I've quickly learned that there's nothing easy about EasyJet, except in the sense that it's easy to see why someone would have a nervous breakdown or go on a murderous rampage after flying with them.
My latest journey begins insipidly, at 2.15am, with a walk across Waterloo Bridge to a bus stop on The Strand. The bus to Victoria Station is late and filled with drunk South Africans talking about how many women they'd slept with that night and bewildered Eastern Europeans asking indecipherable questions of the bus driver, who is doing his best impersonation of a man who could not possibly give less of a shit if he tried.
I arrive at Victoria Station to find it closed, which would appear to be detrimental to my chances of catching the Gatwick train in fifteen minutes time. Many anxious minutes of confused glances at fellow travellers pass before, finally, a rail employee who must have a pint riding on who can look the least like he gives a shit between himself and the bus driver, pulls up the metal gate. The confused travellers and I pour into the empty station to discover that, guess what, the train is late. How on earth can a train arrive late at 3am? What has it been doing before now?
All these setbacks pale into insignificance once I'm inside the Gatwick terminal and in the hands of EasyJet. Their insistence to open only two check-in desks, irrespective of how many hundreds of thousands of people are queueing, means that I'm standing at the back of a long, static line of half-asleep people squinting at what may or may not be check-in counters in the far distance.
It takes me a while to work out why the line is moving so slowly, until eventually I get close enough to make out the check-in staff pointing out the "prohibited items" poster to each person as they check in, which is leading each person in turn to spend an eternity reflecting on which illegal things they may or may not have packed. It's the usual list of items that you'd most definitely need for a romantic weekend getaway in Paris or a few days on the beach in Mallorca: anthrax, hedge trimmers, propane canisters and the like.
Elderly couples at the desk asking each other, "Ohhh, errr, dear, did you pack that industrial belt sander in your luggage or mine? And what about the human stem cells packed into those petri dishes? Oh, we left them at home did we? Oh good". Elsewhere, low budget families, with their kids kicking and scratching around my heels, are ummming and ahhhing and asking throwing hapless questions at check-in staff. "Well you see, I was in such a rush that I can't remember if I packed that flamethrower or not. I really don't know, can I ask the audience?"
After 45 minutes of standing in line at check-in, another 30 minutes queueing for a Sausage and Egg McShit, and another half an hour blowing on my coffee until it has reached a safe temperature that will not cause my lips disintegrate on contact, I barely have time to turn to the old man next to me and say "what ever is the world coming to?" before the boarding call comes.
Everything goes well on the flight, up until a split second after the plane takes off and the baby two rows in front of me begins its usual routine. The screaming continues fiercely and unabated until touchdown in Pisa, but by this point I haven't slept in 24 hours and my tiredness pushes it to the outer reaches of my consciousness where it is more or less ignored and disregarded, like a Green party MP at a policy launch. And at the end of a gruelling six hour journey, I emerge punchdrunk into the dazzling Tuscan sunshine and breathe a haggard sigh of relief.
I step off the bus at Pisa and into a large piazza, at the far end of which is the Leaning Tower itself. Ellen quickly locates me amidst the throng of tourists, seemingly not a difficult task considering I'm the only man in Italy wearing jeans and a coat right now.
"What the hell dude? Aren't you boiling hot?", she says.
"Well I didn't expect it to be 25 bloody degrees at nine in the morning".
"It's always hot and sunny here! You're not in friggin' London anymore". Clearly. I can see large swathes of blue stuff above me which, from experience, look like clear sky. A dead giveaway that I'm no longer in England.
I must admit feeling a bit of a thrill walking past the Leaning Tower. It's another of those European icons I've seen in my mind a thousand times while growing up (and just about every time I've eaten a frozen pizza) and finally here it is, towering above me, and leaning. Pisa is not unlike a Southern Californian town in appearance, with its solid white villas and wide, tree-lined streets leading to distant scrub-covered hills. Replace a few of the palm trees with drive-thru fast food outlets and you could be in suburban San Diego.
Ellen takes me back to her and Michael's place and immediately goes to back sleep on the couch. Sleep, I'm soon to discover, is a favourite pastime in Italy. I suppose when you spend so much time engaged in impassioned debate and sex, the need for a siesta becomes more acute than it does in cooler climates. It's not long before I too find a suitable couch on which to drift off into a late-morning, and indeed mid-to-later-afternoon doze.
Michael comes home from the hospital and briefly joins us in the siesta-fest. He and Ellen are officially stationed in the hospital here as part of their med placement; however their tenuous grasp of Italian makes them rather surplus to requirements. It's hard enough to order a bus ticket here - as I discovered earlier - so I could only imagine that attempting to diagnose a patient whilst unable to speak a full sentence in their language would be a tricky business. It's a pretty big step up from their Samoan hospital placement, where the doctors and surgical teams generally resembled those four guys from the "V" ads.
"Yeah, Samoa was pretty cruisy", says Michael. "We'd be done by 10.30am on most days. If we were lucky we'd get to work in the intensive care ward. That was just like the other wards, except it had air conditioning".
Ellen and Michael have a pleasant surprise in store for me this evening. They're taking me to a bar, where all you have to do is buy a beer and youre entitled to free reign over their buffet food. I can't help but feel suspicious though. If there's one thing I've learned in Europe already, it's that if something looks too good to be true, it surely is.
"You'll see", says Ellen, on the way there. "When we discovered this place, the first thing we thought was 'wow, Max is gonna fuckin' cream himself' ".
That was a slight exaggeration on Ellen's behalf, but when I enter the bar to see massive buffet plates of pasta piled up on the counter, I begin to believe. I take up a table in the corner and Michael brings over some half-litre glasses of local beer. "Go for it", he says, gesturing the buffet with the trademark broad grin on his face.
This is not like your average buffet back home, with runny eggs, tough steak and undercooked bacon stewing in its own juices. This is fresh, simple pasta, served in four different dishes, with delicious pizza bites piling up on the counter. I fill my plastic plate until its dangerously heavy, then I take it back to the table and dominate it. Then I go back to the counter and repeat the process. By the time the buffet is taken away, we are all reclining lazily in our chairs, hands on stomachs, burping contentedly. The 8% lager Michael has bought me doesn't sit particularly well with the mass of carbs I just consumed, but it's making me pleasantly light-headed.
It doesn't even bear thinking about what would happen if a Dunedin bar - The Captain Cook, for instance - offered a similar deal. People would drop everything, everywhere, and make a beeline for the pub. University attendance would plummet. Crowds would gather on the grass strip across the road, swelling perhaps to the lawn outside the museum and spilling into the streets and public areas beyond. Students would arrive at the crack of dawn, buy one beer and spend the rest of the day alternating between eating the free food and shovelling the contents of their plates into tupperware containers to be microwaved and enjoyed in leaner months to come. Faced with an astronomical food bill, the Cook would go out of business virtually overnight.
And yet, here in Pisa, no one even seems to be batting an eyelid at the prospect of free food for the price of a beer. I don't understand it, but I don't particularly care either. It's just more free food for me.
We round off the evening at an al fresco bar on the river bank. A steaming hot day has mellowed into a sultry evening, and large numbers of locals are mingling with tourists in various outdoor drinking areas. It's my round, so I procure beers for Michael and myself and pay the lady. The price for two beers comes to 9 Euro, which is a little steep but I'm prepared to let it slide. Just as I'm turning to find a table, she says "Oh! Sorry, sorry, hold on" and disappears under the bar for a moment. When she reappears, she is holding two massive plates of cous cous, antipasto and other Mediterranean foodstuffs, which she places in our hands with a gratifying smile.
I'm on to something pretty good here, I reckon. A town where every beer comes with a plate of delicious food on the house. It's like a dream come true. We're completely stuffed from our meal at the last bar, but that doesn't stop us from cramming the latest offering in somewhere. It is free food, after all, and it would be ungrateful - rude even - not to wolf it down with gleeful exuberance. Which I suppose just goes to show that you can take the boy out of Dunedin, but you can't take Dunedin out of the boy.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Amsterdam
I could tell he didn't like me from the moment he laid eyes on me. Something about the fire in his eyes when he refused to shake my hand in the dressing room, and the way he spat in my general direction as I walked out to bat.
This isn't what I'd hoped for at all when Irish Richard told me I was playing cricket in Amsterdam. But it's happening now, and I'll just have to grin and bear it - while I still can grin, that is. Standing off in the distance with a shiny new rock in his hand and preparing to run in at me again is Shoaib Akhtar's younger, leaner, meaner cousin. He's angry, and he will continue to be until he's sent my head flying off its shoulders. He's already got me praying to some unseen higher power and I've only faced two balls. The first zeroed in on my off stump before swinging, viciously and late, past my hapless forward defensive prod. The second was a mere blur accompanied by a whirring sound as it fizzed past my nose on the way through to the keeper.
"I am gonna fuck you up, boy", he's saying, and now he's running in again. Oh god. This one is short of a length but I prop forward instinctively, too hungover to read it early. It rears up nastily and suddenly it's headed straight for the hard spot directly between my eyes. I'd love to sway out of the way but suddenly my whole body has gone to jelly. I have no control over it as the red missile traces its inexorable course towards its target...
"How are you feeling, lazy man?", says Willem as he assembles the bread and cold meats for our breakfast. I'm still in Utrecht, and alive. Shoaib's cousin, if he exists, is still waiting for me in Amsterdam ready for our showdown tomorrow. That Dutch Dynamite last night was obviously so potent that it gave me nightmares. I highly recommend it if you're ever in Utrecht.
Irish Richard arrives at lunchtime to pick me up on his way through to Amsterdam. It's time to say goodbye to my gracious hosts Willem and Heleen, who have declined my offer to join me in the capital for the weekend. "No thanks, but have fun with the gay boys".
Richard has organised for us to go on a late afternoon/early evening boat ride through the canals of Amsterdam, which I'm told is the best way of exploring the city. Before we embark we head to Reilly's bar for a warm-up pint, where we meet Robert and a couple of his mates. A cricket teammate and associate of Richard's, Robert greets us with a cheerful hello and wonders aloud if we'd like some beers. It's a Friday but his glazed over expression, and the fact that he's wearing sunglasses in the murky light of an Irish pub, suggest that his weekend began many hours ago.
"Oh man, it's been a long hard week", he says. "I got up this morning and you know, I was so tired that I didn't know if I'd be able to play golf today".
"How did you go?", Richard asks.
"I won!", he says, sounding as surprised about it as we are.
The television in the bar, which had previously been showing the England v South Africa cricket test, has now been switched over to pre-match build up of some pointless friendly football match between Spurs and Celtic. Richard is disgusted. Quick as a flash, Robert pulls a radio out of his pocket and switches it on to the correct frequency.
There seems to be a surprising amount of enthusiasm for cricket in Amsterdam. Richard told me on the way over that his club has six teams, made up mainly of Dutch players. Is this something we need to be worried about as Black Caps fans? Is our position as 7th best test playing nation in the world under threat from the sleeping giant that is the Netherlands?
"Don't worry, Pietersen and Collingwood are still in", Robert says, holding the radio up to his ear. "Well boys, shall we go for a boat ride?"
