Saturday 13th Nov.
4am the alarm goes off, and for probably the first time before a trip to Amsterdam, I actually went to bed early, and we were all up and ready in no time. Quite surreal not being horribly tired and hungover, as we headed along the cold empty motorways to stanstead. One tradition I didn’t break however was a pre-trip curry. Vindaloo, gurgling through my lower intestine at the airport at 5am every time… eeeugh.
Flight was easy, arriving at Eindhoven (because of cheap flights down that end), and before too long we were on the long train ride up north to the Dam. We pull into Central station at 1pm, and make a beeline for our hotel ‘gandalf passenger ship’, which is directly next to the big green Nemo thing, in oosterdock. We are all starving after half a day of being on the move with no food, so we get the formalities of ‘checking in’ over quickly. The hotel seems great, great service even better location, and decent price (32.50euro per person), but we don’t hang around. I decide Mannekin Pis on damrak would be a good place to eat, so after cutting through the top of Warmoerstraat, we order 4 chips with ‘frit saus’. Beautiful. That quick walk through warmoerstraat gave S a glimpse of what to expect later, he seemed pretty excited! Chips demolished, we check out boat times and prices for a tour around the canals. C and I have done this tour before, but we know that her Mum would love it, and to be honest we really enjoy it too.
Armed with tickets for a boat ride a little later, I head us into the 420 café. 420 is great, lovely cosy café feel. A nice backround noise of conversation and laughter, with decent bar like interior, make this place very comfy. Im not really a fan of guitar music in general, but the sounds they play suit the place just right. Some places are so chilled you end up falling asleep and other places are so loud and un-comfy its hard to enjoy your time there. 420 really has got it right in my opinion. I was conscious of this being both S and M’s first coffeeshop experience, and it was a great success. We opted for both the NY Diesel, and the Neville’s Haze. C and I are both sativa fans, and with two first timers it seemed a good idea to stick to sativas. I chose the diesel without looking, as I love diesels in general. As the budtender opened the bud box however, I saw it was almost full of shake. I’ve seen shake before, but I was surprised to see so much of it! The whole box was filled with shake. In all fairness though, the (scouse?) bud tender picked out the few pop corn buds available for me, which was nice. The nevilles haze however, was a quality dense green nugget. For the first smoke I opted for the Diesel. Despite the clear better quality of the haze, my biased love of diesels won through. The diesel was not bad. Diesel taste, but not as wonderfully diesely as the red diesel I had in June. It had a quick high, which got stronger as we smoked but never felt as if it could get too strong. A definite sativa high aswell. We sat and smoked and I waxed lyrical about the strange hypocracy of hollands coffeeshop laws, to both S and M. my poor girlfriend C has heard all this before from me, and once I’m on my favourite soapbox, its takes quite a few joints to get me down ha ha.
Pleasantly high off the nice and easy diesel, we all head to the boat dock on damrak, for the tour. Can of Heineken in hand, we cruise the canals and we end up passing our boat hotel on the tour. A surprise was wathcing 4 russian guys and girls on the boat tour, who were necking a large bottle of neat whisky, which they had stashed under a coat. Lunatics! Ha ha By the time the tour finished it was about 4.30 and the sun was already going down. The cold came in very quickly as it got darker, but we were lucky that it was remaining dry the whole time.
We wandered over to Nieumarket, with S catching sight of the famous ‘red light district’ on the way. A promise to sample that area later was made. On Nieumarket, we went into the temple bar, for a couple of Heinekens. Why does Heinkeken taste so good in Holland? Its so awfull at home, and I wouldn’t even drink it in Belgium, but in Holland…. Man its so good. a couple of beers down, and we headed further down klovenierburgwal, and hit coffeeshop Goa.
Although I remember visiting Goa years ago (like 10 years ago) I have never returned for some reason. I suppose the competition of Basjoe, rusland and greenplace being so near by has meant that I always overlook it. We were very glad we did go into Goa. Great atmosphere, lively, and chatty. The music was downtempo stuff like dj shadow, which I love. The sand coloured interior gave a nice warm glow top the place. Here we sampled the Nevilles haze from 420. This stuff, had a real good haze taste. On rollin up, ripping the bud in half gave off a really nice strong smell. I claimed it had undertones of orange to the smell, but I just got laughed at for taking it too seriously. Ha ha. The high on this stuff was very quick to kick in, and noticeably stronger. Each toke the high kicked up a notch. A Very very good purchase.
