Saga of the Bulls and Amsterdamage pt 1

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Trip Start Jan 20, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Ongoing

  Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Saturday, August 22, 2009

Hello again everyone! As usual I’ll begin with an apology for the tardiness of this instalment in the increasingly inadequate and infrequent blog-like chronicle of our mediocre travel exploits, though I’m inclined to add that the apology is more habitual than sincere… ;)
 As I write this, I am sitting at a table outside the lovely Nijdam house in southern Holland where we’ve spent the last couple of days enjoying some lovely dutch sunshine and hospitality. It’s raining at the moment,  but the weather has been amazing for the last two days making a wonderful contrast with the English weather we’ve endured for the last five or so months in Liverpool. Oh, the weather in Liverpool had it’s nice days, to be sure, but I think I hated these even more than the grey rainy ones as it simply meant that we would get slaughtered at work (the Pumphouse Hotel, on the Albert Dock is regrettably (from a staff perspective) possessed of possibly the best beer garden in the city and when the sun comes out, so does 90% of the city. And they all want serving at the same time…). 
So anyway, we’re in Holland at the moment but before I get to how we got here, I suppose I should mention our experience in Spain, running away from several hundred kilos of highly motivated, highly cranky, agile and surprisingly fast beef…
We left Liverpool in the early afternoon of 09 July on a National Express coach which, true to form and sadly also true to schedule, took all day to get us down to London arriving around midnight with a change at Milton Keynes. With our flight leaving early the next morning, we’d decided there was no point in doing anything much, nor trying to visit any of our mates in London, so we jumped on the express coach out to the airport where we thought we might be able to sneak in a bit of cheeky kip time before our flight to Bilbao in the morning. Only one thing that was kind of funny happened at the airport and while it’s not really in the best of taste, I’ve never let that stop me before, so now’s not really the time to start is it? It happened at about 0400h, while I was answering one of natures calls in the airport toilets. Halfway through my crap, this powerful voice booms out, “What are you doing in there?!”. It was so unexpected that suddenly I wasn’t halfway though my crap anymore, I was pretty much finished. Before getting a response, the voice once again boomed out, “You’re up to no good in there, aren’t you mate?!” Not sure if I was being addressed or not, I was attempting to think of a suitable response (something in between, “what’s it to you?” and, “why don’t you fuck off?”) when I was saved the trouble by the bloke in the next cubicle mumbling something. Whatever it was that was mumbled didn’t appear to impress the voice, which then said, “No, no. You were playing with yourself. We’ll have none of that, mate. Out you pop!” . On hearing this I had an instant sense of guilt closely followed by some intense relief, because I had been so bloody bored that I was considering doing what my neighbour was in trouble for. Just exactly how in the hell they knew what he was up to was a little disconcerting anyways… Cameras? A complaint from someone? If that was it, how the hell did they know? I didn’t hear anything, and I was right next door to the fellow. And if someone noticed by looking in the cubicle, well surely that’d make them as much of a wanker as the wanker, right? Perhaps not in quite so literal a sense though. Whatever the answer was, I was too scared of the authorities to do anything other than wipe my arse and get the hell outta there. No doubt more information than many of you needed, but, well… tough.
In due course we got on the flight and bumped into some other Aussies, who were of course, headed the same place we were, the running of the bulls, also known as, “el encierro” or “la fiesta del San Fermin”. After a bit of discussion, it devolved that we had some mutual acquaintances in London and that these gents had organized the hire of a vehicle from the same place we had, in Bilbao.  These guys we with the Fanatics tour, an option we’d considered before opting to do it ourselves, a bit more off the cuff. One thing they did have that we didn’t though, was directions to Pamplona and to the fanatics campsite outside of town, which they happily copied for us after I managed to provide some assistance in Spanish at the car hire desk. Not having any accommodation of our own, we’d simply planned on sleeping in the car, but now, knowing where the fanatics would be, we thought we’d chance our hand by popping in to say hello and see if any of the staff we knew were there. Offer assistance in putting up tents or taking them down or interpreting Spanish, but sadly (and not in the least bit surprisingly) they had all bases firmly covered and didn’t need any help from us, so there went our hope of scamming some accommodation and it was back to the car for us.