From the pub, we wander through a maze of streets and canals in the general direction of the boat. Robert trails off some distance behind, endeavouring to walk straight whilst holding the radio to his ear. I'm also joined by a couple of South Africans, also keen cricketers, who ask if I'm looking forward to the gay parade tomorrow.
"Actually, I'm playing cricket with Richard all day so I'll miss it. Gutted I know".
"Oh well, you'll enjoy the cricket", says John, the club pro for Richard's team". "They don't take it too seriously over here". In light of this, I decide not to tell him about my nightmarish visions of Shoaib Akhtar's cousin.
Suddenly, a desparing yelp of "OH NO!" comes from somewhere behind us. I turn around, expecting to see Robert flapping about in the canal but instead he's just standing, holding the radio to his ear.
"Pietersen out! Out for 91!"
Robert is an Australian-born Dutchman. Why does he care?
"And now Flintoff out! Flintoff out in the same over!.... To Harris? Harris! Oh no!".
Robert's brother is already loading beers and snacks onto the boat as we arrive. It's an open-topped motorised dinghy of about 20 feet, small enough to manoevre through most of the waterways and low enough to get under every bridge. A good crowd of about 25 people, mainly cricketers plus some various hangers-on, pile into the boat and we're away.
A canal boat cruise certainly is the best way to see the city, especially with a Heineken in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other. Every canal is lined with trees and a row of ancient four-storey houses. Many have their construction dates visible on the front, and most that I can see date back to the late 16th century. Unlike many Dutch cities, Amsterdam was not bombed heavily during World War II, and consequently the city centre has looked much the same for hundreds of years.
Robert sees me gazing up at the buildings and taps me over the shoulder. "See those hooks?", he says, pointing up at the large metal hooks attached to ropes that jut out from the top floor of each building. "Those are for moving furniture in when you move into the house. And see how that hook has a backpack hanging on it?". He points to a house further down the canal, which we're passing now.
"Yep, what's that for?"
"That means someone in that house has just graduated from school!"
I'd like to believe him, but he's just finished telling us about how he sold his keyboard to some guy on eBay who, before coming to collect it, emailed his girlfriend asking how old she was. When the man received the answer that she was in her thirties, he didn't bother coming round. "Can you believe that?", he said. "My girlfriend made me miss cricket practice so I could stay home alone and let some fucking pedophile into my house!"
"I don't know, Robert", I say, sceptical of his backpack theory. With every beer he drinks - and I drink - the line between truth and fiction in Amsterdam is getting blurrier.
"It's true!" He says defiantly. "Ask anyone!"
I ask the attractive blond girl sitting opposite me, who also happens to play cricket for the Dutch women's team.
"It's true", she confirms. "When I finish school next year, my backpack will be hanging up too".
"See?", Robert says triumphantly, then returns the radio to his ear. "Oh! Oh! Collingwood on 97!"
The boat briefly cruises out into a wide harbour before plunging back into the narrow canals in another part of town. This time we're in the red light district, which is gearing up for a weekend of gaiety. Lining the walkways either side of the canal is an uneasy mix of seedy locals and American tourists with their shirts tucked into the belts. A feature of the red light district here is prostitutes in clear glass "display cases" that face onto the street. Not my cup of tea, but an amusing novelty worth taking photos of anyway.
"Don't", Richard says firmly, lowering my arm. "They don't like being photographed, Big Lad".
Evidently, countless tourists' cameras through the years have wound up at the bottom of canals as a result of photographing the ladies. Usually what happens is that the club that owns her sends out one of its heavies to repossess said camera and deposit it in the drink. It would be quite amusing to see an American tourist try this on and end up with a wet camera just for the craic, but alas, none of them are game as we cruise past.
It's well after dark when we finally park the boat up at a mooring next to a pub with a suitably large outdoor drinking area. The hot weather has followed me up from Utrecht, making it a perfect evening for some not-so-quiet beers by the canal. I pull up a chair with Robert, who has put his radio away now that the cricket is over and can focus solely on drinking his way into immortality. Also at the table is Richard and a couple of Kiwis, Patrick and Bruce (whose real name isn't Bruce but the nickname seems to irk him a bit, so everyone is using it).
Possibly spurred on by the large volume of beer consumed, I confide in Richard my fears for tomorrow's big game.
"Mate, you'll be fine", he says. "At the level we're playing there aren't going to be any fast bowlers".
So Shoaik Akhtar's angry cousin won't be there?
"Mate, we're playing a team of postal workers from Cardiff. They'll all be fat Welsh bastards. It'll be pretty village, mate".
"Are you sure?"
"Don't worry about it, mate", says Patrick reassuringly. "Go out and have fun. Don't go swinging at every ball, just concentrate, be sensible and you'll be fine".
Given the scale of this evening's festivities, I think concentration is going to prove an impossibility tomorrow morning. The rest of the night is remembered only in flashes and snippets of conversations: posing for photos with blond Dutch girls, chopping beers, reminiscing with Patrick about the halcyon days of Cornwall Rugby Club of which we were both members in different eras.
Next thing I know it's four in the morning and I'm lying face down, fully-clothed on top of the sofa bed in Richard's lounge. The light is on and my laptop is open, displaying a half-finished email to a special friend which is quickly deleted to save me considerable embarrassment in the morning. And a good night was had by all.
A Welshman, and Irishman and a New Zealander walk into a cricket clubroom in Amsterdam. The Kiwi turns to the Irishman and says, "where's the shitter?" The Irishman says, "down the corridor and on your right".
Not very funny, is it? Well, it's not a joke. It's just what's happening right now. Richard, myself an a Welsh ring-in named Mike are at Bloemendaal Cricket Club, a pleasant, tree-lined ground on the outskirts of Amsterdam boarded by quaint old Dutch houses. It's a warm, humid day and I won't say that the atmosphere is buzzing - in fact, I won't even say there's an atmosphere at all - but the setting is near ideal.
Straight away I can see that this isn't going to be the no-holds-barred tussle for national pride that I had envisaged. Our team is made up predominantly of part-timers and ex-players from around the world - a bit like the Harlem Globetrotters, except without the skill and flair. As well as the Welsh, Irish and Kiwi ring-ins, there are a couple of subcontinental players, but the remainder of the side is local.
Our opposition, the Cardiff Cavaliers, turn up hungover five minutes before the start of play and head straight for the clubroom bar. There are no Shoaib Akhtars in this lot; a few Jesse Ryders though. All of them are decked out in pink t-shirts, indicating that either they didn't know about Amsterdam's festive weekend and have just made a rather inappropriate choice of colour, or that they're a team of gay postal workers from Cardiff.
As confidently predicted last night, I'm not in any state to play cricket. My head is pounding and I'm sweating pure alcohol in the sapping early afternoon heat as we take the field. My mood was not improved in the changing rooms when our captain, for reasons best known to himself, gave me the new ball.
"Can you bowl?", he asked, hopefully.
"Yeah, a bit".
"What kind?"
"Medium".
"Ok. You can take the new ball".
Oh God. "Wahey!" shouted Richard, always happy to remind me how not-hungover he was.
"Look, I'm no Shane Bond, mate".
The Skipper didn't seem to know who Shane Bond is. "You will be fine. You are a young man compared to the rest of us. How old are you, 28?"
"I'm 23".
"Well, you will be fine".
The Cardiff Cavaliers send out their two most capable batsman to deal with the threat of my gentle outswinging medium pacers. While their teammates sit on the boundary line in deckchairs drinking beer and hurling abuse at them, the openers comfortably see off the less than ferocious challenge of myself and our other bowlers, setting the platform for a healthy total of 186 off their 35 overs.
"Alright, big lad", says Richard as we make our way off the field, "you'll want to bat high up the order eh, or you might not get a hit".
"Fuck that". I'm still shaking off the cobwebs of last night, and besides that, I'm knackered from chasing their openers' perfectly placed cover drives to the boundary, then being left out on the boundary and having to run in again every time they gently knocked a single in my direction. To say that I had my work cut out making up for my middle-aged teammates' lack of pace and agility in the field is an understatement.
Eventually it's decided I'll go in at number four, which should give me some time to put my feet up while the openers blunt the new ball and set up the chase. As it happens, I'm on my way to the crease by the ninth ball of the innings, both our openers having departed to lazy shots hit in the air straight to fielders.
"I'm pretty fuckin' dark, eh", I say to Richard, who went in at first drop.
"Look big lad, these bowlers are up to fuck all. Just be sensible, don't throw your wicket away. We'll win this".
"Alright, mate". In one ear, out the other. Each of my first two balls are met with furious swipes which emphatically fail to connect.
"Fuck. I'm never drinking again", I confide in the Welsh keeper between deliveries.
"Me either", he says with a wry grin on his face. He knows as well as I do we'll be both be sinking pints in the clubrooms not two hours from now. I think that's why he's grinning.
"Easy, big lad", Richard says to me at the end of the over. "It's keeping low so just go easy to start with. Just play straight, nothing stupid".
My form is scratchy at best. Patrick's bat which I have borrowed from the occasion is too heavy for my listless arms to wield and nothing is coming off the middle. Luckily, Richard is in murderous form at the other end. In total contrast to his batting partner, he's sending balls pinging every which way to (and over) the boundary. His trademark hoick over cow corner, hit cleanly and crisply every time, is an inspiration for every aspiring village cricketer from Bombay to Bloemendaal.
And so we stay together for almost an hour and a half, putting on 120 runs, of which I contribute a Mark Richardson-like 18. I depart with about 60 runs still needed and, despite a late-innings collapse of Black Caps proportions, our number eleven whacks the third-to-last ball of the match back over the bowler's head to seal a less-than-memorable one wicket win. Richard is man of the match with his rampant 89 off just 54 balls.
Back in the clubrooms nursing a well-earned pint, I reflect with some pride on my induction into the pantheon of Kiwi cricketing greats to have plied their trade in Holland: Shane Thompson, Mathew Sinclair, Darrin Murray, to name but three.
Then there is the sheer farcical nature of today's events to consider. Here I am, having just played cricket with a Welshman, an Irishman and a few Dutch fellas, against a Welsh team, in Amsterdam. It really does sound like the makings of a really bad joke.
"Small world eh?" says the Welsh keeper. "So where's the drinking at tonight?"
"Dunno mate. You guys look like the ones dressed for a party".
"True", he says, looking down at his fluro-pink t-shirt with the rueful grin again.
The cricket has taken up most of the afternoon and evening, so it's after 9 by the time we hit the bars in downtown Amsterdam.
On the balance of today's game, I'd safely conclude that the Dutch aren't in line to challenge the Aussies for world domination any time soon, but they do have better bars and less laws. It's a warm, balmy evening and we spend it wandering through the endless maze-like alleyways of the city, in and out of cosy bars and tourist traps and Irish pubs, experiencing chance meetings with Kiwis from Te Puke, stragglers from the gay parade, and an Aussie barman who used to live around the corner from me in Sydney for six years and we never met. By the time I fall into the taxi at 4am I'm barely well enough to read the address Richard has written down for me on a piece of paper, let alone pronounce it to the bemused cab driver. I'm pretty sure he overcharges me, but I'm in no position to do anything about it.
