So, as the year comes to a close, I thought I would rectify those omissions with a new series: TBSO2007. And hopefully I will make it past volume 1.
Most of what is missing are the funny things that Jamie and I did together. Man, living with her was the best. What's that song? You don't know what you got 'till it's gone? Yeah, it's like that. We shared a bedroom and literally never fought. We travelled to Paris, Amsterdam, London, and followed The Avett Brothers around the UK in a manner not unlike a pack of pre-teen girls. Everything was a photo or fashion opportunity, and everything was funny. It was a great semester.
I knew it was going to be big fun from the moment I went to pick her up at the train station in Edinburgh. She had been travelling for days; every flight out of North Carolina was delayed, and after missing her connection in Manchester she decided to get on the train with what must have been a hundred suitcases and at least fourteen gallons of hair product (her unswerving devotion to product is one of the things I love most). We rolled loudly through the station with bottles flying everywhere, laughing crazily and generally letting Scotland know that Jamie Had Arrived. As we turned a corner a pidgeon flew at our feet. Jamie ran at it wildly and yelled 'get out of my way pidgeon! You don't know me!' -- and lo, our catchphrase for the next four months was born.
Everywhere we went after that; the Union, Tesco, the Musee de Cluny in Paris; we said it: "You don't know me, tuesday night Bop!" or "You don't know me, Den Haag!" It worked for everything.
By the time spring break rolled around we were itching to go someplace exotic, or at least somewhere that wasn't the three narrow streets of St Andrews. We decided to storm London, Paris and Amsterdam, as we knew native speakers in all three cities (it's the Queen's English in London, you see) and airline tickets were relatively cheap. In London we would see Harry Potter naked, dance the night away in chav heaven, and visit Botticelli at the National Gallery. Paris meant trips to the Louvre, taking lovers' walks along the Pont Neuf, and having baguette fights in the Jardin de Luxembourg. In Amsterdam we would visit the Anne Frank House, tiptoe through the tulips, and examine Vermeer's interiors. Oh, and, of course, spend some time hooker watching after we light up a big fat doobie. I know you were thinking it.
[Somewhere in Durham, North Carolina my grandmother just said 'Oh Lauren!' at her computer screen.]
We had been travelling for 10 days by the time we got to Amsterdam, and my throw-caution-to-the-wind traveling style had backfired big time in the accommodation department. We had arrived in town on a Friday afternoon (rookie mistake) and every rentable bed in the city that didn't belong to a window hooker was taken. We walked up and down the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal until we were visibly perspiring and Dutch words started to look reasonable. It was at that point I knew the madness was setting in. I've been traveling around on a shoestring for a while now and never, ever have I been so defeated.
[Ok, that's not true, I once spent a lonely night on the floor of the Bad Schandau train station in the middle of the Czech Republic, my arms and legs wound through the straps of my backpack to ward off thieves, clutching a handful of money, and praying for daylight. That was maybe a little worse... but at least I wasn't so sweaty.]
I finally took us back to a place I had stayed two years before (the name escaped me then, and does to this day, but I remembered it because it was above a gay bar called The Getto) and practically begged the owner to find us a bed. All I will say about the hotel owner is that his name is Otto, he has a formidable beard, and he looks exactly like the type of man who might own a crumbly motel in Amsterdam. He also has cats. Lots of them.
Otto explained to us that he didn't have a bed left in this motel, but for a nominal fee he could rent us a small apartment across the city for the weekend. He could have charged us 80 euros to sleep in his beard with the cats and I would have said yes, so we happily trundled across town with Otto and his jolly wife to check out our new digs.
As we crossed the canal into the Red Light District I thought man, this is funny, we're in the Red Light District. Red Light District. Man. Hilarious. The prostitutes watched us pass with their steely gaze; one even tapped the glass like she was eyeing me at the zoo. Jamie managed to catch my reaction on film at the precise moment when I saw Otto reach for the door of our place, and they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is:
[I like to think I look ironic and spontaneous, but the truth is if you could have heard my thoughts it would have sounded like this: ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod]
He took us through a series of six -- SIX -- locked doors to a third floor apartment that was surprisingly lush by our standards. We even had a tiny kitchen for making pancakes in the morning! My initial horror turned into infinite delight when I realized that we were staying in the Dutch Fort Knox and you could look down from our windows and see four different brothels. The people watching! My god! We showered and got ready to go back out (ok, Jamie showered and I just changed my pants) and Jamie managed again to capture my mood perfectly as we left the apartment:
Nice to meet you -- The name's Lauren and I'm darn glad to be here!
Charlie came down on the train from his home in Leiden and we hit the town for a big night out. There was dancing, Febo, and a man on fire. Since we're not 19 anymore we were ready for bed by 3 am, and Charlie offered to walk us back to the apartment and spend the night on the floor by the door for protection (good on him). By the time we got back to the apartment the brothels were in full swing. Immune to the hypnotic pull of the women in windows, Charlie fell asleep on our couch while Jamie and I moved idly to the window to witness the goings-on three floors below. We leaned our heads against the glass and stared down like people possessed, watching the stag parties and German tourists stumble by in raucous droves.
We must have stood there for an hour when Jamie broke the absorbed silence with a cry of panic: "Lauren! They're watching us!" Sure enough, a handful of working ladies had spotted us in our rear window glory and were glaring menacingly in our direction. I'm fairly certain one woman even pantomimed a stabbing motion as if to say simply, I Will Cut You. Jamie and I looked at each other in abject terror and simultaneously hit the floor -- anything to get out of the sight lines of the angry hookers before they could remember our faces well enough to describe them to their knuckle-cracking boyfriends. As we lay on the floor I looked at Jamie and said "what if they come up here and stab us for real?" She looked back at me, stood up slowly, and yelled out the cracked window: YOU DON'T KNOW ME RED LIGHT DISTRICT!