Before we got to that point of course, we first had to navigate our way from Bilbao to Pamplona which after a few false starts proved not to be too difficult. Having some time to kill though (we’d arrived quite early in the morning) we decided to head north to the city of San Sebastian, which one of doug’s work mates had said was quite lovely. While en route though, we received something of a distress call from the other lads we’d met on the plane. They’d been busted speeding by the police, who were demanding payment of the fine on the spot, the lads though, hadn’t pulled any euros out yet and couldn’t pay them. The Spanish cops were clearly determined to live up to their reputation of being dodgy buggers. We didn’t actually have any euros on us either at this point, figuring that we’d pull some out from an ATM when we got  to a town. Trying to help the other guys though, we pulled in to about 3 different service stations, trying to get out some money to pay the Spanish cops. None of these had an ATM though and time was a wasting. Finally, we managed to pull into a small town and get some money out, not long after which, we got a phone call from the guys who said that the Spanish cops were tired of waiting and were taking them in convoy to the next town to get cash out. The whole episode stinks like a 3 day cat as far as I’m concerned. Who ever heard of having to pay a fine on the spot… in cash? 
At any rate, we continued heading on towards San Sebastien, which really was a beautiful spot. Lovely beaches, clear sunny skies and loads and loads of women wearing half a bikini. Excuse me for being a typical guy, but I thought that was great. After spending a pleasant afternoon in San Sebastien, it was time to head for our eventual destination, Pamplona. We got there with out too much trouble and after the already mentioned foray into the Fanatics campsite, we picked a spot just down the road, by a creek as a potential place to spend the night. Before settling in for the night, we decided to head into the town itself to check things out, like the parking situation. If we could scam a good park in the city, it would save us a lot of trouble, no need for drink driving or massively long walks. Sadly, such was not to be the case. It did give us a bit of an idea of just how insane this festival is though. During the 8 days of the Festival of Saint Fermin, where the bulls are run at 8am every morning, the population of Pamplona swells from 200 000 to around 1000 000, according to one website anyways. Being there, it wasn’t hard to believe it. People absolutely everywhere, most of them wearing the traditional white shirt and keks with a red neckerchief and sash at the waist. Inside the city it was just pandemonium. Music all over the place and people walking around drinking and in general having what looked to be a great time. We couldn’t wait to get amongst it. News had also reached us that someone died that day, during the encierro, which was sobering news as we were planning on running the following morning. Not having found anywhere substantially nearer to town, we headed back to our spot by the creek to sleep the night. Evidently a good number of other people also had the same idea and it was a fairly noisy night, till about 0200 anyways.
Up early the next morning, we managed to snag one of the taxis that was returning the late night revellers to the campsite on the way back into town to take us back the other way. Getting in to town showed that despite the early hour, the revellers from the previous night, maybe even a few nights before that, were still going strong. Some people, it seems, drink the entire night through to get enough dutch courage to run with the bulls. Or perhaps to kill enough brain cells to make it look like a good idea anyway. Feeling fresh and at least partially rested, we followed our cab drivers directions and located the corralled off streets that make up the encierro. From a little bit of prior research we were already aware that it’s impossible to run the entire course in front of the bulls, it’s only 850m but the bulls are simply too fast. All the runners have to choose a section of the run and do the best they can not to get gored or trampled on by other runners. Having found the course, we then set about figuring our which part we wanted to run in. The crowds around at this time were incredible. Early risers out to see the run, tourists from all over the place, people out to do the run themselves, press photographers and news media vans everywhere. Disorganised chaos. 
