Oldest and craziest memories of trips from 80s and 90s

[winnie]

bump
this thread rocks... any more memories?

[CannaSir]

I think it was '98 that I came to town with a couple of buddies for a few days around July time. The three of us had been sitting upstairs in The Old Church early one evening getting wasted and chatting, like ya do. The conversation soon turned into a gang-up mickey-take at my expense as I had made the error of grumbling at the fact that the last two women that had 'declared an interest in' me were certainly no lookers! G & M thought this was hilarious and coined the term 'munter-magnet'! Thankfully, however, their attention was distracted by the people-watching out the window and the ribbing-storm passed.... not for long, however...!

On exiting The Old Church, we headed off down the canal side towards the hooker-maze. We had just passed the public pissoir and I was walking ahead of the other two, when I suddenly jumped into the air as I'd had my arse pinched quite hard! I turned to look over my right shoulder as I turned around to see....: right, let's get this straight: I SWEAR this to be true and NO Exaggeration! - You know that final battle scene in Lord of The Rings where the huge trolls storm through the gate? Well, the creature I beheld at that moment would have been able to audition for that scene with the unique selling point being that [i]she would not have required any make up for the part![/i]. 'She' had started to walk away from me with her companion, a skinny middle aged guy, and was about 4 metres away and looking at me over her shoulder as it dawned on me who was responsible for the pinch. As soon as I saw that huge, warty, bulbous nose, heavy brow, and twiste grin, combined with the overflowing belly-in-white-blouse, very short pleated skirt and enormous blubbery orange-peel thighs I exclaimed "Oh NOOOOO!!!" and doubled up in some sort of vain attempt at making myself invisible!! M & G now came into my view: the pair of them were also doubled up, almost asphyxiating from uncontrollable laughter! The first words M was capable of uttering were 'munter-magnet!', before he nearly choked to death on the re-issue of the joke!

To this day that story gets an outing a couple of times a year whether I like it or not!

[smokestaxlitenin]

1981...the place...Melkveg.... just outa high school...

drank some space yogurt drink and was tripping! Had trouble walking, too....
also remember getting black opiated hash... real knockout stuff
(also remember buying tire rubber in dam square)

Good times!!!

[joossy]

I was 12 with the school football team on a week long trip to play in the Amsterdam cup a big summer tournament for youths. After a long journey by boat and mini bus, we arrive in Amsterdam as a treat the teachers decided to get us all mcdonalds. So the two mini buses pull up on a street and out get a sports teacher and a geeky music teacher ( who was coming along to make up the numbers of adults) to get us the mcdonalds, 5 minutes pass and then out the mini bus window we see both teachers come running around the corner empty handed and jump into the mini buses and hastily drive off totally freaked out. We are obviously asking where the Macdonalds is but the teachers say nothing. We then pull up to the hotel and are told to go in to reception. The teachers then get together and call a meeting with all the kids where they tell us that when they went to get the macdonalds they were intimidated by drug dealers who tried to force them to buy drugs and threatened them so and they had run off! They then told us because of this for the whole week no one was aloud to leave the hotel unless going to the tournament in the mini buses as the city was to dangerous! All sightseeing etc cancelled!

My first trip to dam without teachers i was 16, we arrived at 8am and got off the dam express (coach) in the RLD. We walk a few paces and see a sign above a shop saying "cafe" so in we go excited to buy some marijuana for the first time and ask to see the menu, the lady says take a seat I will bring it over, so over she comes and gives us the food menu, hmmm so I say thank you but can we see the weed menu, she then starts shouting and tells us to leave straight away, so there we are 16 yrs old, three of us, standing outside the cafe thinking WTF happened there, we thought Amsterdam cafes sold weed? Needless to say we had a lot to learn and eventually we did

[mlester187]

My trip in Jan 2010 was with three of my best mates. Two of these guys, lets call them O and A, were BIG eaters, and proud of the fact. On our first day, needless to say, we got heavily, heavily stoned. We had reservations at the supper slub that night (which we knew was like a 5 course meal). Around 3pm we left Dampkring to head towards Burger bar for a spot of late lunch, we all opted for a Kobe with plenty of toppings. O and A were sooo stoned that they ordered another one whilst eating their first?!?! I told them to calm down as we were going for a 5 course meal later, they simply laughed and said that they could carry on eating all nigiht in the state they were in. On the walk back to dam sq (we were going to freshen up after a day of smoking and eating) A speaks up from behind us, "just one minute guys, I wanna have a look in here," whilst walking into the KFC on Damrak. O walks into McDonalds Next door. A walks out with a HUGE family bucket and an extra meal. O walks out of McD's with 2 big bags containing 4 meals?!?!
Me and the fourth person were simply in awe! We were wetting ourselves. Got back to the room for a smoke/freshen up whilst A and O preceded to demolish their 'warm ups' for tonights meal.

