Sometimes I feel like I want a roommate/boyfriend just so I can cook breakfast (cooking breakfast just for myself is boring). Most places I go, I meet people who say something akin to, "Yeah, I love breakfast. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and you're supposed to never skip breakfast, bla-bla-bla... But it's either have a nice breakfast or sleep for a few more minutes. So I skip the nice breakfast and sleep for a few more minutes."
These are my favorite kinds of people. 'Cos I don't need sleep and I like cooking breakfast.
We fit together like peas and carrots.
Maud is the pea to my carrot. The bacon to my eggs. The cheese to my everything.
I made Maud a low-fat (she hates fat almost as much as I love it) cappuccino and a stack of crepes for breakfast. I'd wanted to make her some chubby American pancakes, but many Europeans don't keep baking powder or baking soda in their spice cabinet -- so crepes were the best that I could do. But even though they weren't as epic as I'd wanted them to be (a crepe is never as epic as an American pancake) they looked ever so lovely next to the cappuccino with a dollop of whipped cream slowly melting into the middle, Viennese style.
Learning how to make coffee in a strange kitchen is always one of the challenges I enjoy overcoming. Sabina's Gregor was my favorite, but he is closely followed by Fritz (this is what I'm naming Maud's milk frother). Every morning this week, I pour a few drops of milk inside of Fritz's metal bowl and turn him on. He whizzes and puffs and produced a prodigious amount of frothy milk to pour atop my coffee.
I like Fritz. Maud likes it when I use Fritz.
Maud went to get ready and I packed a lunch for us to share. Farmer's cheese and olives and tomatoes and nuts and apples and bananas and a bottle of white wine. Google had told us the weather would be questionable, so I even packed a picnic mat into Maud's backpack.
Then I napped.
Then I guilty-pleasure googled opportunities in South America (SO MANY COOL THINGS TO DO).
Then I took another nap.
Then I read a few chapters in my Neil Gaiman book.
Then Maud came downstairs and announced that she was ready to go.
So I went upstairs to get ready (by the time I came downstairs, Maud was almost ready to go).
One thing that's awesome about not shaving my legs, not wearing makeup and making the conscious decision to not stress out about my appearance?
To many ladies, getting ready = shower, wash hair, shave legs, shave armpits, check if eyebrows are properly plucked, apply moisturizer, style hair, put on makeup, slather on deodorant, decide what to wear and voila. Ready.
To me, getting ready = shower, wash hair, slather on deodorant, put on the clothes that smell the least and voila. Ready.
We walked to the bus stop around the corner, Maud carrying our heavy picnic and me carrying my bulky camera. Sometimes I feel guilty for letting Maud carry the heavy things (I think she might wear the pants in our relationship), but then I remember that this is my hot Dutch friend. This is the lady who graduated sports academy and has muscles that make my chaturanga arms look like spaghetti.
And then I don't feel so guilty for letting Maud carry the heavy things.
As the bird flies, Amsterdam is about 65 km from Maud's home.
To an American accustomed to driving on enormous roads with little/no traffic, 65 km translates into 40 minutes of travel time -- and that's only if you're driving like a grandma. Thus, as we'd left Maud's cozy home at 8:30, I just assumed we'd arrive in Amsterdam at 10:00 (at the very latest).
But it was Sunday, and as Europe isn't fond of Sundays, the only bus from the stop around the corner wouldn't be dropping by until well after nine o'clock.
So we speed-walked to the large bus stop. Then we took a bus to the tram. A tram to another tram. The other tram to the train at Rotterdam Centrale (where there was all sorts of hullabaloo and confusion regarding the ticket to Amsterdam, so we lost more time). And (finally) a train to Amsterdam.
We arrived in Amsterdam at 11:30.
It might have been faster to hitchhike... Jesus.
Something about Holland, should you ever visit this cloudy little country full of cheese, windmills and not nearly as many wooden clogs as I'd hoped --
-- it's expensive. Bloody expensive. Heinously expensive. Dutch people charge you for everything. Fuel is the equivalent of eight dollars a gallon. Public transportation is public robbery. Museum prices make my vagabond budget curl up in the corner like a frightened hedgehog.