While trying to shove our way through the crowds to find a place to run we were aware that time was starting to run out. In the end, we just had to shove our way up to a barrier and try and climb through, all illusions about any sense of organisation pervading the event pretty much shattered. Police were escorting anyone they thought was a little too drunk to participate out of the barricaded streets, though this was at best a token effort. Too many drunks and not enough police. Inside the blocked off route, it was still enormously crowded but full of people in very high spirits, lots of pushing and good natured shoving, which I suppose was just the nervous energy of so many people thinking the same thing, “I hope I don’t get a bulls horn shoved violently up my arse by half a ton of angry beef”  or something along those lines anyway…
Just before 8am, a rocket goes up to signify that the bulls are ready to go and at this point, the course empties out significantly. By around 50%, or so it seemed. Either a lot of people lose their nerve before the bulls are let out, or never intend to run anyway and just enjoy getting amongst some good pushing and shoving. Not long after this, a second rocket is released, to signify that the bulls have entered the course. At this stage, everyone is looking in the direction that the bulls will come from, bouncing on their toes and trying to see past the throngs of other runners. The first warning you get though, is when all the people in front of you turn around and start fleeing for their lives, in a reasonably literal sense. There is something about panic. It is remarkably contagious. When a huge number of white faced people start running in your direction, panic written all over their expressions, the compulsion to run is almost overwhelming. So run we did, the first time though the bulls weren’t actually in sight and it petered out fairly quickly. When the next mass panic began we were determined not to turn tail and flee until at least having seen the bulls. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. When everyone starts running and you’re trying to wait, you’re a bit of a liability. This doesn’t actually become evident to you until you see the bulls yourself, see how enormous they are and how ridiculously fast they’re moving and then turn tail to run yourself. At this point, while you’re trying to accelerate from 0 to flat out in a time that would make Usain Bolt jealous, you realise how annoying all those people who are standing there waiting to see the bulls are. More than that, they’re a bloody liability. As you’re pushing the land speed record to new heights, you are also trying to divide your attention in equal measure to dodging the slower people in front you, the idiots who are still waiting to see the bulls (amongst whom you numbered scant seconds ago) and the bulls which are approaching your hindquarters at frightening speed. Somewhere amidst all this chaos, things are quite likely to go wrong, and they frequently do. Doug and I lost sight of each other fairly quickly, each of us concentrating fairly strongly on not tripping over, not hitting other people, going as quickly as possible and not catching a bulls horn in the arse.
As nearly as I can recall, my thoughts while running were something like: Fuck me, they’re bigger than I thought - and faster! Sprinting, looking over shoulder, then in front, then behind again, dodging people, checking where bulls were, checking in front then behind, holy shit they’re close! Check in front, hurdle someone who fell over, poor bugger check in front again. Start checking behind, get massive shunt, fucken hell!,  flash of large brown object, hooves, propelled violently into pile of about 8 or 9 people. Trying to extricate self, more people pile on, what a mess.
It took a couple of minutes for everyone to get off each other from the pile up, after which I sprinted off towards the end of the bull run to see if I could catch up. Fat chance (pun intended). Following the course to its conclusion, you wind up in the stadium which is absolutely packed to the rafters. I had thought that things were pretty much at an end and set about trying to find dougie, no easy task when, like the other 500 or so people (and myself) on the floor of the arena, he’s wearing white shirt, trousers and a red neckerchief. While wandering around the stadium I was kind of surprised by a sudden roar from the crowd then seeing everyone down inside the stadium scatter in different directions. When they’d all parted, I saw one of the bulls, now rested, full of energy and looking decidedly cranky had been let back out. When they get let out into the stadium, there is no set course for them to follow but there sure are a lot of people around for them to vent their rage and frustration on.  They run around like crazy at first and you can see people getting tossed about all over the place. Eventually they tire a little and people start getting braver, darting in to touch the bull, or for those brave/silly enough, to try and jump over the bull. We saw a few people try it, but no one managed it very convincingly. Running in to smack it on the arse was enough for me. As well as trying to get it’s attention and then get the hell out of the way, I suppose. When the bull tires enough and stops hurting people, they bring out one of the older and bigger steers which are a bit calmer and they use these to herd the younger, angry bull back into the pen.
Around this time, Dougie cottoned on to something that had escaped my attention with the first bull. A lot of people were gathered in front of a gate in the wall of the stadium, chanting, “eh Toro, eh!” (hey Bull!). After a little while, they all huddled together, down on their knees and continued chanting. Taunting the next bull to be released into the arena. The gate then opens and the maddened bull charges down a narrow chute and leaps over the huddled people, into the arena and starts its own glorious chaos. 
I still hadn’t found dougie at this time and didn’t know that he’d already gotten on board and was there, in front of the gate for the second bull. All I remember thinking was, that’s fucken stupid. I gotta try it”. So after dodging the second bull’s maddened antics around the arena, I made sure I was over at the gate to join in for when number three was released and this, of course, is where I found dougie. He’d been in on it since the second bull. It was quite an experience, I have to admit. Staring down the narrow corral, to see a tremendously angry bull staring back at you. Then tensing yourself not to dive out of the way as it charges towards you. Trying to hold its gaze until you duck, involuntarily as it sails scant inches above your head, into the arena to begin wreaking its own version of havoc upon the hapless crowd. Well, they’re not really hapless, but it sounded good, y’know?