By now the evening was setting in, and dinner was on the cards, so we took the long walk down to Utrechtstraase, to find the Golden Temple restaurant. Being with a party of 3 vegetarians, this place was really up their street. Im a carnivore, but I would happily eat here every week. A big variety of cuisines, all made amazingly. The upstairs of the restaurant is a yoga centre, which really sums up the health conscious hippy vibe of this place. En route to the resturant, amazingly, we walked straight into our dutch friend that we met in Laos, whilst backpacking earlier in the year. We spent about 4 months with this girl, and she is a genuine friend that we keeop in contact with. To bump into her like this, in the street was amazing. She was with her mum too, and they were heading somewhere for dinner, so it was decided that they would come to dinner with us. We all had a good chat and a laugh. After dinner, we said goodbye to our friend and we headed up to Rembrandtsplein for a pint. Next was the promised tour of the Red light district at night. I remeber how incredible this place was when i was new to the city. its funny how things become normal after a while, and it was great to relive that 'first time' experience though other people. We led S and M up and down all the windowed alleys and streets, taking in all the 'sights'. ha ha. After a while, once we had all had a good eyefull, we decided to go to a coffeeshop. C and her mum were getting tired now, so they decided to make this one a night cap. We stopped in Baba, which we like, but as per ususal at night it was rammed, and no seats available, so we skipped over to Stones coffeeshop, which was also full, but the sofa became free just as we arrived. I browsed the weed menu, whilst waiting for my drink, and saw the Martian Mean Green. Ive read mixed reviews on this strain, but ive definatly always been interested in trying it. i think it is the marmite style love it or hate it reviews of this strain which have lodged its name in my mind. i asked to have a look, and i was really impressed. the bud wasn't dense like the nevilles haze, it was 'open' and looked like a freshly manicured bud, that had never been squashed in storage. it was particularly sticky on the fingers and the smell was a lovely sweet sickly smell. the menu claimed it to be 80% sativa 20% indica, but the stone fealt a lot more indica than that (possibly the beers all evening were affecting the high). a nice powerfull smoke, with a skunky taste on the inhale.
after this joint we walked C and her mum to the end of warmoerstraat, and they headed to bed in the boat. This left me S to finish the night in style. S is not a smoker in general, but he was really holding up his end, and i was impressed with how well he was taking all this smoking and drinking. So i decided we needed somewhere lively to keep us going, and we opted for the bulldog mack bar. I know bulldogs are not to everyones taste, but they do serve a purpose. and if you are in the mood for a boozy lively chavy weed friendly atmosphere..... then look no further ha ha we had a few beers, and got on the Jagermister shots aswell. I rolled a huge joint, using up all the remaining nevilles haze and the Martian Mean Green. this sent us sideways. we didnt last too long, and we were soon heading back up out on the street. Even through my hazey vision and spongey brain, i knew where i was headed..... i had this part of the trip planned since a month ago..... the destination was voyagers coffeeshop... the mission was the Butter.
Litterally since i booked the hotel, i knew that voyagers was the closest shop to our beds, and i knew i was gonna try the butter. in safe stumbling distance. as we aproached the place i noticed it was already gone midnight... SHIT! i was pretty sure that coffeeshop only have a licence till midnight so we stepped up the pace, and were relieved to find it still open, either i was wrong, or this place was open late. We strolled in, allready in a state. and ordered the 0.2g portion for 10 euros. a northern English guy was the bud tender, i wasnt sure if it was mister highly blessed or not, i should have asked, but i was stoned. he mentioned something about the butter in the exact way Highly blessed did on this forum, which made me think it was him... but as i said, very mashed, i so didnt introduce myself. His service was great, explained the process for making the stuff, and he had a quality Microscop on the counter with a LCD screen. the butter looked fucking ridiculous. just a smooth green blob. its so pure, that there's hardly any thing to see close up. like a green bogey ha ha. he gave us the warning about how strong this was gonna be, and suggested we had half now, and then half in the morning when we woke up to experience the high without other smokes influencing the high. S and I sat down, and azed at this green peice of putty, on a square of baking paper. three other english stoners who had been openly eavesdropping on my purchase jumped at the opportunity and bought themselves a gram of it. I tried to roll the butter out into a sausage, but could onyl manage to get it to go about half the length of a king size rizla, with it falling apart, so i settled for a half size stubby joint of the whole 0.2g..... 3 tokes later.... zzzzZZZZIIIINNNNGGGGG... oh my fucking god... this like laughing gas.... i pass the spliff to S... and he starts to stare into the distance... passes it back..... and wooOOOOSHHH, my whole body is fizzing. my hands are pins and needles, in a good way. and i break into giggles. the other lads who are preparing their butter are wathcing and smiling.. i try to tell them that this is fucking mental... i think they got the message! we manage a couple more tokes. before we are well and truelly done. we litterally float out the door. S needs food before bed, so we head into a kebab shop type place near by. he spotted some cakes in the window, but the counter is at the other end of the shop!! what? how...um where... ummmm??!!!! he seems completley unable to work out the concept of collecting the cake himself and paying for it at the counter, so he gives up and leaves empty handed ha ha ha ha ha. we float back to the dock, where we delicatly tip toe onto the boat, being extra carefull not to fall into the water. i get into bed, C is already asleep, and i lie there eyes closed, having the most intense waking dream. a tunnel of words was spilling away infront of me. i enjoy this for god knows how long eventually passout.