I wake up on my final day in Holland to find myself miraculously spared of a hangover. There are some unexplained cuts and bruises; always the hallmark of a good night out. Richard is off playing cricket all day, so I wander alone into town and retrace last night's chaotic steps. My aimless walking takes me through all manner of neighbourhoods, across and along canals, through alleyways and parks, past the occasional gaggle of American tourists and a thousand coffee shops.
Walking alone is always a good way to gather one's thoughts, and it allows me to reflect on my week in Holland. On the whole, I can be pretty happy with my time here. When travelling alone it can be easy to get sucked into living like a tourist, visiting only museums, eating at McDonalds, drinking in Irish pubs and never straying off the beaten track. For the average visitor to Holland, the closest they'll come to immersing themselves in Dutch culture is when they spill a pint of Heineken down the front of their shirt.
Well, not me. I've wandered the streets and watched the locals going about their daily lives. I've gazed up in awe at windmills and mingled with the locals on a crowded beach. I've eaten stropwafels and fricandel speciaals and potat met mayo and uitsmijters, giving my digestive tract the kind of stern examination normally reserved for when Shane Bond is steaming in from the Pavillion End. I've played cricket in Bloemendaal with a bunch of ex-pats and Dutch postal workers. I've cruised the canals with beers and some good bastards. I've talked smack with locals in bars and almost got run over by bicyclists a thousand times a day.
And I've spilled a pint of Heineken down the front of my shirt.
This isn't what I'd hoped for at all when Irish Richard told me I was playing cricket in Amsterdam. But it's happening now, and I'll just have to grin and bear it - while I still can grin, that is. Standing off in the distance with a shiny new rock in his hand and preparing to run in at me again is Shoaib Akhtar's younger, leaner, meaner cousin. He's angry, and he will continue to be until he's sent my head flying off its shoulders. He's already got me praying to some unseen higher power and I've only faced two balls. The first zeroed in on my off stump before swinging, viciously and late, past my hapless forward defensive prod. The second was a mere blur accompanied by a whirring sound as it fizzed past my nose on the way through to the keeper.
"I am gonna fuck you up, boy", he's saying, and now he's running in again. Oh god. This one is short of a length but I prop forward instinctively, too hungover to read it early. It rears up nastily and suddenly it's headed straight for the hard spot directly between my eyes. I'd love to sway out of the way but suddenly my whole body has gone to jelly. I have no control over it as the red missile traces its inexorable course towards its target...
"How are you feeling, lazy man?", says Willem as he assembles the bread and cold meats for our breakfast. I'm still in Utrecht, and alive. Shoaib's cousin, if he exists, is still waiting for me in Amsterdam ready for our showdown tomorrow. That Dutch Dynamite last night was obviously so potent that it gave me nightmares. I highly recommend it if you're ever in Utrecht.
Irish Richard arrives at lunchtime to pick me up on his way through to Amsterdam. It's time to say goodbye to my gracious hosts Willem and Heleen, who have declined my offer to join me in the capital for the weekend. "No thanks, but have fun with the gay boys".
Richard has organised for us to go on a late afternoon/early evening boat ride through the canals of Amsterdam, which I'm told is the best way of exploring the city. Before we embark we head to Reilly's bar for a warm-up pint, where we meet Robert and a couple of his mates. A cricket teammate and associate of Richard's, Robert greets us with a cheerful hello and wonders aloud if we'd like some beers. It's a Friday but his glazed over expression, and the fact that he's wearing sunglasses in the murky light of an Irish pub, suggest that his weekend began many hours ago.
"Oh man, it's been a long hard week", he says. "I got up this morning and you know, I was so tired that I didn't know if I'd be able to play golf today".
"How did you go?", Richard asks.
"I won!", he says, sounding as surprised about it as we are.
The television in the bar, which had previously been showing the England v South Africa cricket test, has now been switched over to pre-match build up of some pointless friendly football match between Spurs and Celtic. Richard is disgusted. Quick as a flash, Robert pulls a radio out of his pocket and switches it on to the correct frequency.
There seems to be a surprising amount of enthusiasm for cricket in Amsterdam. Richard told me on the way over that his club has six teams, made up mainly of Dutch players. Is this something we need to be worried about as Black Caps fans? Is our position as 7th best test playing nation in the world under threat from the sleeping giant that is the Netherlands?
"Don't worry, Pietersen and Collingwood are still in", Robert says, holding the radio up to his ear. "Well boys, shall we go for a boat ride?"
From the pub, we wander through a maze of streets and canals in the general direction of the boat. Robert trails off some distance behind, endeavouring to walk straight whilst holding the radio to his ear. I'm also joined by a couple of South Africans, also keen cricketers, who ask if I'm looking forward to the gay parade tomorrow.
"Actually, I'm playing cricket with Richard all day so I'll miss it. Gutted I know".
"Oh well, you'll enjoy the cricket", says John, the club pro for Richard's team". "They don't take it too seriously over here". In light of this, I decide not to tell him about my nightmarish visions of Shoaib Akhtar's cousin.
Suddenly, a desparing yelp of "OH NO!" comes from somewhere behind us. I turn around, expecting to see Robert flapping about in the canal but instead he's just standing, holding the radio to his ear.
"Pietersen out! Out for 91!"
Robert is an Australian-born Dutchman. Why does he care?
"And now Flintoff out! Flintoff out in the same over!.... To Harris? Harris! Oh no!".
Robert's brother is already loading beers and snacks onto the boat as we arrive. It's an open-topped motorised dinghy of about 20 feet, small enough to manoevre through most of the waterways and low enough to get under every bridge. A good crowd of about 25 people, mainly cricketers plus some various hangers-on, pile into the boat and we're away.
A canal boat cruise certainly is the best way to see the city, especially with a Heineken in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other. Every canal is lined with trees and a row of ancient four-storey houses. Many have their construction dates visible on the front, and most that I can see date back to the late 16th century. Unlike many Dutch cities, Amsterdam was not bombed heavily during World War II, and consequently the city centre has looked much the same for hundreds of years.
Robert sees me gazing up at the buildings and taps me over the shoulder. "See those hooks?", he says, pointing up at the large metal hooks attached to ropes that jut out from the top floor of each building. "Those are for moving furniture in when you move into the house. And see how that hook has a backpack hanging on it?". He points to a house further down the canal, which we're passing now.
"Yep, what's that for?"
"That means someone in that house has just graduated from school!"
I'd like to believe him, but he's just finished telling us about how he sold his keyboard to some guy on eBay who, before coming to collect it, emailed his girlfriend asking how old she was. When the man received the answer that she was in her thirties, he didn't bother coming round. "Can you believe that?", he said. "My girlfriend made me miss cricket practice so I could stay home alone and let some fucking pedophile into my house!"
"I don't know, Robert", I say, sceptical of his backpack theory. With every beer he drinks - and I drink - the line between truth and fiction in Amsterdam is getting blurrier.
"It's true!" He says defiantly. "Ask anyone!"
I ask the attractive blond girl sitting opposite me, who also happens to play cricket for the Dutch women's team.
"It's true", she confirms. "When I finish school next year, my backpack will be hanging up too".
"See?", Robert says triumphantly, then returns the radio to his ear. "Oh! Oh! Collingwood on 97!"
The boat briefly cruises out into a wide harbour before plunging back into the narrow canals in another part of town. This time we're in the red light district, which is gearing up for a weekend of gaiety. Lining the walkways either side of the canal is an uneasy mix of seedy locals and American tourists with their shirts tucked into the belts. A feature of the red light district here is prostitutes in clear glass "display cases" that face onto the street. Not my cup of tea, but an amusing novelty worth taking photos of anyway.
"Don't", Richard says firmly, lowering my arm. "They don't like being photographed, Big Lad".
Evidently, countless tourists' cameras through the years have wound up at the bottom of canals as a result of photographing the ladies. Usually what happens is that the club that owns her sends out one of its heavies to repossess said camera and deposit it in the drink. It would be quite amusing to see an American tourist try this on and end up with a wet camera just for the craic, but alas, none of them are game as we cruise past.
It's well after dark when we finally park the boat up at a mooring next to a pub with a suitably large outdoor drinking area. The hot weather has followed me up from Utrecht, making it a perfect evening for some not-so-quiet beers by the canal. I pull up a chair with Robert, who has put his radio away now that the cricket is over and can focus solely on drinking his way into immortality. Also at the table is Richard and a couple of Kiwis, Patrick and Bruce (whose real name isn't Bruce but the nickname seems to irk him a bit, so everyone is using it).
Possibly spurred on by the large volume of beer consumed, I confide in Richard my fears for tomorrow's big game.
"Mate, you'll be fine", he says. "At the level we're playing there aren't going to be any fast bowlers".
So Shoaik Akhtar's angry cousin won't be there?
"Mate, we're playing a team of postal workers from Cardiff. They'll all be fat Welsh bastards. It'll be pretty village, mate".
"Are you sure?"
"Don't worry about it, mate", says Patrick reassuringly. "Go out and have fun. Don't go swinging at every ball, just concentrate, be sensible and you'll be fine".
Given the scale of this evening's festivities, I think concentration is going to prove an impossibility tomorrow morning. The rest of the night is remembered only in flashes and snippets of conversations: posing for photos with blond Dutch girls, chopping beers, reminiscing with Patrick about the halcyon days of Cornwall Rugby Club of which we were both members in different eras.
Next thing I know it's four in the morning and I'm lying face down, fully-clothed on top of the sofa bed in Richard's lounge. The light is on and my laptop is open, displaying a half-finished email to a special friend which is quickly deleted to save me considerable embarrassment in the morning. And a good night was had by all.
A Welshman, and Irishman and a New Zealander walk into a cricket clubroom in Amsterdam. The Kiwi turns to the Irishman and says, "where's the shitter?" The Irishman says, "down the corridor and on your right".
Not very funny, is it? Well, it's not a joke. It's just what's happening right now. Richard, myself an a Welsh ring-in named Mike are at Bloemendaal Cricket Club, a pleasant, tree-lined ground on the outskirts of Amsterdam boarded by quaint old Dutch houses. It's a warm, humid day and I won't say that the atmosphere is buzzing - in fact, I won't even say there's an atmosphere at all - but the setting is near ideal.
Straight away I can see that this isn't going to be the no-holds-barred tussle for national pride that I had envisaged. Our team is made up predominantly of part-timers and ex-players from around the world - a bit like the Harlem Globetrotters, except without the skill and flair. As well as the Welsh, Irish and Kiwi ring-ins, there are a couple of subcontinental players, but the remainder of the side is local.
Our opposition, the Cardiff Cavaliers, turn up hungover five minutes before the start of play and head straight for the clubroom bar. There are no Shoaib Akhtars in this lot; a few Jesse Ryders though. All of them are decked out in pink t-shirts, indicating that either they didn't know about Amsterdam's festive weekend and have just made a rather inappropriate choice of colour, or that they're a team of gay postal workers from Cardiff.
As confidently predicted last night, I'm not in any state to play cricket. My head is pounding and I'm sweating pure alcohol in the sapping early afternoon heat as we take the field. My mood was not improved in the changing rooms when our captain, for reasons best known to himself, gave me the new ball.
"Can you bowl?", he asked, hopefully.
"Yeah, a bit".
"What kind?"
"Medium".
"Ok. You can take the new ball".
Oh God. "Wahey!" shouted Richard, always happy to remind me how not-hungover he was.