In August of the same year I went with O, his brother, Al and another friend, G. Al had made a decision to try as much space cake as possible. i told him to go easy on them but he was having none of it. He found the green cake in CS 36 and got hooked! He ate like 6 for breakfast the next day and obviuosly wasnt feeling to good after an hour or so. He ended up spending the whole day sat in the hotel foyer, he claimed to be unable to get up to the room. Every time we went back to check up on him he hadnt moved, literally not one inch, he remained in the same, slouched, position ALL day. To this day we all say that he left his soul in Amsterdam because he's never been the same person since.

[winnie]

does anyone remember Tugelaweg, The Frog on Nieuwendijk or De Gouden Haan??

[amstajunkie]

My first time in amsterdam was in the summer 1996 i was 14. I went with my parents and my 4 year older sister we stayed in an apartment rented by the renaissance (kattengat). One night i nicked a few guilders from my mom and went to a cs nearby with my sister. There was a psychedelic toilet with uv lights!??I remember us smoking a prerolled and playing backgammon. we got so HIGH couldnt stop laughing. we didnt wanna go back to our parents so we wandered around in the RLD.
GOT LOST BIG TIME!!! late at night found the renaissance to face some worried parents. Where have u been ??? why are you being so silly??why are your eyes red????Eeeehhhhhh......
went back the next day and bought 2 joints to smugle back home
my sister and i still laugh about it to this day.
Ive been in love with amsterdam ever since

You smoked up your 4 year old sister?

I was thinking the same thing. lol

[mafufero]

Thanks to everyone for this excellent thread. Nothing like first-hand accounts about the city's recent history and how it's evolved in the past three or four decades. I found this story in the New York Times online archive. It's about Amsterdam in the mid-1970s and the sudden surge of heroin use and trafficking during the genesis of the city's coffeeshops. I add it here because it helped me understand the city's rough and edgy character back in those days. Though perhaps obvious to some, I think it also shows how the alarming use of heroin in those days (alarming at least to local authorities) may have made Dutch politicians more willing to enact a policy of toleration regarding marijuana, while continuing to combat heroin and other hard drugs.

AMSTERDAM CALLED THE CENTER OF HEROIN (Article from the New York Times, November 16, 1975)
By Bernard Weinraub

Amsterdam has replaced Marseilles as the center of the heroin traffic in Europe, according to senior officials and Western narcotics experts. Virtually all the heroin, smuggled from Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok, is distributed in Amsterdam among a network of Chinese dealers, according to the officials. The heroin is then slipped across the relatively open Dutch border to Belgium and West Germany as well as to France, Britain, Austria and Sweden. In emerging over the last two years as what is described as the major European center of traffic in hard drugs, Amsterdam has witnessed an abrupt rise in heroin addiction among young people. The increase has been so rapid that addicts are being turned away from overcrowded treatment centers.

Dr. Peter Geerlings, a narcotics expert who is director of the psychotherapeutic day center at the University of Amsterdam and head of the city’s methadone center, termed the heroin problem an epidemic. “There was nearly no heroin, no overdoses before 1972,” he said. “Now we see this tremendous increase, this epidemic, first among the most vulnerable, the people with social and psychiatric problems, and now among the middle class.”

A Western narcotics official put the number of addicts at 8,000 to 10,000, mostly in Amsterdam, compared with fewer than 100 in 1970. This year at least 3 Americans have died of heroin overdoses and three more deaths were drug related.

Discussing the increased traffic in Amsterdam, Jan van Straten, chief narcotics officer at the Ministry of Justice in The Hague said, “I don’t think Marseilles is the central point in Europe any longer. Amsterdam is for sure.” In explanation of the emergence of the city of 850,000 as a distribution point, he said: “the Netherlands is a small country, easy to reach, in the center of things. We have Rotterdam, the biggest port in the world. We have a big international airport near Amsterdam. There is no border control with Belgium, only slight border control with Germany and no real border control with Common Market Countries.”

Western narcotics officials, noting that the Amsterdam police force has eight people working full time on narcotics, imply that the Dutch authorities have taken the drug problem seriously only in recent months.

The number of narcotics arrests has more than doubled in five years. In 1971 only 50 grams of heroin were seized in Amsterdam; so far this year (1975) almost 90 pounds have seized, a record. “It’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Van Straten said.

