Retrospective: My Weekend In Amsterdam

This is an account of my weekend trip to the Netherlands the last available weekend during my semester abroad in Freiburg, Germany, fall semester of 2005. I’m able to piece together that it was December 9th through the 12th, although additional details beyond that get hazy. The retelling got long so it’s split into two parts. Here’s the second part. Note that no admission of guilt or wrongdoing in any territory should be taken as stated or implied!

It was the middle of December 2005 and I was wrapping up my time abroad in Freiburg, Germany. The following week was final exams, and I would be on a Lufthansa flight bound for the States immediately thereafter. I felt all of the tumultuous, conflicting emotions of a student whose time abroad was drawing to a close. There was relief of some end in sight, being able to see friends and family, and the simple joy of understanding the errant stranger that might ask what time it was. There was trepidation over leaving the former French barracks and surrounding neighborhood that I came to know as home, and the several dozen other exchange students in the program that I had, with varying degrees, grown fond of. I had emerged unscathed from the supposedly unadulterated ‘anti-Americanism’ of a Europe still reeling from Dubya – even given the thumbs up on a train by a Turkish immigrant after revealing my nationality. I had my regrets, but they were mostly of the ‘opportunities missed’ variety.

The study abroad program I entered – IES‘s European Union program – nearly finished my Politics degree and included a host of program-sponsored travel throughout Europe, concentrating on EU seats of power and influence. We traveled in groups throughout Europe from west (France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg) to east (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia). In addition, I had spent a free weekend in Dublin, leaving with the pukey smell of the Guinness factory clogging my nostrils and some disorderly Irish kid’s piss soaking my shoes. By the end of the program, my wanderlust was all but sated. There was a single item left on the proverbial bucket list for my then 21-year-old self, and that was to experience Amsterdam.

Now, one fortuitous result of the European Union has been the slackening of borders, to the extent where travel of persons and goods throughout the Union is practically unfettered by traditional political boundaries. Because of this, and because of some particularly enterprising fellow students who had taken a train northward earlier in the semester, I was already familiar with the exceptional products coming from the Netherlands’ coffeeshops and smartshops. In quick summation for those not aware, the Netherlands has had for decades the clear-thinking drug policy of decriminalizing natural substances you might find whilst walking in the woods (or desert, as the case may be). Any free adult is able to walk into a coffeeshop and purchase small amounts of marijuana, or the equivalent smartshop designated for psilocybin mushrooms, hallucinogenic cacti, or any of the numerous other specimen that might alter perceptions and which the Christian god purportedly gave man dominion over.

Being one not shackled to puritanical ideals of consciousness, I felt a strong obligation to blow some legal weed while giving the DEA the figurative middle finger. (The legality of so-called ‘soft’ drugs in Germany is a murkier area, much like the rest of Europe.) Sure, I had some other things planned for my trip to the Netherlands, but then I’d already read Anne Frank’s diary and heard of the unfortunate incident involving Van Gogh’s ear, so there were certain priorities above and beyond the museums and canals.

I booked a flight via one of the budget airlines and looked forward to the Amsterdam experience, still temperate mid-December. I would be missing the legendary flower markets, but giddily I could already imagine the picturesque canals snaking through the oldest de Wallen district of the city, the friendly prostitutes soliciting from their black-light-lit rented cubicles, and the now ubiquitous coffeeshops peppering the landscape.

This trip, however, was almost not to be. My status as rookie globe-trotter glaringly revealed itself after I mistakingly left my passport on top my bureau. I discovered this fact just short of arrival at Frankfurt airport, a two hour-odd train ride, and despite the sincerest regrets of airport staff, I had nowhere to turn but back. So back I went, arriving in Freiburg late at night, playing the dejected fool.

“Soul-crushing” would be proximately the correct term, but after weighing the pros and cons, phoning my parents for solace, and in consideration of the dirt-cheap cost of the original ticket and the (slim) likelihood of getting another chance to go, I booked a one way flight the next day and fervently held onto the passport. It was going to happen. I phoned the hostel where I would be staying and told them I’d be a day late. Even factoring in two tickets to Amsterdam, the cost of flying was ridiculously low, to the point where it doesn’t even make sense for an airline to fuel the damn planes. But they did, and so I went.