"Look, I'm no Shane Bond, mate".
The Skipper didn't seem to know who Shane Bond is. "You will be fine. You are a young man compared to the rest of us. How old are you, 28?"
"I'm 23".
"Well, you will be fine".
The Cardiff Cavaliers send out their two most capable batsman to deal with the threat of my gentle outswinging medium pacers. While their teammates sit on the boundary line in deckchairs drinking beer and hurling abuse at them, the openers comfortably see off the less than ferocious challenge of myself and our other bowlers, setting the platform for a healthy total of 186 off their 35 overs.
"Alright, big lad", says Richard as we make our way off the field, "you'll want to bat high up the order eh, or you might not get a hit".
"Fuck that". I'm still shaking off the cobwebs of last night, and besides that, I'm knackered from chasing their openers' perfectly placed cover drives to the boundary, then being left out on the boundary and having to run in again every time they gently knocked a single in my direction. To say that I had my work cut out making up for my middle-aged teammates' lack of pace and agility in the field is an understatement.
Eventually it's decided I'll go in at number four, which should give me some time to put my feet up while the openers blunt the new ball and set up the chase. As it happens, I'm on my way to the crease by the ninth ball of the innings, both our openers having departed to lazy shots hit in the air straight to fielders.
"I'm pretty fuckin' dark, eh", I say to Richard, who went in at first drop.
"Look big lad, these bowlers are up to fuck all. Just be sensible, don't throw your wicket away. We'll win this".
"Alright, mate". In one ear, out the other. Each of my first two balls are met with furious swipes which emphatically fail to connect.
"Fuck. I'm never drinking again", I confide in the Welsh keeper between deliveries.
"Me either", he says with a wry grin on his face. He knows as well as I do we'll be both be sinking pints in the clubrooms not two hours from now. I think that's why he's grinning.
"Easy, big lad", Richard says to me at the end of the over. "It's keeping low so just go easy to start with. Just play straight, nothing stupid".
My form is scratchy at best. Patrick's bat which I have borrowed from the occasion is too heavy for my listless arms to wield and nothing is coming off the middle. Luckily, Richard is in murderous form at the other end. In total contrast to his batting partner, he's sending balls pinging every which way to (and over) the boundary. His trademark hoick over cow corner, hit cleanly and crisply every time, is an inspiration for every aspiring village cricketer from Bombay to Bloemendaal.
And so we stay together for almost an hour and a half, putting on 120 runs, of which I contribute a Mark Richardson-like 18. I depart with about 60 runs still needed and, despite a late-innings collapse of Black Caps proportions, our number eleven whacks the third-to-last ball of the match back over the bowler's head to seal a less-than-memorable one wicket win. Richard is man of the match with his rampant 89 off just 54 balls.
Back in the clubrooms nursing a well-earned pint, I reflect with some pride on my induction into the pantheon of Kiwi cricketing greats to have plied their trade in Holland: Shane Thompson, Mathew Sinclair, Darrin Murray, to name but three.
Then there is the sheer farcical nature of today's events to consider. Here I am, having just played cricket with a Welshman, an Irishman and a few Dutch fellas, against a Welsh team, in Amsterdam. It really does sound like the makings of a really bad joke.
"Small world eh?" says the Welsh keeper. "So where's the drinking at tonight?"
"Dunno mate. You guys look like the ones dressed for a party".
"True", he says, looking down at his fluro-pink t-shirt with the rueful grin again.
The cricket has taken up most of the afternoon and evening, so it's after 9 by the time we hit the bars in downtown Amsterdam.
On the balance of today's game, I'd safely conclude that the Dutch aren't in line to challenge the Aussies for world domination any time soon, but they do have better bars and less laws. It's a warm, balmy evening and we spend it wandering through the endless maze-like alleyways of the city, in and out of cosy bars and tourist traps and Irish pubs, experiencing chance meetings with Kiwis from Te Puke, stragglers from the gay parade, and an Aussie barman who used to live around the corner from me in Sydney for six years and we never met. By the time I fall into the taxi at 4am I'm barely well enough to read the address Richard has written down for me on a piece of paper, let alone pronounce it to the bemused cab driver. I'm pretty sure he overcharges me, but I'm in no position to do anything about it.
I wake up on my final day in Holland to find myself miraculously spared of a hangover. There are some unexplained cuts and bruises; always the hallmark of a good night out. Richard is off playing cricket all day, so I wander alone into town and retrace last night's chaotic steps. My aimless walking takes me through all manner of neighbourhoods, across and along canals, through alleyways and parks, past the occasional gaggle of American tourists and a thousand coffee shops.
Walking alone is always a good way to gather one's thoughts, and it allows me to reflect on my week in Holland. On the whole, I can be pretty happy with my time here. When travelling alone it can be easy to get sucked into living like a tourist, visiting only museums, eating at McDonalds, drinking in Irish pubs and never straying off the beaten track. For the average visitor to Holland, the closest they'll come to immersing themselves in Dutch culture is when they spill a pint of Heineken down the front of their shirt.
Well, not me. I've wandered the streets and watched the locals going about their daily lives. I've gazed up in awe at windmills and mingled with the locals on a crowded beach. I've eaten stropwafels and fricandel speciaals and potat met mayo and uitsmijters, giving my digestive tract the kind of stern examination normally reserved for when Shane Bond is steaming in from the Pavillion End. I've played cricket in Bloemendaal with a bunch of ex-pats and Dutch postal workers. I've cruised the canals with beers and some good bastards. I've talked smack with locals in bars and almost got run over by bicyclists a thousand times a day.
And I've spilled a pint of Heineken down the front of my shirt.
Utrecht
Have you ever woken up in an unfamiliar place with no recollection whatsoever of how you got there?
I have a few times. Usually it's a result of falling asleep somewhere after a long day. My couch, a mate's floor, the local park. I've really done it this time though. This time I've gone and woken up in Holland.
"Good morning, Max", says Willem as he comes in. That's good, at least my name hasn't changed. He brings me in a cup of tea, which I accept gratefully, and slowly but surely the details of my journey begin to come back to me.
It took me over seven hours to cover the 230 mile distance between London and Amsterdam. The first two and a half hours required travelling in the opposite direction, via train and bus, to a paddock in the middle of nowhere commonly known as Luton Airport. 45 minutes spent standing in a check-in queue that looked like the beer line at the Captain Cook on a Saturday night - but a bit less orderly - did little to improve my mood. Nor did the ever-increasingly possibility of missing my flight, which quickly dissipated when I finally reached the departure lounge to discover it had been delayed an hour.
Once safely removed from British territory and the complete lack of organisation, communication and efficiency that goes with it, the rest of the journey was a doddle. Willem and Heleen were waiting for me at the train station and after a brief walk and a beer, I was safely ensconced in their Central Utrecht apartment.
Heleen has already gone to work by the time I'm up and about, but Willem (who is "in between jobs") is happy to walk me around the town. From what I understand, Utrecht is kind of an Amsterdam-with-training-wheels: it has the look and feel of its bigger brother 30 miles to north, without the nightlife, the smut and the tourists. "We like living here a lot", says Willem. "Much cheaper and friendlier, and we don't get all the bloody tourists".
Like almost all of his countrymen, Willem is tall and slender. The average height for a Dutch male is 6"1, almost 10 centimetres taller than your average Antipodean male. My theory for why this is so - which has been widely refuted by everyone I talk to, nevertheless I know it is true - is that when it floods, the short ones can't keep their noses above water and subsequently perish. It is survival of the fittest in its purest form.
Holland is remarkably flat and susceptible to heavy flooding: not surprising given that 30% of the country lies below sea level. Thinking about it now reminds me of an amusing encounter I had with a Dutch couple one summer on top of Queenstown Hill.
"Howdy", I said cheerfully, after dragging my arse to the top and taking a couple of hours to regain my breath.
"Hello", the man politely replied.
"Not a bad a view up here, eh?"
"It is beautiful. We certainly don't have anything like this back home".
"So where are you from then?"
"Holland".
"Wow!", I said enthusiastically. "You've probably never been this high before".
The silence that followed told a thousand words.
Let's face it, rightly or wrongly, marijuana is an intrinsic part of Dutch culture. Every time in the past two weeks that I've told someone I was going to Holland, the news has inevitably been greeted with a snigger and a "Holland eh? Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more". That's not what I'm here for, though. I'm here to play cricket.
When I emailed my friend Irish Richard a few months ago asking if I could stay with him in Amsterdam, he replied almost immediately in the affirmative and with the news that he'd lined up a game for Bloemendaal Cricket Club for himself and I. I didn't think much of it at the time. All I knew about Dutch cricket was that the Dutch don't play cricket. Who would I be playing against then?
Then it hit me: oh God, I'll be playing against a team of Pakistani and Indian immigrants, all fearsome, highly competitive and quite mad. They'd see a meek, hungover Kiwi huddling over the crease, smell blood and before I could do anything my jaw would be in ten pieces. And lord only knows how good their batsmen might be. My bowling - which barely set the world alight in my schoolboy days - would be mercilessly pasted to all parts. Well, the game isn't for another few days so I might as well enjoy Utrecht while I'm here, but quite frankly, I'm terrified.
It also happens to be gay pride week in Amsterdam this weekend, which entails a parade through the streets in the afternoon followed by a canal boat parade later in the evening. But I had no idea it was on this weekend, I swear. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they're a liar.
In the afternoon I wander by myself through the streets of Utrecht. Firstly through the town centre and its narrow, winding, cavernous streets that occasionally offer a pleasant view of Dom Tower, which rises a hundred metres about the town. Then I find myself in residential areas, wandering down canals past fishermen drinking beers in the sun, middle aged men smoking joints, young men playing football in parks. Life seems happy and healthy and everyone I pass has a smile on their face. How attributable this is to the weed they're smoking, I can't be sure.
Heleen finishes work in the early evening and we sit outside in the central plaza drinking some local beers. Surrounded by graceful old buildings and bathing in the happy chatter of hundreds of afternoon drinkers, the plaza is an ideal location to observe take in the sights and sounds of Utrecht.
Being not at all proficient in Dutch I stumble through the menu without much idea of which is which, so end up relying on Willem to recommend the beers.
"That beer sounds good", I say, pointing at an item on the menu.
"That's a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. We'll get you a Dommelsch".
The local beer is fresh, crisp and served in big tall proper pint glasses, not the poky little handles you get back home. It's a warm sunny evening and the opportunity to get a skinful then stumble home with a wad of mayo-slathered Dutch style French fries looks too good to turn down. I'm careful not to get too carried away though, because I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow. Tomorrow, Willem is taking me to see a windmill.
While I was in New York, I read an article in the Times about Holland's disappearing windmills. While a new generation of futuristic, soulless electricity-generating mills have gone up, the old school thatched roof variety are becoming an endangered species. Schemes have now been established to ensure the survival of the 250-odd remaining mechanical mills, so that future generations of windmill-admiring tourists will be able to gaze up at these graceful dinosaurs of the Dutch landscape for years to come.
It's mid-morning and Willem and I are standing at the base of "De Ster" - the Star windmill. Built in 1721, the mill was used to cut logs into strips, which then slid down a ramp and onto barges to be taken up the river to construction sites.
