I see Dutch people...

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Finally. The most highly anticipated weekend of this summer was on the brink of fruition. Amsterdam - that perverse Mecca for virtually all young voyagers throughout Europe titillated by the prospect of legalized marijuana (among many other narcotics), the Red Light district,live sex shows and the birthplace of Heineken and Amstel. My own pilgrimage there would serve two fold; obviously observe (not partake) in the aforementioned activities but also to finally re-unite with some of the Dubai boys - Dar 'Disco Dancer' Homayoun, who has been sent there to take part in a 7 week acting course (of all places) and Laurent 'Lebo Sleezer' Frangie, who actually goes to university in Groningen up north. Actually, the main reason I was persuaded to come down by these two was because of Dance Valley - a 90,000 person quasi rave / electronic music festival in the countryside outside Amsterdam, headlined by huge names like Tiesto, Carl Cox and Ferry Corstener; Ahh the thought of seeing these guys live in such an atmosphere! However, I would have to wait a few days until then..

I managed to convince Brian and Shauna to come along, which meant that there would be quite an interesting juxtaposition of childhood friends, with whom I can draw upon years worth of memories, and these virtual strangers that I would consider to be my closest friends here in France! When I was faced with these two chronologically disparate chapters of my life, it wasn't so much regrettable but rather a slightly pained observation that life had indeed moved on, a lot, since the last time I saw these two jokers. Whether for the better or for the worse is still debatable (I'm not wise enough to make that judgment yet), but the fact of the matter still remains that I'm not the same person I used to be and that is slightly unsettling because what substance could the phrase 'being yourself' retain if the concept of 'yourself' is constantly evolving? Not too sure how I fell into this melancholic digression but I'll stop for now!

Where was I? Ah, Thursday morning, the 10th of June and I wake up, much to my surprise, not in my apartment but that of Shauna's (fellow student from Washington St. Univ.). A quick shake of the head and my brain reboots, flooding my vision with broken memories of the night before like a soundless movie on fast forward. After reviewing some crucial bits of footage again and again, I decided that I had simply ridden the crest of an extremely strange turn of events and would deal with it later. For now, I had to worry about escaping from there without disturbing her host mother (who apparently took quite a shine to me when I met her, so maybe it wouldn't have been that bad!), running back home without waking up my host mother, pack my bags for the weekend and get ready for school. Just before I leave, I peek into Brian's and discover, much to my amusement, that he isn't there either. I guess we both had a pretty good night.

We groggily make it through class, one tearfully boring grammar exercise at a time, until its finally time to catch the train. Our voyage this time would last approximately 12 hours, with stops in Paris and Brussels. To help pass the time, we had actually invested in Monopoly, French style, where Park Place is replaced by the Champs-Elysees and the pound sign is shunted in favor of the currently omnipotent euro. Unfortunately, we decided that it would be far too awkward to ask a stranger to be our fourth player so it sat quietly the rest of the trip collecting dust while I whittled away the time once again by watching the paysage go by in a paint smear of green, brown and blue, listening to some trance to get in the mood for the weekend and occasionally sharing eloquently silent glances with Shauna across from me.

I was a little disappointed at the prospect of being in Paris and not being able to see more than one of the ubiquitous McDonald's outside the Gare Routiere (I still did not manage to make a trip there during my entire time here!) and the same for Brussels, so we just had to make do with settling for Amsterdam - what a shame. We get there about 10 minutes shy of midnight and during the entire last leg of the journey my mood continually improved at the thought of finally arriving - I had spoke to Laurent a couple of times to make sure he would be at the station to pick us up and already we had regressed back to talking with this strange accent we would adopt at school without really realizing it! It's basically English spoken in a medley of an Indian and Arab accent interspersed with smatterings of literally made up words and non-sensical phrases, whose origin is completely unknown but is used by all my friends nonetheless, even at this age, even after having not seen each other for close to a year. It felt good. Before the train ends, however, I have to recount the story of a very weird Australian fellow who was on the train with us, apparently drawn to us by our English. After explaining to us that he had no place to stay and taking note of our surprised expressions he said 'Oh not to worry mates, if everything fails I'll just find some bloke with some cheap cocaine and stay up the rest of the night!' Our cue to exit.

