Dirty Dutch!

So we're in Amsterdam at the moment. You could do worse than trying to think of this city as the mega mall version of Kings X - with all your sex shopping needs. It kicks it on Kings X for the wildest and dirtiest of parties, but it's a fluffy city. By that i mean it doesn't have any real industry. Well none that easily comes to the surface out of the seedy canals that surround both the city and its reputation. I like my cities to have stressed out civil servants, tired business people commuting, and all those other people that come with major cities. The population of Amsterdam is about one and half million, but there seems to be zillions lonely accountants on weekend breaks, lads on stag parties, and IT boys who´ve come to gawk at the real thing. The place is packed with foreigners. Where are the Dutch?

So as Sandy and I are attempting to go a little further into understanding the culture here and hopefully get a few stories out of it, if not beers. We've decided to focus on the things that are the hardest to access - prostitution, marijuana cafes, and punk rock music.

But we wanna hear it from the Dutch. We decided to kill a bunch of birds with the single bullet, so to speak, to try to get an inroad into the culture. We've taken up the crazy road of Couch Surfing Dot Com. It's a global service for people, like us, who want to stay somewhere for free and possibly return the favour in the future, that is have someone else crash on your couch in your home. There's a whole bunch of websites similar to it, globalfreeloader.com, hospitalityclub...

The friend who put us onto it, Owen, went through the whole of Europe without paying for accommodation.

At first the idea grinded against my conceptions of how you should travel. I couldn't really put my finger on why, except that maybe it was because we'd be hanging out in a complete stranger´s house which all those Hollywood horror movies tell you not to do. I told my brain to stop being a sissy and quit screaming, "But they might be psychos!" The up-side of the service, and why we chose to ignore our fears, is that it'll provide us with quick inroads into communities which might've taken us much longer to access. Things like music scenes, off-beat travel ideas and the general culture of the city we'll be all much closer at hand because we'll be meeting the locals.

That's the theory.

Sandy organised our first place to stay. It was with an old Jewish dude called Sallo who lives in the south of Amsterdam. He didn't have enough room for two, so because we had a van he said we should stay in that and feel free to use his amenities, like to wash our clothes and other boring stuff like that.


Sallo lives in a square apartment block with all the flats facing each other and some basic shops underneath. If you can imagine that the Italian forum in Leichhart was by built by socialists, being functional, no frills, a little bleak, but too not bad either then you might have picture.

I have to admit that as we were walking up the four flights of stairs to his apartment for the first time, images of Clockwork Orange flashed through my mind. I was happy I was Alex in this fantasy, not the victim. But this helped me understand the risk Sallo was taking by letting complete strangers into his home. We might be psychos!

We met him at the door, shook hands and sat on his couch. For a while we all sat looking at each other. None of us were really sure of what to do next. It was Sallo's first time too.

He finally broke the silence and asked, 'What is it you want from me?'

I'd heard the Dutch had a directness, but this was my first encounter with it. 'Ummm...' I mumbled.

Sandy jumped in, being the diplomatic one, she explained everything we were doing in Amsterdam, in our life, and in his house.

'Okay,' He stood up. 'To practical things. I will show you how the shower works.'

We followed him into the bathroom. He turned a couple a taps. Sandy and I smiled politely, wondering what to say. It was a shower. I wanted ask if he knew Australia had showers too, but it was too early in our relationship.

He was nice enough, if a little odd, and we felt safe. Even if his ideas and our ideas clashed on several things though. First, we thought we´d be sleeping in our van out the front of his flat, but he'd already made up his mind on this. ´I will show you your place to sleep.´

Outside, he jumped in his car, us in ours, and after passing a series of turns and round-abouts, an authentic Dutch windmill and though some paddocks, we were well and truly out of town. He pulled up next to us. ´You will stay here tonight.´

We looked at the cows. Birds were chirping. A gentle breeze blew the grass and trees. it was extremely picturesque, but not exactly what i had in mind - this is Amsterdam! On the plus though, it was extremely quiet. The night before we'd camped north of the city - near a free pedestrian ferry crossing into the centre of town and we'd woken to morning peak hour. Think Circular Quay with cyclists.

The paddock was a winner.

I don't think Sallo liked us much in the end though, we'd only visited him a few more times before it came to its natural end. You see, Sandy and I suffer from a little problem of being late. We never do it on purpose, it just happens. The Dutch however have an impeccable talent and reputation for being on time. It´s almost perverse.

On Sunday we were at a punk rock gig and a Dutch bloke we'd been chatting with said, 'Oh my god! The band is five minutes late. That is so rock n roll.' According to the Lonely Planet 15 minutes is the maximum allowed for lateness. I'd just read this before we'd arrive late at Sallo´s. We just over half an hour last and it would be our last time.


´I see you don´t have a watch.´ Sallo standing in the door.
´No, I´ve got a phone.´ I smiled, hoping it would wash over.

He proceeded to lecture us, and almost quoted the Lonely Planet verbatim by saying only up-to 15 minutes lateness is acceptable! I wondered if those authors had been caught too.

Sallo wasn´t a bad guy though and we´re now open to the whole idea of couch surfing. We were the bad ones, but he has since written back to us and everything is alright. I'll happily do it again.

So apart from bumming it, we've been doing some filming too. On Sunday we interviewed a punk band called the Stilettos. Tomorrow we're interviewing some pot cafe owners about their business with questions like, 'Has anyone ever died in your cafe?' and 'Is this fair-trade hooch?' We'll also be talking to the sex workers union with questions like, 'Is there an award wage?' and 'Do you offer a career guidance program for girls in Dutch high-schools?'

On a side note, if you're travelling to Amsterdam looking for some indie rock, there's not a massive live scene here, but some venues worth checking out are:

The Paradiso (major internationals),
Melweg (major + local),
Patronaat (major + local),
Heineken Music Hall (major internationls),

Click here for a full listing...



P.S - we've been cruising on the wrong side of the road for at least a week and its been fine. Only three times have we nearly collided with trucks. I was driving, Sandy screamed.