillion and one Dutch paintings by dudes like Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Steen. The trouble began at the Van Gogh Museum. It was in there that we discovered the lift wasn’t working. Mikey, Ethan, and myself were inside it, stuck between the third and fourth floors. After waiting about 10 minutes, we tried yelling to get noticed. We honked this emergency horn which sounded throughout the floor. We called the elevator help phone, but we couldn’t understand Dutch. My cousins tell me I was cursing all the time. About 15 minutes passed, and finally Ethan pressed the ground floor button in one last, final, desperate attempt for freedom. And behold! The elevator moveth! Instead of getting off at the ground floor, though, we decided to stop at the first floor and walk down the stairs to the ground floor. It was a good decision. We saw a picket of security guards surrounding the elevator. There was a security guard at all the other elevators, except the second floor one. They weren’t there when we first went in. I think they thought that we were some dumb ass hooligans creating a ruckus, and they thought that the elevator was working perfectly. We made our escape. Later on, we found out that some people were very angry at the museum. We also missed this Dutch model who was posing in her birthday suit in one of the non-Van Gogh galleries. We totally missed it. Our day was ruined.

It’s midnight now, and I think I’ll call it a day.

To be continued…