10-II-1976.

Train from Düsseldorf to Amsterdam.

I've told this story so many times that I'm now loathe to type it down... but well, it's time, I guess. Inge came to get me, as Rudolf was off to work already. His mom made me breakfast. Didn't talk much, as she spoke no english and my german was still very thin, I could barely read Asterix.

She took me to the railway station and stayed with me just long enough that I may buy a ticket to Amsterdam. I think it went direct from here, it being on the way from Düsseldorf. I had about an hour to kill, and watching the model trains displayed in the hall couldn't keep my attention, despite the intricate work of their little engines, switches and signalization. So I had a beer (2 DEM). On the train, I found a mostly empty compartment, just one guy with a beard and one blonde young guy. The beard was the decisive factor, I was looking for people like me, easier to make contact and less chance for trouble. The guy was from Brazil, that much we heard before he left the train. The other guy was a dutch sailor, disembarked in Hamburg or so, going back to Rotterdam. He soon brought four cans of beer. Explained dutch pronunciation to me - there are five vowels: (unreproducible), and that's easy, the trouble begins with diphtongs, the voices composed of two other vowels: a, e, i, o and u. OK, so they have a completely different coordinate system there...

Some german guy dropped by twice, to scratch for a cigarette. Actually, second time he offered to pay. He got it for free both times, and then when he left, I asked this guy what the fuck was that. He just shrugged and said "Germans... they are so ashamed if they don't have, too shy to beg, so they offer to buy off, even on a party."

Then it was my turn to go get some beers. I walked up to wagon restaurant, and said "vier bier". The guy said sixteen marks, in german. I said "a u tri pičke materine". He said "sorry, bro, you looked like one of them". Then he couldn't guess my neck of the woods by dialect, despite bragging about his ability in that department, because "you mixed at least four dialects so far, can't get where're you from". That's probably because I was telling jokes all semester, as per the acting course I got from Aćim last summer. So bosnian and montenegrin dialect foremost, a few others at times.

The border officer was giving me some trouble - seeing how long my hair was, he fully expected me to be a hippie looking for a way to live off charity and dutch social services, by just sitting around Dam square (which was false: that's the time when they started sperm banks and paid donors handsomely - heard that from Rudolf, one jerkoff a week was enough to survive), so he asked me to show him enough money. I showed the 200 DEM I had (or was it 300? I doubt it), and he said that's not enough to return to Yugoslavia. But, I said, enough to return to Düsseldorf. And then I remembered to show him my airplane ticket, which made it OK. Though, there were guys who used that as a trick. Two days later I could have had an airplane ticket to the US for a dollar - the tickets weren't so strictly tied to a name, so the return half of a two way ticket could be resold, and the hippies who'd cross the big puddle would do exactly that.

Arie was waiting for me at the station. His gang was at a nearby bar near Leidseplein (sp?), going at probably second round of beer. One of them was a guide to the group of freshmen, who comprised at least a half of the gang, with the purpose of getting them to learn how to live in the big city and not get eaten by it. I remember two dialogs with him - "where are you from?" "yugoslavia" "aaaah yugoslav brandy (rakija), so awful!" "how much did you drink" (he shows something like 0,4 liters)(I slap my forehead). The other: "where are you from?" "yugoslavia" "aaaah yugoslav coffee, so awful!" "and you also drank the sludge at the bottom?" (he nods)(I slap my forehead).

Amsterdam is indeed fascinating. First, the weather wasn't cold at all, despite the date. Then, bicycles everywhere. Then, when taking a left turn to cross a bridge over a canal, you take the right lane and get a special left turn signal, which you also see in a small version of the semaphore at about 1,4m height, because the main light is above your head and you're too close. The left lane is to go straight or right. The radius of the turn is too small, so it would take a really small car to perform a left turn from the left lane, it would be a real elbow curve.

Got some cigarettes from a street automat, his treat - I didn't have any gulden /guilder?/ that evening. Went to sleep to his place in the dorm. Now the dorm is a series of high rises, less than 20 floors each, and perhaps sixteen to twenty rooms per floor, and each room is what we'd call garsonjera, i.e. one larger room, perhaps 3x5, miniature bathroom, a niche to serve as kitchen, and a terrace. A largish hotel room. There was no tub in the bathroom, only a shower on the ceiling and a sink on the floor. If you run too much water and showerhead spreads too much, everything gets wet.

He had a poster on the wall, an eye test, with font getting gradually smaller in each line, saying "TO / OOMUC / hsexma / kesyoushortsighted". Got it right... after coming rather close. The other running joke was to find the two meanings of "the more you drink, the WC". OK, everyone got the first, the more you have to pee. But even I didn't get the other: the double you see.

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Mentions: Ariejan Verschoor (Arie), Inge Hertmann (Inge), Milan Šebrcan (Aćim), rakija, Rudolf Ochsner, in serbian

21-XI-2013 - 22-XI-2024