Amsterdam day three

Both tired we rose after midday but it seemed I was the only one hung over. We drank some coffee and Mika was soon out the door. As part of his deal with his old landlady he’d agreed to paint his old apartment, well some of it at least. We dawdled a bit but eventually hit the pavement toward the tram. We had heard a bit about these canal houses and Mika had invited us to check out the one in which he’d lived in for the past year. The thing you should know about canal houses is they’re uniformly narrow. Only the super rich built them with a frontage of more than three metres - only they could afford the extra tax. This former house had been converted to two dwellings with the Dutch lady living on the ground floor. But then, in the old days it was not uncommon for three families to be living in one house - one per floor. The top floor, which was Mika’s, consisted of two zones: A kitchen-dining room and a sleep-in lounge room. The only luxury was a tiny balcony overlooking the canal. Cramped for one person let alone a family. Curiously, the bathroom had two swinging doors side by side. Through one you climbed into the bath tub to shower. Through the other end you accessed the toilet directly at the foot of the bath. This “room” consisted of nothing more than the tub and toilet - no easements at all.
Growling stomachs determined it was dinner time so we went back to the apartment and we cooked Mika a casserole having cleaned the kitchen a little. It was a nice, large space to cook in and the view was inspirational. Dinner went down rather well too. For Mika it reminded him of a trip with his father, a sailor, as a young boy - quite Scandinavian he said.
Back onto the town we hit our first CS meeting which had spilled onto the footpath. It was a bit daunting at first but we eased our way into it chatting with a few different people. My mispronunciation of one name ended one conversation rather quickly despite my remarks about Australian’s and their inflexible tongues. Later we worked out he was one of only three that were interested in hosting someone after the meeting. Luckily we met Animesh. Under no pretences we got talking about who knows what - this was after a few drinks - before discovering he was open to hosting. What I can recall from that first conversation was that he had been working in Texas for and oil and gas company, this being his trade. With some guilt he moved to Amsterdam to work on renewable energy. On that topic we grabbed some food on our way to the next pub at what’s literally a hole in the wall. The entire shop consists of little plastic windows which open once the correct change is inserted. Mostly it was fried treats, which we had learned from Mika, was very Dutch. All the while people scurry around refreshing the windows with more food from the other side of the wall. The next pub proved a lot better for live music than the night before and Animesh shared our like of bad 90s rock. In the blur that was getting home he’d changed his mind from us sending a request in the morning to him sending us his address whilst exchanging his mobile number for Mika’s.
The trip back to Mika’s didn’t take long thankfully as it was 6am and we were all keen for some food with last night’s leftovers going down well. By about 7 the sun was well up but I was crashing hard and Alysia, who crawled into bed a few moments before, barely stirred.
- Sam July 31