"I didn't even know this was here", Willem says. "Thanks for bringing me, Max". Isn't that always the way? We get so blasé about the architectural relics we live around that we never give them the time they deserve. It makes me feel guilty that I never spent much time admiring the Peace Pole outside the Otago Museum.
Once upon a time, De Ster would've been visible from anywhere in Utrecht, the second highest structure after Dom Tower. Nowaways it is hemmed in by the canal on one side and depressing 1960s-era prefabricated housing blocks on the other three sides. Still it stands, proud and unyielding - despite the fact that it isn't turning on this occasion and probably never does - a tribute to a distant past when they were the lifeblood of Holland's industry.
And I fear there's only so much one can say about windmills, so we move on.
Holland is currently in the grip of a heat wave that has seemed to follow me throughout my Insipid Journeys thus far. The thermometer is pushing 30 degrees and the humidity is smothering. Willem and Heleen have promised me a trip to the beach, with the caveat that it is "nothing like the beaches you get at home".
"It'll be fine. As long as it's got sand and good waves, I'll be happy", I said.
"You won't be happy then".
After lunch we hop into a murderously hot train packed to the doors with other Utrechtians who have had the same idea as us. The countryside is flat and featureless. Occasionally, a skate ramp or a pile of rubble will tower over the surrounding landscape, but other than that, there is nothing but flatness. At every station, we are joined by another legion of overheated beachgoers. By the time we reach Zandvoort, a resort town on the North Sea, the train ride resembles a pilgrimmage on which millions of Dutch folk have felt obliged to go today. "Are you ready?", asks Willem, with a wry grin on his face that suggests I'm in for a rude shock. "Let's do it".
It is a beach the likes of which I have never seen in my life. Barely a square foot of sand is visible beneath the swathe of tents and beachgoers packed onto the sand like sardines. The mass of people stretches endlessly to the south and many miles to north, where, far in the distance, factories can be seen belching out smoke.
The sea is as calm as a pond. What's more, most of the bathers are content to go in only as far as their waists and no one is putting their head under the water.
"You'll see why", says Willem, still grinning.
Aside from being freezing cold, the water has taken on a murky, brownish tinge and has unidentifiable bits floating in it. I can't see my hands six inches in front of my face through the muck. "What is all this shit?", I ask. This time Willem doesn't even answer. It's quite possible I have just answered my own question.
Back at the bar, enjoying an afternoon pint, I reflect on how lucky we are to have the beaches we do back home. I think back to all those magical summer holidays I had, during that brief but euphoric two-week stint every January when the weather was conducive to beach going. Big, wide, pristine beaches with not another person on them.
At least at Dutch beaches you can get a beer, which is more than you can say for ours. Perhaps that's it: perhaps Kiwi beaches are so empty because you can't get booze at them, so everyone just stays home and drinks instead. One day I'll go back to New Zealand to discover they've relaxed the liquor laws and lined every beach with bars, and then no doubt half of our population will be on them as well.
The train ride back to Utrecht is hotter than anything I've ever experienced. If it's 30 degrees outside the train, it's a least 45 degrees inside. We sit still as possible but regardless, we are sopping wet within minutes. Heleen takes turns to fan first Willem's face then mine, but it makes no difference. For a brief while the air conditioning comes on, but it is quickly overwhelmed by the heat of the train and its passengers. Five minutes after leaving the grotty beach, I feel like I need to go back again and cool off.
Instead we park up at another bar in the plaza, in the shadow of Dom Tower, with a few of Willem and Heleen's friends. It's been a long day and the beers begin to flow steadily as the sun goes down. I flip through the drinks list and, through the sea of indecipherable Dutch words, one drink stands out: Dutch Dynamite. What on earth could it be? The Dutch answer to Ranfurly Draught? Or something more sinister, like budget liqueur or even absinthe? I ask Willem, but he's never heard of it either. The intrigue grows.
I'm reclining in my chair with my pint, looking up at the tower and asking myself important questions such as, "do ants on an ant trail in Europe pass each other on their right hand side?", when the guy next to me taps me on the shoulder. "So, are you going to Amsterdam for the gay parade?", he asks with a grin.
"Nah, I didn't even know it was on this weekend, honest".
"Sure you didn't!", says Heleen.
"I fucking didn't!". Everyone laughs. "I'm going up there for a game of cricket, actually".
"Cricket? Says the man, who has been introduced as Tim, blankly.
"Yeah".
I spend the next half an hour or so struggling to describe the gentlemen's game to three men who have never seen it being played, much less played it themselves. Willem was lucky enough to go to a game with us when he was in New Zealand last year, so he knows some of the rules, but the rest of the table are listening intently and regarding me with a mixture of wonderment and deep suspicion, as if I'm trying to sell them the world's dodgiest get rich quick scheme.
"So then the batter hits it, and if it goes away from a fielder, he will run to the other end and the guy at the other end will run to his end, so they cross, and they get one run. But if the fielder picks it up and knocks the stumps over-"
"Stumps? What are stumps?"
"The wickets... the sticks. So if he knocks the sticks off before the batter gets in his crease then he's out, so he goes back in the dressing room and another guy comes out and he's in".
More blank looks.
"Basically it's like baseball, but ten times longer and more boring".
"And you're going to play this in Amsterdam?", someone asks.
"Yes".
"Why?".
Long pause.
"I don't know".
After a while, my curiosity gets the better of me and I decide a round of Dutch dynamite is in order. "Oh, it's awful", says another man at the table, who is a barman here when he's not drinking. "You better get a chaser as well".
All the boys say cheers and down the vile-looking black contents of our shot glasses. It tastes like mouldy liquorice, if that's even possible. The aftertaste is sickly and bitter.
"Now drink the glass of beer!", demands Heleen. So I do. No one else does, though. They just sit and watch as this crazy man from New Zealand downs his pint in 15 seconds flat. Then they applaud and cheer wildly.
It's as if no one has ever chopped a beer in Holland. I explain to them that chopping beer is a cornerstone of our social history in New Zealand, but they won't listen, they're just amazed. Someone orders me another pint and it's quickly delivered to my table. I can see how this could go downhill fast.
"What were you and your family doing in America?", Tim asks. "We don't like those guys".
Not for the first time since arriving in Europe, I explain that Americans are good people and it is a wonderful country to visit. The global animosity towards America, I contest, is a result of the utterly abhorrent Bush Administration and a global media that loves to pour shit on the Yanks because they don't like their leader.
"The 'all Americans are gun-toting rednecks' line is just a media beat-up", I insist.
"But they voted for Bush. Twice!", he continues.
I try to point out that less than a quarter of the voting population actually did vote for him in the first instance, but my words are starting to desert me as the beers sink in.
"Before coming over here I was worried about how dangerous this place was, what with all the ethnic violence", I say to Tim. "But I haven't noticed any agro at all. Everyone seems pretty chill, eh".
"It's crap. Everyone here lives happily next to each other. Dutch, Turkish, Indonesian, they all get along. There's no violence".
"So it's just a media beat-up then?"
"Exactly".
Which just goes to show what a misleading bunch the media can be. Here was Tim thinking that Americans were a bunch of assholes, and me thinking I was going to be gunned down in the streets for walking around in the wrong neighbourhood. Looks like we're both wrong.
We move inside the bar and remain there until 3am or so, discussing football and the media and how no one else in our party had ever been to see the Utrecht windmill either, which makes me feel pretty special. Eventually I sense the time has come to walk on out while I still can, so I exit the bar and find myself standing in the pouring rain.
Hang on. Wasn't it blazing hot and sunny not six hours ago? It's still warm, but now the rain is pelting down in huge droplets. Thunder is crashing and lightning is frequently illuminating the now-empty plaza. Willem and Heleen have long since gone home, leaving me to find their place under my own steam. I walk around the corner, check to see if there's any Turks lying in wait to gun me down for the three Euro I have in my pocket, then sprint all the way home.
Back at Willem and Heleen's place,, I manage to struggle out of my sopping wet clothes, pour myself a glass of water and struggle into my night shirt. Everything is a struggle at this point. Pushing thoughts of my impending fast-ball induced death on the cricket pitch to the back of my mind, I lie in bed and listen to the relentless thunder and rain hammering down on my roof.
Come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw a single ant the whole time I lived in Dunedin. Isn't that amazing?
I have a few times. Usually it's a result of falling asleep somewhere after a long day. My couch, a mate's floor, the local park. I've really done it this time though. This time I've gone and woken up in Holland.
"Good morning, Max", says Willem as he comes in. That's good, at least my name hasn't changed. He brings me in a cup of tea, which I accept gratefully, and slowly but surely the details of my journey begin to come back to me.
It took me over seven hours to cover the 230 mile distance between London and Amsterdam. The first two and a half hours required travelling in the opposite direction, via train and bus, to a paddock in the middle of nowhere commonly known as Luton Airport. 45 minutes spent standing in a check-in queue that looked like the beer line at the Captain Cook on a Saturday night - but a bit less orderly - did little to improve my mood. Nor did the ever-increasingly possibility of missing my flight, which quickly dissipated when I finally reached the departure lounge to discover it had been delayed an hour.
Once safely removed from British territory and the complete lack of organisation, communication and efficiency that goes with it, the rest of the journey was a doddle. Willem and Heleen were waiting for me at the train station and after a brief walk and a beer, I was safely ensconced in their Central Utrecht apartment.
Heleen has already gone to work by the time I'm up and about, but Willem (who is "in between jobs") is happy to walk me around the town. From what I understand, Utrecht is kind of an Amsterdam-with-training-wheels: it has the look and feel of its bigger brother 30 miles to north, without the nightlife, the smut and the tourists. "We like living here a lot", says Willem. "Much cheaper and friendlier, and we don't get all the bloody tourists".
Like almost all of his countrymen, Willem is tall and slender. The average height for a Dutch male is 6"1, almost 10 centimetres taller than your average Antipodean male. My theory for why this is so - which has been widely refuted by everyone I talk to, nevertheless I know it is true - is that when it floods, the short ones can't keep their noses above water and subsequently perish. It is survival of the fittest in its purest form.
Holland is remarkably flat and susceptible to heavy flooding: not surprising given that 30% of the country lies below sea level. Thinking about it now reminds me of an amusing encounter I had with a Dutch couple one summer on top of Queenstown Hill.
"Howdy", I said cheerfully, after dragging my arse to the top and taking a couple of hours to regain my breath.
"Hello", the man politely replied.
"Not a bad a view up here, eh?"
"It is beautiful. We certainly don't have anything like this back home".
"So where are you from then?"
"Holland".
"Wow!", I said enthusiastically. "You've probably never been this high before".
The silence that followed told a thousand words.
Let's face it, rightly or wrongly, marijuana is an intrinsic part of Dutch culture. Every time in the past two weeks that I've told someone I was going to Holland, the news has inevitably been greeted with a snigger and a "Holland eh? Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more". That's not what I'm here for, though. I'm here to play cricket.
When I emailed my friend Irish Richard a few months ago asking if I could stay with him in Amsterdam, he replied almost immediately in the affirmative and with the news that he'd lined up a game for Bloemendaal Cricket Club for himself and I. I didn't think much of it at the time. All I knew about Dutch cricket was that the Dutch don't play cricket. Who would I be playing against then?
