Justin's lame disclaimer: Be on the lookout for dirty words. And cover the
eyes of your children and/or spouse and/or parents and/or never mind...you get
the point.
Utrecht. What can I say? It's just an amazingly brautiful city. The inner
core has hours worth of walks by canals, through, parks, along narrow
streets, over little bridges, and beside lovingly well maintain old buildings.
There's enough bars, restaurants, and diversions to keep a visitor happy for
days.
And the brown cafes--smoke-up parlors--are everywhere. Must be because
of the local university. Apparently that's what people do in Utrecht, they to
there to get high. They get stupidly high. They get so high it reminds you
of that George Carlin line, "You know, how HIGH do you have to BE?"
It's a good question.
So I've been staying at a StayOkay hostel in Den Haag, which is nice, clean,
efficent, and fairly well managed. It's one of those hostels where you see
middle-class families getting rooms and athletic cycling enthusiasts getting
beds in dorms. Tour groups stay there. It's pretty above-bar. And Den
Haag is a nice sort of city: a little pricey, definitely classy, upscale, and
resorty.
Not like Utrecht. Utrecht is a beautiful city, but it's not populated by
diplomats and well-to-be beach resort enthusiasts. It's populated by
students and backpackers.
My hostel was "lovingly restored by a group of ex-squatters."
Basically, they squatted the place for so long the owner let them have it if
they agreed to make something of it. It's a nice place, it's in a narrow
building with a lovely lobby/dining area, a great sitting area/lounge with
plush Old Europe furniture (a bit torn, but they're squatters man, it's all
good) and French doors leading out to a patio, decorative pond, and
garden in the back. I got a dorm bed for the cheapest I've found so far,
probably the cheapest in Holland.
Lovely decorations: a painting that said "Look without reading this" on the
wall--so classy. It's like one of those 3D pictures that you have to stare
at for a long time to get. But nobody wanted to wait so they all just smoked
up instead. The walls in the lounge were a striking yellow. STRIKING
YELLOW. The sort of thing that really impresses stoned people. As in
"Wow, these walls are really yellow!" Yeah, those walls have a lot of
handprints on them.
Yellow walls + legalized mushrooms, you do the math. If you haven't
guessed, the hostel is basically a Chucky Cheese's for stoners. The walls
are yellow, but if you go upstairs, the staircase walls are green. So are the
stairs. So is the carpeting they put down over the stairs so people won't
hurt themselves falling over. The bathroom area is all blue: floor, walls,
ceiling. And the sinks and toilets are massive, out-sized monsters so that
whether you're shooting up or rallying out both ends at once, you still can't
miss. More colors for the dorms.
The color scheme is so you can find your room baked, high, fried, or
wasted. People could get lost without those colors. And
the big, laminated 72-font signs at the landing on the stairs telling people
what rooms are on that floor. But the staff work really hard to keep the place
immaculately clean so that it has this odd feeling about it: a safe, cheap,
and clean place to get higher than you ever thought possible. It's an odd
combo.
So as you can probably tell, it's definitely not a swank place, at least
that's the conclusion I came to. And since it's so posh it attracts the sort of
chichi clientele that made me feel special just associating with them: budget
drug addicts.
It's really the other customers that make or break a hosteling
experience, like the people making drug deals in front of the hostel safe
every time I went there. Or the Japanese backpacker I ran into four days ago
in The Hague who didn't even remember he had been to The Hague. But of
course there's always one guy who's the odd one out. This time it was a
nice, clean-cut, New Zeelander who was cycling around Europe. He had all
the spandex cycling clothes, with matching pannier bags. Matching pannier
bags. Probably a virgin, too.
Anyway, clearly he has not yet mastered the art of reading through the
lines of a Lonely Planet guide that say "lovingly restored by a group of
ex-squatters" to read: "This place is run by drug addicts for drug tourists."
So he was a bit appalled when this Japanese girl came in our dorm room
around 1:30 and these two Japanese tourists started passing her between
them. Or when they started gangbanging her on the bunk next to his. I
mean, at least it wasn't the bunk over his. The best part was that they would
take turns helping each other shoot up. They had their system down to a
well-oiled machine: the first one would help the second one shoot and then
they'd switch off, shoot the other one up, and fuck like crazy. After the third
one came back from puking he'd jump in and then one of them would
eventually get nauseated from all the sex and run to the bathroom, leaving
two people to shoot each other up again. This was about the part where
the athletic cycling enthusiast guy rolled over (he was WATCHING, what a
pervert) and mouthed "OH MY GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"
which is an insanely dumb question, if you ask me. I'm pretty sure that it
was just your standard E, heroin, Viagra, combo, with some double
penetration to spice things up. And considering he was watching, it's a
REALLY DUMB question. But I could be wrong. It's a fine line between
drugged consent and drugs for sex, you know.
All this was followed a little later by a fear-stricken "DO SOMETHING!!!"
from the Kiwi, also mouthed in dead silence. I think he might have had a
panic attack and passed out. Just as well, he wasn't going to get to sleep
otherwise.
I slept like a baby. I am one hardcore backpacker. I can sleep through
ANYTHING. When I got up in the morning, the Japanese girl was just
putting her clothes back on and the clean-cut New Zeeland boy was sound
asleep. He could have definitely used a few puffs before bedtime. Those
crazy Japs just assumed he was too stoned to care. Why else would he be
staying in a Dutch hostel run by ex-squatters, man?
Points to the Japanese girl for taking a dick up the ass and another up the
cunt without making a sqeak. Must have been the heroin.
How HIGH do you HAVE to BE? Pretty fucking high, man. Pretty fucking
high.