AMSTERDAM TRAVEL DIARIES- day 3

Day 3 - Amsterdam 

*Sex, Van Gogh, Ganjaa, Sex, Paris, Dreamless Nation *

Day 2 night I hit the bed and moved into my sleep.

I woke up with a screaming of a woman in her room, right next to my bed, a wall separates us. I jumped out of my sleep, one eye closed and one eye red. Dazed I am wondering if I am in the middle of a robbery, or domestic violence. I look into my watch is 3:30am local time.

I wait and the sounds grow intense, the woman is now moaning. Shocked I realise the opposite door couple was making love. 🤦‍♀️ 

Luckily I woke up only at the end of their act because after a few minutes I could hear faint sounds of a bathroom door opening n water splashing.

Scratching my head I screamed in my head “ why 3:30 am , you had the whole night “ 

I am a passionate man too but I have manners, all my gymnastics finish by a exactly 11pm. No animals are harmed or woken up in the process….… I have social etiquette.

And so there I was with my eyes wide open and staring at the ever bright sky beyond the curtains, wondering if I will ever see a star one day.

What a start to my day.

I lie on the bed, my head running on the fact that it’s 7am in the morning in India. I message my saviour who promptly asks me to _go back to bed_.

And so I switch off my mobile phone and try to get some sleep.

Twisting and turning in my bed, remembering a gore movie I watched on MUBI before I went to sleep. MUBI automatically switched over my country region on the app and now I had access to films what were playing in Europe. I checked for my favourite directors Kurosawa and Tarkovsky. I was excited that all the films of Tarkovsky was now available to me.

Twisting and turning and finally making it through. I said enough is enough.

And so I jump out to plan my day. Another 5:00 am wake up. Rise and shine routine. I rush to the metro, while planning on my mobile how to reach Rijsk.

I catch the metro then the tram and then finally at the Van Gogh Museum. ( since I travel by the metro in Bangalore switching two lines, its a cake walk for me managing a six line metro here in Amsterdam , ( _2012 I was cluess in Europe as I travelled extensively in 50 days covering 7 countries; performing and conducting theatre workshops for groups, imagine the plight of someone who never saw a metro and managing metros in Europe_ )

Luckily I found place for breakfast at 7am near the Van Gogh Museum. 

Amsterdam wakes up at 11am. All places are open only after 11am.

I spent 6 hours in the Van Gogh Museum 

This is my second visit, last time I visited I didn’t start painting. 

This time I took my own sweet time with all the works, with eyes of a painter 

I remember yesterday evening meeting a person at the reception at where I stay and he said he’s an actor too. But does only adults show. And I was zapped. What could be an adults show. I asked him the details  of his show.

After the Visit to the Van Gogh Museum, I landed up at my friends show and stunned I just could not move into the hall. It was a live sex show.

I turned and walked away, “ _not after watching Van Gogh’s work_ “ , I told my self. I have heard about such performances last time when I was in the city. 

I jumped back into the metro traveling back to my place. By now Marc, who contacted me before I left Bangalore, was trying to organise my workshop for his theatre group in Paris.

So I am keeping my fingers crossed, after my Saturday and Sunday performance at the Amsterdam I may be traveling to Paris on Monday. Keeping my fingers crossed. I am hearing a lot about the revolution in Paris and that’s making me uneasy to travel to a land where government and citizens are in the middle of a minor civil war.

Walking across the streets I noticed cannabis ( ganja) everywhere. The last time I had a huge debate on the topic with my host Dorien, who is a professor in the InHolland University. 

“ give kids and youth the option to try out whatever they wish and then they decide whether they like it or not “ was her and the Dutch society’s view 

When I met her in Bangalore, She was in India to do a research on Indian slum kids.  The problem in Netherlands is that kids are not dreaming about becoming anything. In a land where there’s everything, kids don’t want to become anything.

So the country is worried about their future and so they sent a research team to India, to find out what is the fire, internal and external motivation to dream big.

I would be meeting Dorien to see the results of her research. And so I wait into the bright sunlight evening leading to the bright night; wondering about a dreamless nation and it’s future.