Sunday 14 Nov
waking up, felling absolutly awfull. that butter is like 8 pints of stella the next day. combined with all the beers and the jagermister, its a pretty 'crusty' morning. most of the morning is spent yawning and rubbing my face. after the usual continetal hotel breakfast we check out and stash our luggage at centrall station. we head back into warmoerstraat for a 2nd breakfast. god knows why but whilst everyone else has pancakes, i order a chicken satay sandwich and a beer. terrible decision. ha ha we spend most of the time souvenier shopping, getting the ussual array of tacky bits and bobs, and novelty rizlas etc.
we head over to the rokerij near the centre, and finish off the NY Diesel, as its the lightest of the smokes. again, very nice and manageable day time smoke. We spend our last hours in the Heffer pub on warmoerstraat, trying the krieks and pilsners, in the amazing surroundings in that bar. Time is up, we have to head back to the station, and get down to Eindhoven for our flight that evening. I still have half of the joint of butter in my pocket... and because C didnt get any the night before we spark it up out the front of the station. having learnt his lesson from the night beofre, S doesnt have any of the butter, but consumes a space cake from the grasshopper (0.4g).... and suprise suprise.... we are totally mashed within seconds. we board the train, and settle down for the 2 hour journey south. the cake S ate starts to kick in too, this being his first time eating it, he's really feeling it...
then it all goes terribly wrong (almost)....
the train stops in den haag, and we wait for our connecting train. but it never comes.. we realise people are getting agitiated.. so we ask a train worker whats going on... it turns out 3 seperate incidents of people jumping on the train lines have closed all routes into eindhoven! FUUUUCK! with a head full of butter and space cakes, we have no idea what to do. standing around being indecisive on the a platform in den haag isnt helping. the train inspector suggests we go to Utrecht and take a taxi to eindhoven. it seems like our only option, but with 2 hours beofre our flight, and no idea on how long this new route will take we all prepare for the worst. a missed flight and all the costs involved in staying another night and a new flight home soesnt sound good. we go for it though, and make it to utrecht with an hour and a half to go. we meet and american girl on the train who is on the same flight as us so we all team up and find the taxi rank. We get a people carrier to take us, he says the meter will be running, but he estimates the fare will be about 150 euros!!!! oh well, we have to take it. our minds still reeling from the butter, we jump in the car and tell him to step on it. 1 hour to go!! un-fucking-believably 500 meters after we depart, the taxi gets a flat tyre. shit! its starting to rain now, and the driver fumbles about trying to change the wheel. S and I are of no use in helping. to my embarrasment the butter has completely removed my ability to tighted up wheel nuts. 10 minutes later we are on the road again... on the motorway the car starts to vibrate... and we all get paranoid that the small 'get you home tyre' wheel is going to come off. the driver tries to relax us by saying 'its ok! the wheel is completely safe up to 80kph'.... as he says this, i look at his speedometer, which is displaying the speed '120 kph'... oh my fucking god, im gonna have a heart attack. one eye on the clock and one eye on the satnav, we prey and prey and miraculously we arrive at eindhoven airport with 10minutes to go... but the meter now says 220 euros! the american girl, who clearly wasn't stoned, negotiates a deal and we settle on a 'mere' 200 euros becuase of the tyre incident.... running through check in through the gate and on the plane!!! i cant belive we made it... i finally realx and let the adrenaline dissapte... and the butter kicks back in.... god this stuff is powerfull... its litterally like a joint every toke.... i listen to a ricky gervais pod cast to relax, grab an over priced can of beer from the air hostess and touch down in england still fuzzy. wonderfull!
what an unecessary high tempo end to a quality short trip.
trip 22 done
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