Then it hit me: oh God, I'll be playing against a team of Pakistani and Indian immigrants, all fearsome, highly competitive and quite mad. They'd see a meek, hungover Kiwi huddling over the crease, smell blood and before I could do anything my jaw would be in ten pieces. And lord only knows how good their batsmen might be. My bowling - which barely set the world alight in my schoolboy days - would be mercilessly pasted to all parts. Well, the game isn't for another few days so I might as well enjoy Utrecht while I'm here, but quite frankly, I'm terrified.
It also happens to be gay pride week in Amsterdam this weekend, which entails a parade through the streets in the afternoon followed by a canal boat parade later in the evening. But I had no idea it was on this weekend, I swear. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they're a liar.
In the afternoon I wander by myself through the streets of Utrecht. Firstly through the town centre and its narrow, winding, cavernous streets that occasionally offer a pleasant view of Dom Tower, which rises a hundred metres about the town. Then I find myself in residential areas, wandering down canals past fishermen drinking beers in the sun, middle aged men smoking joints, young men playing football in parks. Life seems happy and healthy and everyone I pass has a smile on their face. How attributable this is to the weed they're smoking, I can't be sure.
Heleen finishes work in the early evening and we sit outside in the central plaza drinking some local beers. Surrounded by graceful old buildings and bathing in the happy chatter of hundreds of afternoon drinkers, the plaza is an ideal location to observe take in the sights and sounds of Utrecht.
Being not at all proficient in Dutch I stumble through the menu without much idea of which is which, so end up relying on Willem to recommend the beers.
"That beer sounds good", I say, pointing at an item on the menu.
"That's a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. We'll get you a Dommelsch".
The local beer is fresh, crisp and served in big tall proper pint glasses, not the poky little handles you get back home. It's a warm sunny evening and the opportunity to get a skinful then stumble home with a wad of mayo-slathered Dutch style French fries looks too good to turn down. I'm careful not to get too carried away though, because I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow. Tomorrow, Willem is taking me to see a windmill.
While I was in New York, I read an article in the Times about Holland's disappearing windmills. While a new generation of futuristic, soulless electricity-generating mills have gone up, the old school thatched roof variety are becoming an endangered species. Schemes have now been established to ensure the survival of the 250-odd remaining mechanical mills, so that future generations of windmill-admiring tourists will be able to gaze up at these graceful dinosaurs of the Dutch landscape for years to come.
It's mid-morning and Willem and I are standing at the base of "De Ster" - the Star windmill. Built in 1721, the mill was used to cut logs into strips, which then slid down a ramp and onto barges to be taken up the river to construction sites.
"I didn't even know this was here", Willem says. "Thanks for bringing me, Max". Isn't that always the way? We get so blasé about the architectural relics we live around that we never give them the time they deserve. It makes me feel guilty that I never spent much time admiring the Peace Pole outside the Otago Museum.
Once upon a time, De Ster would've been visible from anywhere in Utrecht, the second highest structure after Dom Tower. Nowaways it is hemmed in by the canal on one side and depressing 1960s-era prefabricated housing blocks on the other three sides. Still it stands, proud and unyielding - despite the fact that it isn't turning on this occasion and probably never does - a tribute to a distant past when they were the lifeblood of Holland's industry.
And I fear there's only so much one can say about windmills, so we move on.
Holland is currently in the grip of a heat wave that has seemed to follow me throughout my Insipid Journeys thus far. The thermometer is pushing 30 degrees and the humidity is smothering. Willem and Heleen have promised me a trip to the beach, with the caveat that it is "nothing like the beaches you get at home".
"It'll be fine. As long as it's got sand and good waves, I'll be happy", I said.
"You won't be happy then".
After lunch we hop into a murderously hot train packed to the doors with other Utrechtians who have had the same idea as us. The countryside is flat and featureless. Occasionally, a skate ramp or a pile of rubble will tower over the surrounding landscape, but other than that, there is nothing but flatness. At every station, we are joined by another legion of overheated beachgoers. By the time we reach Zandvoort, a resort town on the North Sea, the train ride resembles a pilgrimmage on which millions of Dutch folk have felt obliged to go today. "Are you ready?", asks Willem, with a wry grin on his face that suggests I'm in for a rude shock. "Let's do it".
It is a beach the likes of which I have never seen in my life. Barely a square foot of sand is visible beneath the swathe of tents and beachgoers packed onto the sand like sardines. The mass of people stretches endlessly to the south and many miles to north, where, far in the distance, factories can be seen belching out smoke.
The sea is as calm as a pond. What's more, most of the bathers are content to go in only as far as their waists and no one is putting their head under the water.
"You'll see why", says Willem, still grinning.
Aside from being freezing cold, the water has taken on a murky, brownish tinge and has unidentifiable bits floating in it. I can't see my hands six inches in front of my face through the muck. "What is all this shit?", I ask. This time Willem doesn't even answer. It's quite possible I have just answered my own question.
Back at the bar, enjoying an afternoon pint, I reflect on how lucky we are to have the beaches we do back home. I think back to all those magical summer holidays I had, during that brief but euphoric two-week stint every January when the weather was conducive to beach going. Big, wide, pristine beaches with not another person on them.
At least at Dutch beaches you can get a beer, which is more than you can say for ours. Perhaps that's it: perhaps Kiwi beaches are so empty because you can't get booze at them, so everyone just stays home and drinks instead. One day I'll go back to New Zealand to discover they've relaxed the liquor laws and lined every beach with bars, and then no doubt half of our population will be on them as well.
The train ride back to Utrecht is hotter than anything I've ever experienced. If it's 30 degrees outside the train, it's a least 45 degrees inside. We sit still as possible but regardless, we are sopping wet within minutes. Heleen takes turns to fan first Willem's face then mine, but it makes no difference. For a brief while the air conditioning comes on, but it is quickly overwhelmed by the heat of the train and its passengers. Five minutes after leaving the grotty beach, I feel like I need to go back again and cool off.
Instead we park up at another bar in the plaza, in the shadow of Dom Tower, with a few of Willem and Heleen's friends. It's been a long day and the beers begin to flow steadily as the sun goes down. I flip through the drinks list and, through the sea of indecipherable Dutch words, one drink stands out: Dutch Dynamite. What on earth could it be? The Dutch answer to Ranfurly Draught? Or something more sinister, like budget liqueur or even absinthe? I ask Willem, but he's never heard of it either. The intrigue grows.
I'm reclining in my chair with my pint, looking up at the tower and asking myself important questions such as, "do ants on an ant trail in Europe pass each other on their right hand side?", when the guy next to me taps me on the shoulder. "So, are you going to Amsterdam for the gay parade?", he asks with a grin.
"Nah, I didn't even know it was on this weekend, honest".
"Sure you didn't!", says Heleen.
"I fucking didn't!". Everyone laughs. "I'm going up there for a game of cricket, actually".
"Cricket? Says the man, who has been introduced as Tim, blankly.
"Yeah".
I spend the next half an hour or so struggling to describe the gentlemen's game to three men who have never seen it being played, much less played it themselves. Willem was lucky enough to go to a game with us when he was in New Zealand last year, so he knows some of the rules, but the rest of the table are listening intently and regarding me with a mixture of wonderment and deep suspicion, as if I'm trying to sell them the world's dodgiest get rich quick scheme.
"So then the batter hits it, and if it goes away from a fielder, he will run to the other end and the guy at the other end will run to his end, so they cross, and they get one run. But if the fielder picks it up and knocks the stumps over-"
"Stumps? What are stumps?"
"The wickets... the sticks. So if he knocks the sticks off before the batter gets in his crease then he's out, so he goes back in the dressing room and another guy comes out and he's in".
More blank looks.
"Basically it's like baseball, but ten times longer and more boring".
"And you're going to play this in Amsterdam?", someone asks.
"Yes".
"Why?".
Long pause.
"I don't know".
After a while, my curiosity gets the better of me and I decide a round of Dutch dynamite is in order. "Oh, it's awful", says another man at the table, who is a barman here when he's not drinking. "You better get a chaser as well".
All the boys say cheers and down the vile-looking black contents of our shot glasses. It tastes like mouldy liquorice, if that's even possible. The aftertaste is sickly and bitter.
"Now drink the glass of beer!", demands Heleen. So I do. No one else does, though. They just sit and watch as this crazy man from New Zealand downs his pint in 15 seconds flat. Then they applaud and cheer wildly.
It's as if no one has ever chopped a beer in Holland. I explain to them that chopping beer is a cornerstone of our social history in New Zealand, but they won't listen, they're just amazed. Someone orders me another pint and it's quickly delivered to my table. I can see how this could go downhill fast.
"What were you and your family doing in America?", Tim asks. "We don't like those guys".
Not for the first time since arriving in Europe, I explain that Americans are good people and it is a wonderful country to visit. The global animosity towards America, I contest, is a result of the utterly abhorrent Bush Administration and a global media that loves to pour shit on the Yanks because they don't like their leader.
"The 'all Americans are gun-toting rednecks' line is just a media beat-up", I insist.
"But they voted for Bush. Twice!", he continues.
I try to point out that less than a quarter of the voting population actually did vote for him in the first instance, but my words are starting to desert me as the beers sink in.
"Before coming over here I was worried about how dangerous this place was, what with all the ethnic violence", I say to Tim. "But I haven't noticed any agro at all. Everyone seems pretty chill, eh".
"It's crap. Everyone here lives happily next to each other. Dutch, Turkish, Indonesian, they all get along. There's no violence".
"So it's just a media beat-up then?"
"Exactly".
Which just goes to show what a misleading bunch the media can be. Here was Tim thinking that Americans were a bunch of assholes, and me thinking I was going to be gunned down in the streets for walking around in the wrong neighbourhood. Looks like we're both wrong.
We move inside the bar and remain there until 3am or so, discussing football and the media and how no one else in our party had ever been to see the Utrecht windmill either, which makes me feel pretty special. Eventually I sense the time has come to walk on out while I still can, so I exit the bar and find myself standing in the pouring rain.
Hang on. Wasn't it blazing hot and sunny not six hours ago? It's still warm, but now the rain is pelting down in huge droplets. Thunder is crashing and lightning is frequently illuminating the now-empty plaza. Willem and Heleen have long since gone home, leaving me to find their place under my own steam. I walk around the corner, check to see if there's any Turks lying in wait to gun me down for the three Euro I have in my pocket, then sprint all the way home.
Back at Willem and Heleen's place,, I manage to struggle out of my sopping wet clothes, pour myself a glass of water and struggle into my night shirt. Everything is a struggle at this point. Pushing thoughts of my impending fast-ball induced death on the cricket pitch to the back of my mind, I lie in bed and listen to the relentless thunder and rain hammering down on my roof.
Come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw a single ant the whole time I lived in Dunedin. Isn't that amazing?
The Church
"Look at it this way Max. You don't have a job, you don't have any money, you've lost your girl and you're hungover from drinking cheap cider. Your life can only get better from here".
That's not entirely true - I could be hungover from drinking cheap vodka - but there is plenty of truth to Adam's typically brusque observation. It's 11.30 on a Sunday morning, and we're standing in the rain, queueing to get into the most hallowed of London's many Kiwi and Aussie themed pubs, a pub in which strippers and boat races are as much an institution as the sawdust on the floors. What can possibly go wrong?