A few minutes of standing outside the entrance and finally, I see Laurent turn the corner, wearing an outrageous hoodie that would become his uniform for the trip, with Dar close behind with his girlfriend Sarah (who is, in fact, Kiefer Sutherland's daughter). After many minutes of hugs, kisses, insults, slaps and laughs later, we head back to Dar's apartment, located along the Prinsengraacht, or Prince's Canal. Now, I had always known about the canals but I was seriously astonished at the actual sight of them. At night, the city of Amsterdam is simply stunning. The reflection of the lights coming from apartment windows and streetlamps on the still water literally bathes everything, the walls of buildings, cars, boats, our faces and even the night sky itself, in a soft yellow glow. Even at that hour, the streets were buzzing with life - Amsterdam is no doubt a pedestrian city and it is really a pleasure to walk down each and everyone of its narrow, cobble stoned streets just taking in the sights of the city and sounds of passerby's speaking every language possible, truly making this a cosmopolitan city. It can become a little disorientating at times though, because every street looks scarily the same, each with a canal to one side and narrow apartments to the other.

Finally we're at his door and right as he lays his hands on the knob, it swings open violently and amidst literally a cloud of smoke (yes, that kind of smoke) emerges the small figure of a shabby looking blond guy, days worth of stubble, beer bottle in hand and a great big smile who introduces himself simply by saying 'Hey guys! I'm Haley!' By that I mean Haley Joel Osment, star of movies such as Sixth Sense, Pay it Forward and one of the youngest actors to be nominated for an Oscar. Dar, being the person that he is, is actually in the same acting class as Haley at NYU and although I knew this already, I was really not expecting him to be there! A moment's hesitation on all our parts, and we carry on as though nothing of consequence happened. Haley turned out to be a very cool kid, extremely relaxed who did not give the slightest hint of his glamorous profession. He would spend the entire next 4 days with us, including coming with us to Dance Valley and visiting the Van Gogh Museum.

After doing what had to be done upon our arrival, we left and grabbed a taxi to where we would be staying for our first night there. It turned out to be the house of one of Laurent's fraternity brothers, a very chilled out Dutchman by the name of Renko, who very kindly put us up for the night in his guest bedrooms, even providing us with towels the next day to shower.

The next morning, we are all absolutely famished and Laurent, thankfully, has the perfect cure to our predicament; a huge bowl of freshly made poffertjes . This was by large and far, the best breakfast I have had in a long, long time. My traditional order consisted of simply a molehill sized pile of mini pancakes, hot, puffy and soft freshly brought from the skillet, doused extremely liberally in powdered sugar and finally topped off with a nipple shaped glob of butter, already beginning to melt and create tiny rivulets of sticky happiness as it soaked up the sugar. For the next 15 minutes, the only conversation was the clashing of forks against the plates, grunts of satisfaction and the occasional gulps of water to help us swallow the last of the syrup.

Watered and fed, we wandered around the city for a few hours just taking everything in. Predictably, we find ourselves down the street where the majority of the city's coffee shops are located. Each shop has extensive menus of herbs, all describing in painstaking detail their geographical origin, conditions of growing, strength and the subtle differences in effects that they have on mind and body, ranging from 'philosophically conducive' to my favorite: 'immobile'. It's quite funny how serious people actually take marijuana and also a little interesting that it's one of the only drugs to have developed its own little sub-culture and community, made up of people who all function quite normally, leading ordinary lives and jobs, that just love getting stoned . I find it a little hard to imagine a similar situation for crack...

We stop at a particular one called The Greenhouse ( they all have the most awful puns as names) and the others purchase a few grams of some variety, the name escapes me now. What I do remember is the evidence of just how Europe's crackdown on indoor smoking is affecting Netherland's main tourist attraction. However, the Dutch are extremely wily and have got around the law, for the most part, by simply ceasing to sell spliffs or blunts. Seeing as the law, word for word, only prohibits tobacco from being chuffed indoors, the coffee shops quite happily said 'Alright, no more tobacco. But we can still sell weed!' So now, you can only obtain pure joints from the shop or simply little pouches of the stuff, to which you can obviously add your own tobacco just so long as it is smoked outdoors.

