Regression Therapy : Soak ‘im in oil ’til he sprouts a flipper

Not behind the wheel of a large automobile, I found myself in Amsterdam a few weeks back. It was truly a whirlwind tour of a cool European city, staying in an apartment overlooking one of the many canals.

It was such a blur that only a few things stick out in my mind:

1. God damn, the biscuits over there are mighty fine. Sweet, crisp, foreign tasty. This is in no way a euphemism for anything other than foreign biscuits, see the Nilla photo below.
2. Drinking beer is expensive, though we did get to do it in a pub the size of an armpit, floor strewn with peanut shells and cherubs stuck all over the ceiling. A place called the Chaos Cafe
3. People seemed by and large extremely friendly, and in a friendly way, extremely large. Tall large, not American large. The first few days of bicycle dodging put the patience of the native cyclists to the test, and showed them a generous and understanding bunch. Even predictive of mid-street, jet-lagged tourist dilly-dallying.
4. The weekending British get a very bad reputation for passing out high and dry at 11am in the morning on super strong joints, or singing sea shanties at the noon hour as though it were 4am in the morning. For the record I refer to myself as English not British for the most part. And I only know one sea shanty. Though it has many verses: “Soak ‘im in oil ’til he sprouts a flipper” etc
5. You can walk to anything you may need on a regular basis, or catch a tram. Easily.

I took many bad photos with my new camera (a Rebel T2i notionally bought for the Austin Video Booth project), and share four thousand words’ worth below. A prize for anyone who can tell me where the apostrophe in the last sentence should have gone.