Consider yourself warned. If I didn't have Maud (whose generosity has been truly humbling), my stay in Holland would have looked something like this:
Wake up. Eat yogurt (yogurt isn't so expensive in Holland). Walk around the suburbs. Eat sausage in a bag (also not too expensive in Holland). Walk around the suburbs. Eat cheese (not very cheap, but I can't live without cheese). Walk around the suburbs. Sleep.
But because Maud has the heart the size of a wheel of Old Amsterdam cheese (which is delicious and nutty, by the way), she wanted my last two weeks in Europe to be the best they could possibly be.
Because I have Maud, I got to go to Amsterdam.
This is... wow. This place has such a weird vibe, I thought as we exited the train station. It's got more bicycles than Copenhagen and is more structured than Barcelona... but it's loud like Barcelona. Makes Copenhagen feel like a cemetery. It's touristic like Venice, but I... well, I almost like this kind of touristic. It means lots of cheese shops and coffee houses. So much young energy in such an old place.
 |
| This is the size of Maud's heart. |
 |
| This blue china is famous in The Netherlands. It's called Delftware and is a tin-glazed pottery that became popular in the 16th century. |
I went into a few shops and tried them all (in each shop).
"I want to live in Amsterdam so I can eat samples every day," I told Maud as I stuffed my face full of pesto cheese. "Do you think they'd notice? Maybe I'd have to start wearing disguises."
 | |||
| Yes. I could live off of this. I might eventually be as round as these cheeses, but it would make it easier to roll in and out the door. I'd be a very different kind of ninja. |
 |
| SO MUCH CHEESE |
After raiding several cheese shops (and buying nothing), we stopped by a coffeeshop to check out marijuana prices.
Before I continue this tale, let me first mention my view on pot.
*ahem*
I think it's okay. I don't think you can compare marijuana to hard drugs, I think it has a lot of potential to help people deal with pain and I think that using it for fun does not make you a bad person. I wouldn't want to be addicted to it because I don't think any addiction is healthy and a pot habit is too expensive for my lifestyle (just like that cute pixie haircut I wish I could always have). But I think that getting high every now and then is as hunky-dory as drinking a glass or two of wine at whichever meal you feel the urge to drink a glass or two of wine.
Which I think is pretty hunky-dory.
I've tried smoking a few times at university, once in Wales and once in Morocco -- but nothing ever happened. Everyone around me got super giggly and I just felt left out. Everyone I've told about my inability to feel anything via smoking has told me to try an edible. Hence, our Amsterdam to-do list included purchasing space cake ingredients (the normal space cakes have gluten, so we'd have to bake our own).
It probably would have been a better idea to just have a gluten induced tummy-ache (foreshadowing!)
Tulips aren't in season at the moment, but their bulbs were still for sale at the flower market.
Tip for travelers to Amsterdam:
Don't visit on a Sunday. All of Amsterdam's famous markets are closed (told you that Europe hates Sundays).
We'd purchased our tickets for the Van Gogh museum the night before, and when you purchase tickets online, you pick a time slot. Our tickets were for 15:00, so we decided to wend our way to one of Amsterdam's many parks for our picnic beforehand.
The Van Gogh museum was incredible. I'm not much of a painter and I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough to critique art, but I am a sensitive lady.
And Van Gogh's work is piercing. The circular style in which he layered the paint on his self portraits completely captured me. When I was a kid, my mom used to put me down for afternoon naps with a fan in the room. I hated the fan because like just about everything else in my childhood, the fan gave me nightmares. I'd start to fall asleep and then the sound of the spinning blades would get into my brain. My head started to thunder and whirl and pressure would build up until I thought my forehead would explode. Then I'd either fall asleep and have nightmares of tornadoes or I'd wake up and feel too afraid to close my eyes again.
That's what Van Gogh's self portraits did to me (swear to Slovenian Jesus I wasn't high).
 |
| Dutch stroller |
 |
| My hair is almost long enough for flowers. :) |
Which was hilarious. I'm about 90% vanilla (10% sea salt caramel), so I spent most of my time gawking at the photos and statues and strange carvings from way back when thinking, how did they even come up with that? and GOOD LORD, that looks painful.
People. People are more creative than I give them credit for.
The journey home included one mad dash in the train station (we still missed the train), one train, one metro, one bus, and one brisk, chilly walk.