As per Laurent's suggestion, we head to one of the city's extremely beautiful parks - if ever in Amsterdam, I highly suggest simply spending an entire day there with the appropriate snacks and supplies. We're later joined by Dar and Haley and eventually a highly territorial goose. The day passes by and eventually it's the three of us (Dar, Laurent and myself) just endlessly recounting stories from our glory days back in DC, ranging from Laurent eating a note because he was too scared to show it to a teacher; table volleyball in the common room, making fun of Mr. Agent making fun of Laurent, Dar showing us his erections through his pants in the middle of class (less homosexual than that sounds), imitating our linguistically challenged Korean friend Jae-Jun, me being the alleged victim of racist teachers, BAGU and so on, all the while laughing far more than was necessary.

When we're finally ready to leave, we head over to what would be our second (free) place of residence in Amsterdam, this time quite different to Renko's enormous, plus family home. Instead, we would be crashing in what Laurent described as a typical student accomodation, while most of its original habitants were away on vacation. And typical it was; the students actually managed to jimmy rig this rope connected to the main door latch, which snaked its way up all 4 flights of stairs, so that when the bell rang they wouldn't have to walk down to open it! Anyways, we were soon introduced to Khaish (sp?), another one of Laurent's fraternity buddies from Groningen, who was putting us up. By now, I had made an extremely general conclusion that the Dutch, apart from all being above 6ft that I am convinced is thanks to their full cream milk, are also quite possibly the most relaxed and affable people on earth. Neither Renko, his parents, JP nor Khaish blinked an eye when they found out that 3 random strangers would be staying with them, and simply wondered whether we were enjoying ourselves in Holland. Every time we went out, they all offered to buy a round of drinks and finally, all of them spoke near perfect English, an effort that I have to say the French seem to consciously avoid making.

We were given the option of two rooms that could bed two people each, but before I could even say a word, Laurent, being the true friend that he is, chimes in innocently suggests that Shauna and I take the private room upstairs with the bed while him and Brian would take the couch. I made a mental note to thank him, and then smack him upside one later... We had a quiet night, some beers some smokes, because the next morning was Daaaance Vallleeeeey - and we needed ALL our energy for that one.

Saturday, July 12th: Dance Valley

It's nine in the morning. We walk outside. It's raining. Pissing rain. This is not a good sign at all; seeing as the rave is taking place in the countryside, the rain would inundate the grassy fields, turning them into ankle deep oceans of mud. Either way, we try not to think about it and being our 45 minute odyssey by tram-train-bus to Dance Valley. Already, even at the stations, we see signs of just how immense this festival was going to be, with entire blocks of ticket booths dedicated only to Dance Valley buses and half the people inside all kooked out, dressed in ridiculous outfits ranging from Teletubbies to nothing but full body paint.

We arrive at Spaarnwoude, where all the magic would take place. The bus stops quite a distance away from the actual grounds, leaving us to march the rest of the way. Just the walk was a sight in itself; imagine thousands of people walking down this one muddy, narrow path in a line that was about a kilometer long. All that separated us between the place was a huge hill, on the top of which sat this enormous robot type creation that did nothing but have its head rotate round and round. All very weird already... As we got closer, we finally notice the first of sounds coming from the other side, steadily growing in volume as we walked. Finally, we turn one last corner and WHAM! my heart is literally jolted out of rhythm as the first unsheltered pulse of bass slaps against my chest! I have never, ever experienced music at this level of sheer intensity before! Stretched out in front of me is a vast vista of grassland, covered in enormous tents of all shapes and colors, moving floats wheeling their way slowly through the mud on each with multiple DJ's on board, and even a giant ferris wheel, which just had to be ridden later.

However, the ticket office was where things really got intense for the first time. I mean, people were literally clawing to get in, but the organizers were prepared. We were all steered like cattle in a tent, in which were rows upon rows of steel cages that divided the frenzied crowd, providing at least a little order to the chaos. if you have ever seen Children of Men, where the immigrants are cordoned off, you will know what I'm talking about. People were just yelling all sorts of nonsense, rattling the cages like animals and literally stampeding to get in. All along the lines were enormous, burly security guards waiting for someone to cause trouble and the pat down at the end for drugs was really a series of slap and punches waiting for something to fall out. The checks were all just a farce really; there was no way they were keeping drugs out of an event like this and they knew it. Some people had really ingenious ways of smuggling their goods in. There was a guy next to me, with long, sparse and straggly hair who was already obviously, as Laurent put it, high off his tits. I could already tell he was tripping on ecstasy because his eyes would not stop moving about and he was gnawing away at nothing; dead give aways of E. Anyways, after mumbling some absolute gibberish (could simply have been Dutch but I couldn't tell the difference), he whips out his cellphone, takes off the back, removes the battery and neatly plucks two little tabs of paper, which he immediately pops in his mouth and swallows. Ah...LSD - this guy was in for a rough day. We would later see him tripping, stumbling and finally collapsing to a doped up heap in the middle of the open, stretching and wildly looking around at nothing (he was obviously stuck in some hallucinogenic hell)


