I apologize for falling off the map. I swear I will be more active than I was this week.
Amsterdam was Sam and John´s last stop, the Eurotrip´s big finish.
Amsterdam is well-known for being 1) a beautiful cosmopolitan city and 2) a city where you can legally buy weed.
Actually, Holland´s marijuana laws are complex and contradictory. ¨Coffee-shops¨ can hold a given amount of weed and hash and sell those products legally. Citizens can grow up to three marijuana plants in their home (or it might be five). But no one can grow more than that, which means the farmers break the law when they grow marijuana to sell to coffee-shops. And, according to a few different locals, Holland enforces its law against growing weed in large amounts. Farmers go to jail while sellers stay in business.
The rationale behind allowing coffee-shops to sell is that the sale and use of marijuana is inevitable, no matter how hard we fight a war on drugs. Criminalizing it costs money and doesn´t work. Regulating it saves or makes money (through taxes) and makes safer a dangerous situation.
In my opinion, this rationale holds water in Holland as well as the United States, and I think that the United States should legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana (but I would love to hear your comments, especially if you feel differently).
Eric and Raffi were coincidentally staying in our hotel. We chilled with them a lot.
The Van Gogh museum, the Rijt museum. Really great food. Especially on the last day, when Sam´s dad and John´s dad each treated us to a meal (they didn´t fly out to Europe; they reimbursed Sam and John). We went crazy on an Argentinian lunch (140 euros) and an Indonesian dinner (180).
The Red Light district was insane. Woman stood in windows like manicans selling their bodies like clothes. Some shake that thang, some jiggle their whole bodies as if on three cans of red bull, some stand casually and make eye-contact, some tap the glass and motion passers-by to buy their services, some do their make-up. Some are men who look like women, and they stand under blue lights. (None of us bought anything, not even from the women.)
Eric knew where Anne Frank´s house was, and it turned out to be the most underrated attraction in Europe. It was the second-best site I saw (Gaudi´s insane buildings in Barcelona being the best). It was not the house in which she grew up, but instead her family´s hiding place. We saw the front part, normal, unremarkable. The bookcase that once covered the door to the annex had been pulled out, and we walked through the back of the house where Anne Frank, her family, another family, and a single man hid for over two years. The holocaust is often hard to emotionally comprehend, but it was real inside the hiding place. It put you in the hiders´ mindset, as if you were hiding, as if you were the one in danger. By the way, if you haven´t read her diary, read it. It´s easy and the love story is great.
John and I jogged along the canals every morning. Amsterdam really is a beautiful city. It´s sort of a dreamland. Cars are squeezed to the sides of the road by bikes, which are everywhere - the city is home to more bikes than people. The people are absurdly nice and helpful. The canals are wonderful. And in Amsterdam, much that should be legal - because it happens anyway when it is not -- is legal and regulated.
(And yes, the coffee-shops make good coffee.)
1 comment:
i for one agree. Now that i have broken out of the shell that has been my life and entered the real world (service industry), i have come to understand that pot is nearly ubiqutous. my job as a pool attendent brings me in contact with what is probably the most populous job description in the US: close to minimu wage server, bus boys, somewhat better paid chefs and their managers. throughout my childhood, pot was considered taboo, and widespread use was unique to high school and forgotten in the big person world. that however is shockingly untrue. every person who worked at the pool with the exception of myself and one other person (a college student who preferred alcohol) was an avid user of pot, sometimes even a pot head. probably the most amazing case has been the liberal mention of pot between my collegues and my managers. between jokes and stories, pot is brought up and no one flinches or bats an eye. it is not common, but it is also not unusual for a story to start with "so i was really stoned" or "we were smoking weed when" and remember this is casual conversation between superiors and subordinates.
not only is pot pervasive outside of the work area, it shows up relatively often within the confines of my place of employment. i have witnessed two of my colleagues in my department alone get high during their shift. knowing for a fact that they were under the influence, i did not notice any decline in their productivity. in my dealings with colleagues outside of my department, i have come in to contact with pot in brazen manners, usually discussions in an elevator, or even a strong, fresh stench in the locker room. i have no doubt that pot is just as pervasive within the entire hotel as it is within my department. it should also be noted that my place of employment conducts a drug test before hiring and also administers them randomly.
it is in my opinion and agreed upon my other two colleagues who attend both cornell and UNLV that pot is rather inconsequential in the work place, and i personally qualify it as "the beer of drugs"
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