I think that Holland makes transportation so complicated in order to trick tourists into thinking it's bigger than it really is. It's just really insecure about how small it is, so it makes people run up and down, round and round so that they think Holland is the size of Texas.
We got back to Maud's apartment around nine thirty.
Special peanut butter cookies were ready by ten fifteen.
"I don't feel anything," I said about half an hour after eating our first cookie.
"Should we have another?"
"Well... they are really small..."
"What do you think?"
"Sure, let's try another," I thoughtfully munched on another crumbly cookie.
We should have just stopped there. In fact, we should have stopped after our first cookie. But I think my longstanding inability to get high has convinced me that I'm absolutely impervious to pot. So instead of calling it quits at two or at least waiting for the marijuana to kick in, we helped ourselves to thirds.
And I started to feel nauseous. Nauseous and hot and paranoid.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" I shifted further onto the other side of the couch.
"What?"
"You're looking at me."
"Oh, I didn't notice."
"Yeah, you've been staring for like, ten minutes."
"Have I?"
"Yeah."
"Man."
"I'm feeling really hot."
"Me too."
"Is that normal?"
"ummm...."
"I'm feeling nauseous. I think I'm going to bed."
"Okay."
The moment I hit horizontal, my body exploded. I'd secretly hoped that the marijuana would numb the pain in my back and make it easier for me to sleep, but the result of ingesting three space cookies in an hour and a half was quite the opposite.
The heat concentrated itself in every part of my body where I felt pain. Searing pain all over my back, searing pain in my knees, searing pain in the fingers where I've been feeling the arthritic psoriasis most intensely. Like the fan from my nightmares and the Van Gogh portraits, the heat whirled around my body like fiery helicopter blades.
I felt anxious. The helicopter blades moved into my throat. I felt afraid. The helicopter blades moved into my heart. I felt overwhelmed. My spine became a column of fire.
Never before have I felt the connection between emotional pain and physical pain so directly. So intensely.
I need to calm down, I told myself through the red haze. I need to keep breathing and realize that it can't last forever. Nothing lasts forever.
My mouth was dry and sticky. My throat felt like I'd swallowed a bale of hay. I tried to yell for Maud, but couldn't summon more than a whisper.
I didn't sleep that night. At one point, I managed to crawl to the toilet... but I had to lie on the tile floor for what felt like hours before I had the energy to crawl back to bed.
Then it was morning.
I still couldn't lift my head without wanting to throw up.
How long will this last?
I heard Maud in the shower.
At least she's okay.
She came in to check on me later. I don't know how much later. Time lost its sense of direction on Monday. It went backwards and forwards and sideways and then just stood still for a while.
"Are you okay?" she sat on my bed.
"No."
"Can I do anything for you?"
"Water. Yogurt."
"Do you want anything in your yogurt?"
"Honey."
"Okay."
Maud scampered down the stairs. Time happened. Then there was yogurt. I couldn't lift my head, so I asked Maud to put the bowl next to my face and I spooned it into my mouth sideways.
"Are you okay?" I managed to ask Maud between mouthfuls of yogurt.
"Man, I'm still so high."
"Are you sick?"
"No... just flying. But I did pass out in the shower."
"I wanna be flying," I moaned.
Time happened. Maud ran up the stairs. Maud ran down the stairs. Up. Down. Up. Down. Pitter-patter socks on wooden planks, thump, thump, bang, bang doors, clink-clank glasses in the kitchen.
I want to run up and down stairs...
Maud brought me a lunch of cheese and olives and some women's tea.
"Are you still flying?"
"Yes. Man, I think I'm going to have to cancel my hair appointment. F*ck."
More yogurt happened.
Time skipped about.
And then I slept.
Finally.
I woke up on Tuesday.
What the hell happened to Monday? I feel like it just... disappeared.
I ran down the stairs to make some eggs, celebrating the fact that I could move my head without vomiting.
I'm still a little nauseous, but much, much better. No more cookies for me. Jesus.
The first thing that happened on Tuesday? After spending Monday bedridden and Sunday night in excruciating pain?
Shots.
Welcome back to the world, Bourget. Now it's time to be a grown up. No typhoid for you.
I told the doctor it was my first time getting vaccinations and she looked a little worried. She grabbed my right arm and said, "Make sure to relax -- whoa... you are really relaxed."
I didn't tell her why.
No comments:
Post a Comment