The crowd finally spits us out into the field and we now have a little breathing space. I should mention at this point that present were myself, Shauna, Brian, Laurent, Haley, PJ and Renko. Laurent and I had the only working phones, so getting lost at a place like this would really spell disaster. We devised a quick safety precaution - if we were ever to get separated for a significant amount of time, head to the front of the ferris wheel and just wait for someone else to arrive. A surprisingly simply but efficient system that worked well on a number of occasions throughout the day. However, the three Dutch had this other way that admittedly only worked over very short distances but was far more amusing nonetheless. If ever out of sight, one would stop and literally bellow this cry that sounded like a yak being sodomized by a bull elephant, and it went something like "aaOOOO-AHHH!!!". Anyone recognizing this call HAD to respond in a similar fashion, and with repeated attempts, success is a matter of a few minutes and some very troubled stares from people around you. Definitely bringing this one back to Berkeley.

We spend the majority of the day visiting all that Dance Valley had to offer; there were tents playing extremely intense Sensation Black beats, with a drilling bass line that literally disorientated you; silent tents that gave people headphones at the door and inside were four DJ's, all transmitting their tracks soundlessly over the air and people had the choice to tune into whichever one they wanted, giving outsiders the eerie view of thousands of people dancing to nothing, with the only sound being the low, continuous drumming of feet on the floor; there were punk bands playing on a moving float while 50 year old women did a catwalk around them; there were garbage cleaners that were dressed up as twisted, glittery wood nymphs with 20 foot feathered net sacks trailing behind into which they would spear the waste from the ground; there was a castle on a hill that turned out not to be a castle, but simply four minarets along which people dressed as Spiderman were climbing up and down, again and again for no good reason, there was the aforementioned robot, which turned out to be about 50 feet tall; In essence, there was a lot of funky shit.


Later in the day, it is still overcast and by now I have given up all hope for my shoes, which were previously white but were now completely brown and slathered in about an inch thick of mud. We make our way over to one of the main areas, which would later be host to Tiesto. The stage itself was an enormous feat of construction about 15 feet high, in the middle of which sat a giant yellow and orange half sun, sheltering the DJ's from the persistent drizzle. What was absolutely spellbinding was the sight of the crowd itself. What had to be at least 20,000 people packed arm to arm, face to face in strategically placed spot of land that rose up on all sides, funneling the masses towards the main stage. It seemed as if everyone had left every ounce of self-consciousness and sentience at the door and came together here to form one conjoined mass of humanity, pulsing to the beat of their only voice of reason, the DJ. You could literally see, with each heart stopping thump, a ripple burst from the center stage all the way to the back, again and again, like the effect of a stone hitting a pond. Whatever wordless commands were sent within the extremes of infinite tonalities and ground shaking bass was perfectly understood by this bizarre organism and executed in the form of head shaking, arm twisting, leg kicking frenzies. Every single person out there was, for the briefest of times, in their own world yet part of something bigger, taking part in one of the oldest expression of human creativity; Dance. I had never seen anything like it. I wanted to be a part of it.

I walked right into the middle of this..this creature that was all too eager to devour me into its ranks and grow one more person strong, one more victim of its invisible tendrils of sound that one by one, shut off all my senses apart from my hearing and vision. When the music rose, the crowd rose and I went with it, riding the crests and dips of music like an audio-visual roller coaster. The extent of how much the music possessed was manifest when for a few brief seconds, the speakers blew and all was silent. The crowd instantly stopped moving and there were literally looks of utter confusion, disorientation, anxiety and disillusionment smeared across the faces of everyone around me. People had the look of 'What in God's name am I doing in the middle of all these people??' like they had snapped out of some trance and had only just realized where they were. Without the music, no one knew what to do with themselves. And then it went back to normal - everyone once again had their electronic messiah to listen and obey.