There are differences between the drug situations in Amsterdam and Marseilles. Gum opium from poppies grown in Turkey was shipped to the Marseilles area, where illicit laboratories produced the heroin that was shipped to the U.S. The traffic was disrupted when the French police and the U.S. narcotics agents mounted a drive that destroyed some of the laboratories.
The heroin arriving in Amsterdam, called No. 3 brown, or brown sugar heroin, comes from the Golden Triangle area in Laos, Thailand and Burma. Narcotics officials say it is shipped to such European cities as Brussels, Paris and Vienna and then smuggled into Amsterdam, where the dealers organize the distribution.

Mr. van Straten, who will head a national police narcotics unit early next year, said that Chinese were the main traffickers. He explained that there were 25,000 Chinese in the Netherlands, only 8,000 of them legal residents. Amsterdam officials report an increase in muggings and petty crimes that are believed to be linked to the heroin problem. Harm Rasterhoff, a coordinator in the Department of Youth Affairs, said that the market price for heroin had climbed drastically in the last year and that numerous addicts had an $80-a-day habit. “Last year there was lot on the market and it was cheap, and people became addicted,” he said. “I’m convinced it was a period of extensive proselytizing. This year the priced have jumped.”

One result of the increase in crime was the city’s decision in September to close sleeping facilities in Vondel Park. It had free sleeping quarters and facilities for as many as 1,000 people a night in summer. Although there has been some pressure among young people for legalized marijuana, the Government has sidestepped the issue. It has announced legislation under which the penalty for trafficking “drugs entailing unacceptable risks” would rise to a maximum of 12 years for international offenses and 8 years for internal ones: the penalty for both has been a maximum of four years. The penalty for trafficking in hashish and marijuana remains four years; the practices has been to oust foreigners in such cases.

[treetop]

Wonderful thread. Great read. Some really hair raising stories. This is not one of them....

My first trip was in 1990. Went with 3 mates from college on a coach trip from Liverpool. The coach drivers were the biggest wankers I'd ever met in my short life. We were not even human to them.

When we got to amsterdam I think we went to Central. We bought some hash and smoked a bunch of it right there in the shop. Suddenly the shop seemed too hot and I went for the door. Alas it was not co operating and I collapsed in a heap inside the shops doorway. Next thing I know I'm sitting outside with the owner splashing cold water in my face. I'd been out cold apparently. Didn't bang my head on the way down though!

We went for a walk around the red lights. Man you would not believe how seedy and dodgy it was back then. Very aggressive dealers everywhere. I could not believe how attractive the black hookers were compared to now. It is like these are the same girls who were working back in 1990 now

In a bar we were joined by a Dutch girl on her own who basically chatted us up. That was kinda cool although none of us knew what to do with her

We were staying at some out of town hotel. On the walk back to centraal we were all tired but content. It was a fun trip. I was not to return for another 13 years.

On the way back we all decided to eat the left over hash instead of dinner on the ferry. The dickhead coach drivers had told me a bunch of scare stories about bringing stuff back. What a load of BS

Some of our fellow passengers saw the state of us and gave me 20 pounds for food which we used for a good munchie attack english breakfast style in the ships canteen. Later on the coach back to Liverpool after the ferry my dickhead friend started loudly telling the story of how these Scouse idiots (who were sitting within earshot) had given me money for food and how we'd spent it on beer. (which wasn't even true)

I truly wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

My 'friend'?

He wasn't trying to make trouble. He just really was THAT stupid.

[Munkee]

Just read this thread in its entirety, best thread ever

[Black-King]

wow.. really enjoyed reading thru this entire thread. some nice stories, big up to all who shared.

[Nuggz]

amazing read guys, quite a page turner. Anybody have anymore to contribute?

I came to Amsterdam the first time in 2013, so as someone from the US which is on the whole much "rougher" than Europe, it's hard to imagine the city having ever been so sketchy/seedy; but alas then again on the other hand I don't well doubt it...fascinating stuff

[The pot Doctor]

WOW..... What a read. All of the stories had me hooked couldn't stop reading. A love making a spliff and reading this. ACD rocks

[free_phil_spector]

This thread is fantastic to read with a couple of smokes, and it sent me on a reminiscence of some of my trips of old. Some of the stories I'd plain forgotten, and some of them - when I really think about it now - are almost impossible to comprehend, but at the time it just seemed like all part of the fun ride! Amsterdam was certainly a lot seedier and edgier when I started going in the mid 90s but I loved it precisely for that. It was dangerous fun.

