It’s been a very long time since I’ve written a rambling, self-indulgent Insult journal post.
I left Boston Saturday evening, arrived in Amsterdam on Sunday morning, didn’t sleep on the plane. Get to the hotel on Sunday morning, the stupid Holiday Inn in Leiden wouldn’t let me check in until noon, so my plan to go to sleep for a few hours as soon as I got in was foiled. I change in the bathroom, and decide to go into Amsterdam, deciding that was my best hope for staying up until around 10pm. Amsterdam was bad-to-mediocre, as always, walk around, have a few beers, don’t eat anything (because the food in the Netherlands is awful).
Monday, I get into the office in Europe, very productive day, that’s good. Go out for drinks with a few guys from the office, end up drinking 6 Belgian beers (egads), and only eat a couple of handfuls of nuts before 10pm. I get back to the Holiday Inn, and eat dinner at the “pirate bar” – this ridiculous nautical/pirate themed bar at the Inn (which, overall, is this strange sort of tropical-themed business hotel). I love the pirate bar – everyone I’ve worked with here loves the pirate bar. It was an oasis. However, as of three weeks ago, the pirate bar was transformed into what I imagine a Dutch guy who runs a Holiday Inn thinks a cool bar looks like, that is, color-changing neon lighting underneath the liquor at the bar, blond formica wood bartop, loud club music. The staff – sarcastic dutch guys – and the clients – drunk british businessmen – have remained the same, so everyone in there hates it.
Tuesday morning, I wake up at 4am after sleeping for three hours – can’t fall back asleep, eventually try to use the swimming pool, for some reason, maybe because I think it will help prevent a hangover. Either that worked, or my tolerance is higher than it ought to be, since I probably should have had a pounding hangover – instead I just felt mildly shitty all day. I realize midday that I also have a cold with a sore throat. In the last two years, I have been genuinely or even mildly sick twice – food poisoning in the Netherlands a year ago, a cold in the Netherlands now. Any time I get a sore throat, I get worried it’s strep, also (strep can kill me if untreated)…never actually is strep, though. Work was productive. I had dinner at a coworker’s house, one of the guys in the warehouse, which was nice if awkward. I spent most of the dinner trying to make conversation with a 6 year old Dutch girl that knew 20 words in English, and trying to play with barbies and puzzles with a 3 year old Dutch girl (who would grab my hand and shout “PUZZLEM!” after each of the four times she finished her nine-piece Dora the Explorer puzzle). I get home early but end up staying up until 2am answering work e-mails.
Wednesday, still have a cold. Work goes well. Go out for dinner after work with the boss at the office – to the same place I got food poisoning last year. It goes well enough, though the satay sauce seemed weirdly fishy. Still can’t really sleep.
Today, still have a cold. Go back to Schiphol, to get on my flight to Vienna. While I’m waiting, I drink a Heineken at Schiphol Sport Bar, and I’m pretty sure I see a guy at the bar that played a bully in some random kid movie from the 90s, like the Wizard…he had a british accident that seemed to fade in and out. Just didn’t like the look of the guy. Flight is fine, get into Vienna, walk to my hotel, which is more like a studio apartment in an old traditional european-hotel-style building. It feels like a character’s apartment in an old movie – enough decoration to exhibit what would seem like some sort of individual character, but not enough for that character to be definable in any way. Walk around, cold bothering me, foot bothering me, eat some mediocre schnitzel. I buy tickets to an opera on Saturday, because I want to try it, and Vienna seems like a good place to do that. I am reading a good book. It’s from a series of books that NY Review of Books publishes – modern classics. I like them because when I buy one, I get a guarantee that I’m reading something ‘worthwhile’, without having to worry that the book is too obvious of a classic to actually read in public. It’s called Boredom, written in the 50s by an Italian, about a shitty Italian painter with money who decides he’s really bored, his boredom, and his relationship with this 17 year old girl with the torso of an adolescent, but “magnificent bosoms, full, firm, and round” that have an “adult quality” again noticeable in “her powerful, solid hips”. I like it.
I decided to stay in the hotel tonight, to try to get a full night’s sleep. I was speaking weirdly quietly all day – I think I do this the first day I’m in a country where people only mostly speak English. On the way home, I buy a cigar. I go to the open air market in Vienna (called the nachtsmarkt) and buy blue cheese, bread, a bottle of wine (Austrian Syrah), and salami. Then, I buy prosciutto and a roast pork cold cut from this friendly older Austrian guy. He asks me where I’m from, and responds to my answer of “Boston, America” (?) by saying “Do you know Anthony Bourdain?”, and telling me about how much Bourdain liked his food shop, and showing me the plate that Bourdain signed. I get home. The Austrian Syrah is a kosher wine that is terrible, and when I look the price up, I find out that I got overcharged for by 200%. I fucking hate terrible wine, and I really hate being overcharged for terrible wine. I consider whether the wine-seller might have cheated me on this wine because he’s anti-Semitic and thought I was Jewish and would like the wine because it’s kosher. I do some work, and then say fuck it and go out again and get a new bottle of wine. I walk about a half-mile to a better wine store, spend a half hour looking at wines, google like 20 of them, and decide on a Ribera Del Duero with good reviews that doesn’t seem overpriced (and two bottles of Underberg).
I get home, spread out a pile of food on the table, open the wine, turn on the TV, decide to post about the week so far on Insult, and start eating. The meats and bread are terrific, but the wine is ridiculously good after a bit of air – medium-full body, sort of a toasted bread with caramel smell, intense acidity, tannins, but all balanced, long finish. Ahhh, I love good wine. Holy crap – I unwrap the cheese, and…I like stinky cheese, but this blue cheese is over the hill… it smells like someone spilled a barrel of ammonia in the FIlthhole. May or may not take a walk and smoke the cigar. Either way, going to get a good night’s sleep and then kill Vienna tomorrow.
St00n