So anyways. Running with the bulls was amazingly good fun, especially the chaos at the end, dodging the bulls in the arena and letting them jump over you. Great stuff, and all this before 9am! So after such a glorious start to the day, what else is there to do but get on the lash? Not having a better answer, this is precisely what we did. We managed to pace ourseves quite well, actually, lasting until about 2 or 3 am I think, at which time we decided to walk back to our car, about 6 or 7 kilometres out of town, which we fervently hoped was still there and not towed away for violating some parking laws about which we didn‘t know. Thankfully, after a very long walk home, including a mad 1.8 km sprint through a “vehicles only - pedestrians strictly prohibited” tunnel, we managed to make it back to the car, mercifully unmoved by traffic authorities. We had been planning on running again the following morning, but due to the late night and some of the alcohol, we elected to sleep in instead.
We spent most of the next day exploring the coast between San Sebastian and Bermeo, finding some absolutely fantastic spots along the way. We also picked up the most gorgeous hitchhiker I’ve ever seen. An absolutely stunning young Spanish girl who wanted a lift to the next village, and as doug never tires of telling people, she had to move my jocks off the back seat to sit down. (well, we’d been living in the car for 5 days, of course there were clothes everywhere. It was just unfortunate that my jocks were right there).
So anyways, the rest of the trip was actually pretty dull. We spent our last night in the car again, parked on the side of the road along to coast to Bermeo, got up in the morning took the car back, jumped on the plane and slept all the way back to the UK. Got on another National Express bus and spent about ten hours still trying to sleep and then, well, we were back in Liverpool. Oh, and in typical form, it was pissing down rain when we got back, just to really rub our noses in the fact that we were back in England…Going back to work was about as much fun as you’d imagine, after having spent a few glorious days in sunny Spain, but it was tempered by the fact that we had a bit of a timeframe in mind, sort of a countdown to our next departure, which made things easier. 
(This is in no way meant to be disrespectful or snotty to the people I worked with in the Pumphouse!! What a top bunch of people, I loved em all, and the place itself was definitely a good one to work in, it was just the customers that ruin it all, and I suppose, my all consuming hatred for hospitality work in general. Apparently I’d been observed to say on a number of occasions that I’d rather shovel shit with a toothpick than get another job serving drinks. While graphic, it does kind of convey my feelings in general towards serving customers. Particularly when they come up and say, “I want…”).
So… moving right along. The 3 or 4 weeks work that followed fairly flew by and it wasn’t long at all till it was time to pack in the work and get ready to hit the bricks again. We deliberately finished work a little early to allow ourselves some time to do a few touristy bits and bobs that we’d not been able to take time out for while we were both working. Towards the end of our stay in Liverpool I had been doing 6 days per week and about 50 to 60 hours work, while Doug, since he started his job in construction had been doing 7 days a week and around 80 hrs which combined to leave us with little time and even less inclination to go and take photos of the city. There were also lots of sad goodbyes to be said, and all my friends from the Pumphouse threw me and Doug a spectacular going away party and gave us far, far too much… You guys (if you’re reading this) are absolutely amazing. While I might not have liked the work too much, you all made it worth coming in. Thank you all heaps!
When all was said and done, we managed to wipe away the tears and jump on our flight to Amsterdam, on my birthday, no less ;). After arriving in Amsterdam, our first course of action was naturally to go and find a coffee shop and buy some weed. (come on! We were in Amsterdam!!!! It was my birthday. It had to be done!). We bought a gram of Laughing Buddha grass that was supposed to get you much higher, rather than just catatonically stoned. Not having any bits of the usual ganja paraphernalia, we had to borrow some from the coffee shop, The Rokery. They kindly supplied us with a grinder, some matches and papers. Just in case we failed at rolling joints, we decided to ask for the use of one of the dusty old bhongs on the top shelf, which they happily complied with, though there were a few raised eyebrows. The reason for the raised eyebrows was to become painfully obvious to us a few short minutes later… We ground up the grass, loaded up the bhong with what we thought was a fairly conservative amount and blazed up. Dougie went first and had a bit of a coughing fit, not a good sign for me, as he’s smoked a lot more than I have. Gasping, he handed the bhong over, shaking his head. I finished off what was left from the first cone (not much) then packed another and had a go. After I finished coughing I realised that the size of the cones we’d packed either wasn’t all that conservative, or this stuff was a lot more powerful than we’d anticipated. For about the next three hours, there was absolutely no fucking way we were getting off that couch in the coffee shop. Talk about twisted. One hit from the big bhong and we were completely cactus. We must have looked like the biggest bloody lightweights in the whole of Amsterdam. The high itself kept changing, switching from fits of the giggles to just wondering what the hell was going on, to just wishing it would end and we could straighten out. We managed to set off a fit of giggles by asking ourselves repeatedly, “what the hell made us think we could waltz into a coffee shop in the middle of Amsterdam, buy a gram of laughing Buddha and smoke it from a bhong like a couple of old pros?”. At the time, this was about the funniest thing either of us had ever heard, though it does seem to have lost a little of its potency now.