My first trip (five days with a couple of mates in 1997) is pretty much a blur (as with most of us I'm sure), epecially in terms of what we smoked and where. I do remember a trip to a live sex show one evening. I've no idea which one or precisely where in the RLD it was but it was the usual 50 guilders or so entry with free drinks. The place was vile. Every surface was sticky with spilt booze or god knows what floor, bench seats, tables, everywhere was just disgusting. You literally had to 'peel' your glass off the surface every time you tried to pick it up. The live 'sex' show too was a knock - all the 'action' (I doubt if there even was any...) was hidden from the audience's view and the woman didn't even take her underwear off! After about 20 minutes of this ludicrous softcore pretend shagging, I got bored and went for a piss. Shambling around in the venue's basement, stoned off my nut, I took the wrong turn out of the toilet and somehow ended up in a corridor. I heard a loud cheer go up and seconds later the woman who'd been performing onstage came walking down the stairs stark naked, saw me and freaked out. She started screaming that I shouldn't be there and how I was 'hanging around' outside her dressing room! Luckily I was so caned all I could do was smile pathetically and ask "toilet?". She pointed me back the way I'd come and told me to "get out". I just remember thinking this is my kind of town when you can get told off by a naked woman who's more concerned about why you're there than she was about covering herself up

[free_phil_spector]

To counter the above, I've only had one truly bad experience in Amsterdam. Most of the negative experiences have always been minor enough for me to be able to laugh off the following day as all part of the ride. Even the time I got mugged twice in the same night by the same mugger had an element of farce about it that made it amusing enough to accept as just 'one of those things'. But this incident was truly sinister, dark, and disturbing. It's not one I enjoy retelling at all but here goes anyway...

It was either '99 or 2000, me and a mate booked into one of those shabby hotels that used to be above the shops on Damrak - it's since been closed down, and no wonder either. One night we went our separate ways for some reason and I got back to the hotel before him and crashed out. I woke in the morning to find him crashed out in bed and the door of the room ajar. He woke up and we laughed about how he must have been so hammered when he got back he left it open. Then he discovers his money is gone. And his credit cards (and his cocaine ) - my wallet etc was by my head on the bedside table but he'd left his wallet in his jeans on the floor near the door. We assumed some opportunist had sneaked through the open door and liberated his cash and cards - weird and everything but hey, it was his own fault for leaving the door open - right? We both agreed on that, hey ho shit happens - and off we toddled to report it to the hotel reception and the cops.

The guy on reception at the hotel couldnt care less. I was pretty shocked that we were reporting a theft in his hotel and he didnt even want the details, but I just assumed, this is Amsterdam, he sees this sort of thing dozens of times a year and usually the stoned idiots just lost their wallet in a canal the night before. Why would he take us seriously? So we headed to the police station (I think it was on Buersstraat at the time) where the cops were superb. My mate phoned his bank to cancel his credit card and was told it had been used multiple times that morning at a bunch of high end boutiques and makeup stores in Amsterdam. We went for breakfast and a smoke. Then we returned to the hotel...

Into the lift with us gets a young woman in her early 20s clutching about eight big bags from designer clothes shops. Me and my mate clock it, then clock each other, and we're both thinking 'surely not - WTF?!' My mate starts engaging her in small talk while I stand there trying to work out if this is for real or a bizarre coincidence. And yet, sure enough, the woman - bold as brass - gets out on the same floor as us and lets herself in to the room right next to ours!

Back in the room we're both in a state of confusion and stoned paranoia, and neither of us can quite work out what to do. I was all for contacting the hotel management/police to confront the woman and demand to see the receipts for her purchases, but my mate was convinced it was all just a coincidence and to let it go. Then there was a knock at the door. It was her...

On some pretence (I cant even remember what it was now, my mind was doing cartwheels by this point), she comes into the room and ends up sitting on a bed while my mate makes her a tea and unsubtly starts asking her what she's been up to this morning. It got really dark when she started crying and giving some sob story about her life and I began to notice things like self-harm scars and needle marks on her arms. I couldn't work out whether she was trying to build up to confessing she'd robbed us, or was trying to fuck with our heads by befriending us, or was just plain fucking nuts and didnt know/care she was talking to the people she'd robbed last night. Anyway, the details from here were hazy but I just remember we eventually got shot of her and checked out that afternoon to find somewhere else to stay.

For years we accepted our version of events as how it went down and my mate always accepted it was all his fault for leaving the door open. But about five years ago I discovered a review on tripadvisor (or some such website) for this hotel in which the writer said he knew as fact that "someone" staying at the hotel has a master key and robs from rooms while people are asleep Thinking back to it now, it wouldnt surprise me if the hotel boss was in on it too - it would explain his attitude when we reported it that day.

Anyhow - that seedy shithouse of a hotel on Damrak was one part of the city I was glad to see disappear.