Day 2



The transition point from day 1 to day 2 cannot be defined clearly. It is unimportant. We remained in the internet gaff, joyfully viewing every web page in existence - a skill I acquired during my work placement - until about 6:30. We then moved towards the flying pig hostel, to ensure we would be there first and get beds and fuck anyone else who wanted beds because we deserved them more. Sunrise had occured, and I saw the city for the first time. That is to say my eyes must surely have taken in images of the place. My brain, however, focused on its goal of acquiring intense sleepage. For this was most certainly key. 

We made it to the hostel, only to find it closed. Rumours of its zany 24 hour lifestyle were debunked - all was quiet. We waited. Shortly afterward 2 israeli chicks joined us. We chatted briefly, desperately trying to avoid raising the thornly issue of palestine. Dan prevented me from sellotaping a bomb to myself and suicide kabooming us weary 4 to Allahs mercy by informing me we were without sellotape. I disputed this, feeling sure I had some stowed in 'my' rucksack. A quick inspection revealed that all my rucksack contained was about 14 pairs of pants. These were lucky girls. One of them even had the audacity to be saucyish enough.

The girls were in fact perfectly civil but my buzz was pure sleep and about half an hour later we were granted admission. Another half an hour or so later, having examined every piece of literature with an uninterested eye in what passed for a lobby, we gave them passports and money. They said - go! sleep! I couldve hugged the desk girl were it not for the fact that she was a surly unhelpful bitch. I created beddage in a room where many souls slept. It was blissful and I enjoyed about 6 hours.

Upon my eventual rising, we attended to various tasks, peppering our duties with the smoking of drugs. I acquired a locker - for me this is essential. I placed various unrelated items inside and felt secure and important. We placed our rucksacks in a provided cavern located 2000 feet below sea level. To reach this abyss, one had to descend the most deadly set of stairs man has ever devised. Narrow they were. Pointy also. They were awash with fluids of what I cheerfully determined to be water. Their most impressive and daunting feature was their near vertical slope. I fully expected to encounter a multitude of corpses at their end, unlucky fellow travellers whom, having innocently enjoyed some drugs, had failed to take extreme care in descent. It took wise old me several hours to make it to the bottom, only to find to my disappointment that whatever subterranean creatures lived down there had already disposed of the shattered bodies. Downer.

An unusual system of passwords, keycards, pin numbers, background checks and personality tests later, we managed to gain entrance to the storage room. But how could we two units pass personality tests?, I hear you cry. It is my contention that hoolers slipped someone a few guilders to spare him having to deal any further with the blubbery stick of moaning chaos I had become in my failed attempts to get the fuck rid of my burdenous rucksack. We threw our bags in this room full of their comtemporaries, buoyed by the knowledge that they would make steadfast allies in a location so heaving with fellow luggage.

I bounded back upstairs at the rate of a couple of steps a minute, such was my sense of carefree abandon. We spent the remainder of the day planning the next one, eating, smoking and in the evening we decided to venture into the red light district. Our inability to locate this zone is as famous throughout the continent as the place itself. Many is the specialist who has sought to cut to the root of this issue. I put it down to being spaced out, ignoring those who say it was a subconscious attempt to avoid witnessing unattainable delights. Our troubled dance with the district can best be described in diagramatic terms.


As the diagram shows, we circled the area like a brace of lonely wolves, catching only brief glimpses of what was on offer. Rainfall eventually drove us scurrying back to base where we spent the remainder of the evening steadfastly avoiding interaction with our fellow hostel peeps before retiring for some more of that hot sleepy action. Vavoom!

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