When we finally felt capable (just barely capable) of getting off the couch and leaving the coffee shop, we managed to get our stuff together (we still had all our bags and everything with us) and stumble off in the vague (very vague) direction of Amsterdam Centraal train station, where we were due to board a train to Eindhoven to go and visit Marjon Nijdam, a lovely Dutch girl who had worked at the Whalley Arms last year and invited us to visit her, if ever we wound up in Holland. Us winding up in Holland was pretty much a certainty, sooner or later, so we had arranged a bit of a visit a few days in advance and had a reasonable idea of how to get there, though through the haze of the Laughing Buddha, the idea was seeming a little less reasonable. Somehow though, we did manage it, despite the best efforts of the train service to confuse us (not a difficult task) and the unscheduled delays they threw into the mix just outside of Utrecht. Eventually we did make it to Eindhoven and even found where the buses left from which was to be the next part of our journey to Boekel and the Nijdam family. We found the right bus, but managed to miss it at the last moment. We’d earlier been unable to find anywhere to purchase tickets for the bus and figured that you must have to buy them from the driver. As we were approaching the bus though, we noticed somewhere back inside the station that sold tickets, frantically running inside we managed to grab tickets, then dart outside only to find that the bus had departed. Very kindly though, Marjon and her mum, Elly jumped in the car and drove 30 or 40 min down to pick us up. We had  a lovely dinner with them that night and the next day, which was gloriously sunny, we all rode pushbikes down to Hemelrijk which is like a big lake with a beach and a few rides and diving boards and pontoons and stuff. It was just a great day out in the sun and swimming and trying to do all manner of silly flips and things off the springboards. The next day we spent just lazing about and enjoying ourselves with a brief foray into the neighbours pool to cool down on what was apparently the hottest day of the summer so far. I am ashamed to admit that so accustomed have we become to the northern hemisphere climate in the UK that even though it only got to 32, it felt really, really hot.
The next day we didn’t get up to much, just relaxing again and packing all our stuff, ready to hit the bricks and head back to Amsterdam for a big weekend. The whole Nijdam family were amazingly hospitable and we had a fantastic time staying with them, so a huge big thank you to Pieter, Elly, Ruud and Marjon for everything, thanks guys!
Getting back in to the Dam, we headed straight for the hostel and checked in, then left again in the company of a couple of Italian guys whom I’d translated for while they checked in. Kind of funny that, an Australian guy, translating from Italian to English and back again in a Dutch hostel to a Chinese girl behind the counter. Wonders never cease. Anyway, the Italian guys, Tiziano and Marco were keen to find a coffee shop and get stoned, plus they wanted to buy us a couple of beers fo helping them out at the check in. Given our previous encounter with weed in the Dam, we were a lot less keen, but went along anyway to keep them company. After a while we parted ways with the Italian lads and headed back the Amsterdam Centraal to join one of the guided tours through the red light dirstrict of town. We hadn’t even realised our hostel was in the red light district! We walked right past it on the tour. After the tour, we stayed on in a pub for a few drinks with some of the people from the tour, a couple of american guys, Nick and Josh (both from California) Dan (another Aussie) and Olga?/Helga? A gorgeous young girl from Belarus whom Dougie spent last night with. And that pretty much brings us up to date, I’m sitting here now at the downstairs bar of our hostel, typing away furiously so I can finish this, upload it and then get the hell out there amongst it! Woohoo!!! This is AmsterDAYUM!!! That’s it, I’m off. More on the blog later! :D

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