The Wanderings

Day 7 - Gogh'ing for a Haul with Jimmy

Day 7

Dong….Dong……Ding ..Dong……Dong …Ding….Ding fuckin’ Dong, fuckin’ ding….dong…dong….ohhhh stop it!!….ding…..please, please …..ding…dong …..AHHHHHHHHHH!   Literally five feet from my bedside was a god damn church.  It just wasn’t the fact that I ‘slept’ beside the window that faced the church, it was that some insensitive Dutch priest/minister/reverend decided to play his bells for an hour at six in the morning.   So needless to say, I got an early start to the day's’ festivities. 

     Baggy eyed and irritated, I ventured downstairs to the pub to make up for the premature wakening with a nice Irish breakfast.  As all good breakfasts must start with a cup of fresh hot coffee, I ordered one from the bartender.  A dollop of milk and a spoonful of sugar followed up with a wee giggle of the spoon and I had the fuel to fire up my day.  Sip.  Gulp.  Uh…Og…OH the Horror!  Miss Mindless, the helpless barkeep, mistakenly put salt in the sugar jar.  I could have killed the useless nit.  Simply put, that was the worst beverage I have ever ingested.  Ever.

     The food was not much better than the coffee.  I was served a slice of bread and a hardboiled egg.  To make the day truly horrible, I followed up my salty coffee and slice of egg by sparking up a conversation with two young ladies grazing nearby. Over crumbs, I learned that my new American friends, the Bobsy Twits, were going over to Anne Franks house.  “Hey!”  My outside voice blurted out loud.  “I’m going to Anne Frank’s house too.  Mind if I tag along?”  Oy vey…big mistake, I should have just had another cup of Saltuccino.

     Understanding that the modern day education system is pathetic and politically motivated to veer our children as far away from any topic that was related to reality or our history, here is a few explanatory comments on our objective target for the morning.  Back in the time of the 1940’s, people from a place called Deutschland (aka Germany) decided that they wanted to save the world from the scourge of democracy.  Therefore, they gathered up all their vehicles (tanks) and drove into the countries that surrounded them in hopes of protecting their vulnerable neighbours from this threatening menace.  On their western border lies the Netherlands.  To protect the Dutch (aka…the Netherlanders) from potential harm caused by those dastardly Brits who were threatening to invade from across the channel, the Germans decided to swarm every major city, town and strategic approach with their ‘freedom ambassadors’.  Mimicking the most likable of farm creatures and to demonstrate the purity of their intent, they all lined up and marched like a goose across the countryside and into towns.  Amsterdam was one of those towns.  Upon entry, they recognized that the Jews, being perpetually persecuted peoples needed to be protected the most.  Therefore, they focused on finally finding a solution that protected the poor Jews.   Led by a guy named Adolf and his gang of pure-hearted friends, they came up with an idea….the best way to protect the Jews would be to gather them all up and send them to a place far away from harm.  History does not record who it was, however one of Hitler’s friends put up his hand and said “Ya…vat avout Poland?”  So they banged down every door, opened up every closet, pulled up every floor board to find and save these threatened peoples.  Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam during this time.  Maybe it was the language barrier, however Anne confused “sending to Poland to be saved” with “being sent to a place in Poland called Auschwitz to be sauted”.  Either way, she wrote a diary about her time during the war when she was hiding from the Nazi’s.  Anne was eventually caught, was sent to Poland and it turns out it was not a language problem after all. 

    Back to my morning misadventure.  The three of us ventured out in search of Anne Frank's house.  The first minute went by fairly smoothly, and then…it went all to hell.  For reasons unbeknownst to me, the pair thought that when I agreed to join them on the crusade to find Anne, that I would also be interested to go shopping with them too.  Hence….as we inched our way towards the poor dead girl’s house, I stood by in disbelief watching them stop by every stall along our route and rummage through an tireless series of bargain bins.  I soothed my frayed nerves by slowly yanking out my hairs…one by one.   I was two inches up my forehead when I finally realized it was time to lose the losers.  But how?  First, I needed a plan.  When they wandered in one shop, I would nonchalantly try to lose them by slipping into another.  I found myself crouching beneath raunchy postcard displays and huddling behind piles of souvenir sweaters.  Why didn’t I just tell the two that I had absolutely no interest shopping, shopping with them, or even being anywhere near them?  For some unknown reason, I bit my tongue and followed the tedious twosome around until we finally made out way to Anne’s house.