The Church has been a hotbed of Antipodean debauchery since 1979 - kind of a moist petri dish of flu germs, if you will. I've been informed by many that it is "a place every New Zealander must go to once while in London", and I figure I might as well get it out of the way early on. It sounds like the kind of place I've come halfway round the world to avoid, except that back home you can't find a busy pub for love nor money on a Sunday. Which is a shame, because many of my most memorable drinking occasions have unfolded on the Lord's day.
In a token attempt to fit in with the crowd, I'm wearing my lurid green "Mambo Beer Man" t-shirt that left no one who I passed in the street on the way here in any doubt about where I was going. Many others have gone all out though: there are groups of girls dressed as nuns, bumble bees, Spice Girls. Many of the gentlemen have donned superhero costumes, including a particularly impressive Buzz Lightyear. Who said you don't dress up to go to pubs in the UK?
After an hour of queueing we eventually push inside to find ourselves in a massive converted theatre with bars along the sides. It's almost like The Holy Grail in Christchurch meets the Upstairs Cook, but with even shittier music. In front of the stage is a massive pit (which accurately describes both its physical and moral appearance) already jam packed with young drinkers. In keeping with the classy nature of the establishment, drinks are purchased three at a time in bottles and cans and given to you in clear plastic bags, which you can then carry around the venue at your leisure.
Unable to face getting sprayed with alcohol and sweat in the pit, Adam and I head to the relative calm of the top tier of seating, where we can gaze down at the pit and all the dubious activities taking place therein. On the stage, some terrible comedian with a wig is warming the crowd up with some predictable anti-American jokes. They're lapping it up of course, except for one dreadlocked American at the front who has taken exception, as they always do. To be fair I think even my collection of Salvador Dali jokes would be a hit with this easy crowd.
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Fish.
The "comedian" clears off and is replaced by, ho hum, a stripper. She begins her provocative dance while the PA system plays "Lola", which isn't really the kind of song you want to hear while seeing a chick get naked, but the crowd loves it anyways. A guy comes out now and begins stripping, then they take turns to spank each other. Wild and aroused, the crowd roars and pushes up desperately against the stage like Darfur refugees at a UN food drop. Surveying this scene I don't find myself surprised at all that we share 98% of our DNA with the apes.
I wander up to the bar, looking to score another three cans of Fosters in a plastic bag, and find myself standing next to a pretty American girl. She looks at me and smiles. Better think of a friendly greeting that showcases my irresistible powers of wit and charm whilst assauging any fears she might have that I'm not the nicest guy in the world.
"Hey", I say.
"Hello!", she says with a friendly smile. "Lots of you guys here today!"
What ever does she mean? Is my fly undone? Too late to check now.
"Oh, I mean Australians", she says, noting my confused look.
"Oh. Actually I'm a New Zealander".
"Oh, Noo ZEEE-land! And what are you doing in London?"
I explain to her that I'm fleeing the oppressive regime of Our Glorious Leader, Comrade Clark, who has run my country into the ground with his social engineering, unsustainable welfare policy and economic mismanagement.
"Wow, I didn't realise they're still communists in New Zealand!", she says.
"It's not a widely-publicised fact".
She thinks to herself for a moment, then looks at me as if about to ask a really stupid question, like is there a bridge between New Zealand and Australia, but opts not to ask it. "Anyways, you have a nice day Mr New Zealander".
A good mate of mine who I haven't seen since high school is among the thousands of revellers writhing about in the pit. I can see him clearly from my vantage point, chatting up some unfortunate-looking girl in a shiny bright red dress that is struggling to contain her generous curves. He and his mates have some sort of taxi drivers' uniform on and he's wearing aviators and a sweatband, which suggests that since leaving high school he has become a tosser.
I push gainfully through the crowd, which to the touch feels like a kind of soft, yielding wall coated in beer and sweat, until I'm within touching distance of my old mate. He's still all over the girl.
"Maybe we should just leave him to it", I say to Adam, who has followed me down.
"Nah, let's ruin it for him", he says with a worrying degree of enthusiasm.
The only way to attract his attention is to clap him solidly on the back. He turns around, looks at me blankly, raises his eyebrows in acknowledgement, then turns straight back to the girl. That was unexpected! Is he too drunk to recognise me? Or am I too drunk to recognise that it's not really him? More worringly, does he now think I'm trying to pick him up?
This is an awkward situation, which can only really be satisfyingly resolved by pretending to take a phone call and striding away purposefully in the other direction, as if looking for someone else in the crowd. We take up a new position in the centre of the pit, surrounded by Germans hooking up with each other and popping pills. Everyone is getting in on the kissing act, except me, Adam and one of the Germans who the girls in the vicinity have deemed too ugly to participate. "Bastards", he says to me with a rueful grin, then pops a pill to cheer himself up.
Some New Zealand v Australia boat races are taking place on the stage as I return to my vantage point above the pit. No one cares who wins because they're more interested in coercing one of the Aussie girls to get her tits out. Which she does. It's hard to know what's going on, but it appears that New Zealand has won the first two races. Typically, the Aussies are accusing us of cheating like the sore losers they are. Oh look, the girl has got her tits out again, and all the participants cheer and shake hands. That's more like the ANZAC spirit we know and love.
I'm fairly conscious of how I acquit myself overseas, so as not to give foreigners a bad impression of New Zealand, but clearly no one else in here is. I suppose in a way bars like the Church are a good thing, because they allow us to exhibit our unique brand of drunken idiocy behind closed doors, but when those doors open at closing time and thousands of pissed ex-pats spew forth into the streets of North London, the ugly side of our drinking culture is suddenly unleashed upon an unsuspecting public.
Drunken Aussies are staggering about every which way in search of kebab joints and alleyways to piss in, harrassing strangers and friends alike in the process. A camera crew question Adam about Green Party politics, which he deals with most eloquently considering he's pissed off his tree. An Irishman, not a day over 18, is jumping around in the background yelling "I want to be a Kiwi! I want to be a Kiwi!". Don't they all?
I can't say my four hours at the Church constituted a life-changing experience, but there certainly were amusing scenes from a "better them than me" point of view. The best part of it is that's it's still only four in the afternoon, which gives us the rest of the day to go back to my place and attend to my bottle of duty-free whiskey. And why not? It is a Sunday after all...
That's not entirely true - I could be hungover from drinking cheap vodka - but there is plenty of truth to Adam's typically brusque observation. It's 11.30 on a Sunday morning, and we're standing in the rain, queueing to get into the most hallowed of London's many Kiwi and Aussie themed pubs, a pub in which strippers and boat races are as much an institution as the sawdust on the floors. What can possibly go wrong?
The Church has been a hotbed of Antipodean debauchery since 1979 - kind of a moist petri dish of flu germs, if you will. I've been informed by many that it is "a place every New Zealander must go to once while in London", and I figure I might as well get it out of the way early on. It sounds like the kind of place I've come halfway round the world to avoid, except that back home you can't find a busy pub for love nor money on a Sunday. Which is a shame, because many of my most memorable drinking occasions have unfolded on the Lord's day.
In a token attempt to fit in with the crowd, I'm wearing my lurid green "Mambo Beer Man" t-shirt that left no one who I passed in the street on the way here in any doubt about where I was going. Many others have gone all out though: there are groups of girls dressed as nuns, bumble bees, Spice Girls. Many of the gentlemen have donned superhero costumes, including a particularly impressive Buzz Lightyear. Who said you don't dress up to go to pubs in the UK?
After an hour of queueing we eventually push inside to find ourselves in a massive converted theatre with bars along the sides. It's almost like The Holy Grail in Christchurch meets the Upstairs Cook, but with even shittier music. In front of the stage is a massive pit (which accurately describes both its physical and moral appearance) already jam packed with young drinkers. In keeping with the classy nature of the establishment, drinks are purchased three at a time in bottles and cans and given to you in clear plastic bags, which you can then carry around the venue at your leisure.
Unable to face getting sprayed with alcohol and sweat in the pit, Adam and I head to the relative calm of the top tier of seating, where we can gaze down at the pit and all the dubious activities taking place therein. On the stage, some terrible comedian with a wig is warming the crowd up with some predictable anti-American jokes. They're lapping it up of course, except for one dreadlocked American at the front who has taken exception, as they always do. To be fair I think even my collection of Salvador Dali jokes would be a hit with this easy crowd.
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Fish.
The "comedian" clears off and is replaced by, ho hum, a stripper. She begins her provocative dance while the PA system plays "Lola", which isn't really the kind of song you want to hear while seeing a chick get naked, but the crowd loves it anyways. A guy comes out now and begins stripping, then they take turns to spank each other. Wild and aroused, the crowd roars and pushes up desperately against the stage like Darfur refugees at a UN food drop. Surveying this scene I don't find myself surprised at all that we share 98% of our DNA with the apes.
I wander up to the bar, looking to score another three cans of Fosters in a plastic bag, and find myself standing next to a pretty American girl. She looks at me and smiles. Better think of a friendly greeting that showcases my irresistible powers of wit and charm whilst assauging any fears she might have that I'm not the nicest guy in the world.
"Hey", I say.
"Hello!", she says with a friendly smile. "Lots of you guys here today!"
What ever does she mean? Is my fly undone? Too late to check now.
"Oh, I mean Australians", she says, noting my confused look.
"Oh. Actually I'm a New Zealander".
"Oh, Noo ZEEE-land! And what are you doing in London?"
I explain to her that I'm fleeing the oppressive regime of Our Glorious Leader, Comrade Clark, who has run my country into the ground with his social engineering, unsustainable welfare policy and economic mismanagement.
"Wow, I didn't realise they're still communists in New Zealand!", she says.
"It's not a widely-publicised fact".
She thinks to herself for a moment, then looks at me as if about to ask a really stupid question, like is there a bridge between New Zealand and Australia, but opts not to ask it. "Anyways, you have a nice day Mr New Zealander".
A good mate of mine who I haven't seen since high school is among the thousands of revellers writhing about in the pit. I can see him clearly from my vantage point, chatting up some unfortunate-looking girl in a shiny bright red dress that is struggling to contain her generous curves. He and his mates have some sort of taxi drivers' uniform on and he's wearing aviators and a sweatband, which suggests that since leaving high school he has become a tosser.
I push gainfully through the crowd, which to the touch feels like a kind of soft, yielding wall coated in beer and sweat, until I'm within touching distance of my old mate. He's still all over the girl.
"Maybe we should just leave him to it", I say to Adam, who has followed me down.
"Nah, let's ruin it for him", he says with a worrying degree of enthusiasm.
The only way to attract his attention is to clap him solidly on the back. He turns around, looks at me blankly, raises his eyebrows in acknowledgement, then turns straight back to the girl. That was unexpected! Is he too drunk to recognise me? Or am I too drunk to recognise that it's not really him? More worringly, does he now think I'm trying to pick him up?
This is an awkward situation, which can only really be satisfyingly resolved by pretending to take a phone call and striding away purposefully in the other direction, as if looking for someone else in the crowd. We take up a new position in the centre of the pit, surrounded by Germans hooking up with each other and popping pills. Everyone is getting in on the kissing act, except me, Adam and one of the Germans who the girls in the vicinity have deemed too ugly to participate. "Bastards", he says to me with a rueful grin, then pops a pill to cheer himself up.