After a while, I felt a steady heat growing on the back of my neck. I couldn't figure out what it was for a while, thinking it was just be getting hot from dancing. Then, the MC gets on stage and belts out 'Everybody please welcome our new guest, the Sun!' Everyone, all thousands upon thousands of people flip a 180 and we are all blinded, for the first time that day, by the dazzling light peeking in between the crowds and just above the huge hill. It sounds so silly now, but at that time it was one of the greatest sights and feelings ever. Everyone continued dancing, their backs to the DJ, watching and greeting the presence of the sun in an offering of dance as it gradually warmed us and lit up the entire valley like a golden blanket. I seriously felt as if I was part of some ancient pagan ritual that was trying to appease some obviously angered sun-god into staying. Back on stage, extreme displays of pyrotechnics probably reserved for a such a moment were busy paying their own homage to this ultimate fireball. At this point, Ferry Corstener had taken the stage, fueling the crowd with some insane tracks that I'm listening to at this very second as I write this from Dubai. He was however, only warming us all up for the main attraction Carl Cox.

As strange as some of the sights were during the day, night was when the real phantasmagoria came out to play. There was no external lighting, save for the DJ's so he could see his equipment. Instead, the real revelers, who come prepared for this sort of thing, lit themselves up using an assortment of glow sticks, finger LEDs, mouthpieces, fibre-optic wires sewed into the hems of their clothes, helmets with strobe lamps and much, much more. This constant flashing of neon colors continuously slashing and slicing through the black night would burn negative images on the back of my eyelids that would continue to dizzy me, no matter how much i tried to escape them. And when I finally decided to brave it once more, I did a double take at the sight of a woman, enveloped from head to toe in a silver, skin-tight space suit leering imperiously at us from about 6 feet above through the aid of crutches attached to all four of her limbs. This restricted her movement to an extremely slow and wobbly hobble not helped by a) the thousands of heads she was trying not to put a hole through and b) the aforementioned sludge that the rains and weight of a million footsteps had turned the ground into. I looked around and noticed saw that all throughout the audience were dozens more like her, patrolling the crowds - I remember being reminded of Spielberg's version of War of the Worlds, where those huge beetle like creatures would go around sucking up humans left and right. I'm sure that pour soul tripping on LSD from earlier, if he ever made it that far, would be seeing exactly that!

The night was finally coming to a close and Carl Cox had taken the stage. Having never seen him before, I was really taken aback to see that the face behind the name was actually a gargantuan black fellow who definitely wasn't running a marathon anytime soon but was a virtuoso with his beats and mixes. The final climax of his set was augmented by an impressive display of extremely high powered lasers penetrating about 200m through the air, directly above the crowd. About twenty of them would simultaneously fire, creating a hatched pattern above that would slowly descend towards our heads and everyone would jump, attempting to reach but at the last second the blanket of lights would jump away only teasing.

The final mix ended quite abruptly, signaling the end to an extremely memorable day filled to the brim with sights, sounds and a Ferris wheel ride. Definitely one for the record books and experience I hope to savor again in the future. The long hike back, turdging through mud, the bus-train-tram back to the student accommodation and we were all well and truly spent.

Our final few days were spent, like I mentioned, walking around the city some more with Haley, visiting the Van Gogh museum, seeing some more greenery of both natures, taking some canal cruises and generally enjoying life. I hardly want to write about the Red Light District because well, there isn't much to tell. It was far seedier and gloomy than I imagined and the girls in the windows looked positively bored to tears - it even got to a point where we saw one munching from a can of peanuts while trying to look attractive at the same time. You do get all sorts in Amsterdam I guess. Although, I did get a flash of a nipple and a smile - I thought I would return the favor, thought the better of it and moved on. Ah! The one highlight! The entire time at Dance Valley I had been looking high and low for any merchandise, anything at all from t-shirts to even a lighter, that would serve as a physical reminded of our day. Nothing. Walking around the streets still a little bummed from this, we were walking past a Chinese restaurant on the brink of closing when I spied a massive 3x4 poster just sitting on the wall. Without a mote of hesitation I just barged in, asked if I could take the poster, yes, and boom! I'm sitting pretty with the poster lying at my feet as I write! Perfect end to a perfect trip.

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