Some New Zealand v Australia boat races are taking place on the stage as I return to my vantage point above the pit. No one cares who wins because they're more interested in coercing one of the Aussie girls to get her tits out. Which she does. It's hard to know what's going on, but it appears that New Zealand has won the first two races. Typically, the Aussies are accusing us of cheating like the sore losers they are. Oh look, the girl has got her tits out again, and all the participants cheer and shake hands. That's more like the ANZAC spirit we know and love.
I'm fairly conscious of how I acquit myself overseas, so as not to give foreigners a bad impression of New Zealand, but clearly no one else in here is. I suppose in a way bars like the Church are a good thing, because they allow us to exhibit our unique brand of drunken idiocy behind closed doors, but when those doors open at closing time and thousands of pissed ex-pats spew forth into the streets of North London, the ugly side of our drinking culture is suddenly unleashed upon an unsuspecting public.
Drunken Aussies are staggering about every which way in search of kebab joints and alleyways to piss in, harrassing strangers and friends alike in the process. A camera crew question Adam about Green Party politics, which he deals with most eloquently considering he's pissed off his tree. An Irishman, not a day over 18, is jumping around in the background yelling "I want to be a Kiwi! I want to be a Kiwi!". Don't they all?
I can't say my four hours at the Church constituted a life-changing experience, but there certainly were amusing scenes from a "better them than me" point of view. The best part of it is that's it's still only four in the afternoon, which gives us the rest of the day to go back to my place and attend to my bottle of duty-free whiskey. And why not? It is a Sunday after all...
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
London
"The only reason the relationship worked was because I backed down on 95% of things. But I'm a considerably better person than him, and cleverer".
I'm in London, sitting on a bench outside the Tate Gallery, listening to other people's loud and public conversations as they walk past.
"My birthday's on the Sunday so I think we'll have it on the Monday so I don't have to spend as much... fuck the effort, know what I mean?", says a man to his wife whilst pushing a pram. A man and a lady walk past me from behind, discussing fish, babies or, perhaps, a recent purchase from Amsterdam.
"I dunno, six pounds or eight?", asks the lady.
"... Double".
"Really?!"
"Yeah, you can get real heavy ones".
I have chosen this bench on the Thames Path because it is ideally placed to take in the sights and sounds of bustling London Town at lunchtime. It overlooks the Thames, lifeblood and lavatory of the people of London since Roman times. Across the Thames stands the impressive St. Paul's Cathedral. Crossing the river just to my right is the eight-year-old Millennium Bridge. A pedestrian bridge, it was highly praised in the media after its completion but turned out to be flawed in its composition, buckling under pressure and threatening to collapse at any moment, leading to rumours that it had been constructed by members of the England rugby team.
In a pedestrian underpass away to the left, the sounds of "Tequila" performed by the unlikely duo of an accordion player and tenor saxophonist can be heard wafting in my direction. Meanwhile a group of emo schoolkids are having an argument over something to do with Facebook, or some social networking site.
"'Friended' isn't even a verb!", says a 12-year-old with long straight black hair to his eye-linered peers. "'Friended is a past participle, you bellends!"
This stretch of the Thames Path is awash with bustling bodies heading in every direction. Emo schoolkids, Cajun blues musicians, American tourists with their shirts tucked into their belts, businessmen in pink shirts, French people arguing, joggers jogging, buskers busking. So this is London eh?
"This is a Picadilly Line train, terminating at Cockfosters", said the train lady at Heathrow last night. This was the first dialogue I heard upon arrival in London and was not entirely inappropriate. I had already seen the word and guessed that it had some sort of alternative, less overtly homosexual pronunciation.
"No, it's Cock-fosters", said Georgina. She was kind enough to retrieve me from Heathrow; a blessing since otherwise - considering the bunny-in-the-headlights mindstate I was in - I would probably still be standing wide-eyed in the Arrivals Hall.
I spent my first night in London on the floor of Georgina's modestly-sized dorm room. Well, not quite on the floor, but close enough to it to feel solidarity with the thousands of pioneering Kiwis before me who have arrived on these shores with a small wad of cash and nothing to sleep on. In other words, the only from here was up.
Back at my bench, I'm now witnessing a young American couple bickering over which tourist attraction they should argue at next.
"We didn't come to London to be in a park all day!", says the man in an aggressive tone. "You could do that in any city. We came here to see London".
"You're the one who wanted to come here!", she screams back.
Americans, of course, are famous for talking unnecessarily loudly in public so that everyone has to hear them but still pretend that they aren't listening. Working in the library for two years, you learned to recognise the familiar nasal twang of an approaching American at least half a minute before you saw him, penetrating the solemn silence of the building. I never minded it so much, but I did feel sorry for the unfortunate students who came to the library on a Monday night to study polymers and Greek mythology but ended up learning more about how Jay had this, like, total wipeout at Cardrona on Saturday and it was, like, totally sick, dude.
As much as I'd love to carry on enjoying the chatter, I have a city to explore; quite a large one actually. Counterintuitively - given that this is London - it is a hot, sunny day. Not quite equal to the searing heat of midtown Manhattan, but warm enough to make you skirt along the side of the walkway to stay in the shade. Perhaps an afternoon spent wandering through London's many user-friendly parks might be the ticket. With the aid of Georgina's map book - which I refer to surreptitiously inside my bag so as not to look like an amateurish tourist, which I most certainly am - I make my way past Westminster through St James's Park and towards Buckingham Palace, through a garantuan throng of tourists at the Palace Gates, and down Constitution Hill.
Largely by accident, I find myself passing by the New Zealand and Australian war memorials. Given the subject matter, I can't help but feel they could've chosen a more serene location for the memorials than the middle of one of London's busiest roundabouts, though on the plus side I suppose that means they get seen by a lot of eyes.
Our war memorial is a little unconventional - 16 cross-shaped bronze shafts scattered over a small area rising diagonally out of the ground - and it's not much liked by our English friends, it would seem. One particular art critic-cum-pompous wanker has even deemed it a "bristlingly unlovely installation" and a Frankenstein monster". He goes on to say that "it obscures certain views in that area", suggesting that in his opinion we should've opted for an invisible memorial, or perhaps no memorial at all.
You can imagine what sort of individual the above art critic is: a crusty old Hooray-Henry who eats steak and kidney pies and enjoys it, regards anyone born outside of London as an uncultured savage and believes that rogering your manservants at high tea while listening to "Land Of Hope And Glory" on the gramophone is still the truest affirmation of British values.
Well, I don't care what he gets up to with his servants - as long as they're cool with it, of course - but I don't agree with his summation of the New Zealand memorial. It may not be stunning, but it doesn't look like one of those mass wall-mounted urinals at rugby stadiums, and the Australian one sure does. If anything, it does aptly sum up the regard in which Aussies are generally viewed overseas, but whether or not it was the deliberate intention of the designer to create this effect is unknown.
London is purported to have the best parks and public areas of any city in Europe and I find it hard to disagree as I stroll around Hyde and Regent's Parks. Firstly, they are massive, so you can get lost on your own in them, along with a million other people. There are no shortages of benches and attractive lawns to rest up on, either. Nor are there any shortage of locales to visit and enjoy. In Hyde Park alone I wander past the Speakers' Corner, through Italian gardens, across Serpentine Bridge and past youngsters paddle-boating through the lake, and finally to my intended destination at the Princess Diana memorial fountain.
Unbelievably, as I'm standing looking at the fountain, the young American couple walk past, and they're still arguing. He must really hate parks by now, I think to myself. The argument appears to be going along the same lines as they stop talking to look at me for a moment, see that I'm preoccupied writing something down in a diary and so carry on arguing. The advantages of travelling alone are clear: I can choose to visit whichever places I want, don't have to buy anyone an ice cream and will never get told off for listening in on other people's conversations.
From Hyde Park I enjoy shady stroll back into town along a horse trail, past the utter tourist chaos that is Trafalgar Square and back across the Thames, where I'm joined by gathering throngs of workers making their way home for the evening.
A glorious summer day has turned into a glorious summer evening when I meet my cousin Katie at Liverpool Street Station. There are more trains at the station than there are in New Zealand currently and the main concourse is crawling with commuters moving every which way and bouncing off each other like atoms in a particle accelerator. I stand outside a French bakery thinking about what a miracle it would be if Katie actually found me, but she does in the end, my ongoing bunny-in-the-headlights expression obviously causing me to stand out amongst the commuters.
It's a Wednesday evening but every bar with an outside area is packed. We end up at The Globe, near the station, where businessmen have liberated themselves and are crowding around on the outside lawn drinking plastic cups of beer.
"This is what happens in good weather", says Katie knowingly. "People never know when they're next going to get a nice day in London, so when the sun's out, everyone drinks while they can". It seems like a commendable attitude to me.
Katie moved here from Wellington a fair while ago and is a good source of advice about London. "It's definitely scary at first, but in a few months you'll be fine. Just don't live in the stabbing areas".
How do I know if I'm in a stabbing area? Do they have signs?
"Hah, just don't go too far South. Or East".
The fact that so many Kiwis are prospering here makes me feel a lot better about my chances of survival in this big, scary place. After an enjoyable dinner, Katie pays for my beers and walks me all the way home, where Georgina is waiting out front to let me in.
There's no way I'm letting myself get stabbed on my first proper day in London, you see.
I'm in London, sitting on a bench outside the Tate Gallery, listening to other people's loud and public conversations as they walk past.
"My birthday's on the Sunday so I think we'll have it on the Monday so I don't have to spend as much... fuck the effort, know what I mean?", says a man to his wife whilst pushing a pram. A man and a lady walk past me from behind, discussing fish, babies or, perhaps, a recent purchase from Amsterdam.
"I dunno, six pounds or eight?", asks the lady.
"... Double".
"Really?!"
"Yeah, you can get real heavy ones".
I have chosen this bench on the Thames Path because it is ideally placed to take in the sights and sounds of bustling London Town at lunchtime. It overlooks the Thames, lifeblood and lavatory of the people of London since Roman times. Across the Thames stands the impressive St. Paul's Cathedral. Crossing the river just to my right is the eight-year-old Millennium Bridge. A pedestrian bridge, it was highly praised in the media after its completion but turned out to be flawed in its composition, buckling under pressure and threatening to collapse at any moment, leading to rumours that it had been constructed by members of the England rugby team.
In a pedestrian underpass away to the left, the sounds of "Tequila" performed by the unlikely duo of an accordion player and tenor saxophonist can be heard wafting in my direction. Meanwhile a group of emo schoolkids are having an argument over something to do with Facebook, or some social networking site.
"'Friended' isn't even a verb!", says a 12-year-old with long straight black hair to his eye-linered peers. "'Friended is a past participle, you bellends!"
This stretch of the Thames Path is awash with bustling bodies heading in every direction. Emo schoolkids, Cajun blues musicians, American tourists with their shirts tucked into their belts, businessmen in pink shirts, French people arguing, joggers jogging, buskers busking. So this is London eh?
"This is a Picadilly Line train, terminating at Cockfosters", said the train lady at Heathrow last night. This was the first dialogue I heard upon arrival in London and was not entirely inappropriate. I had already seen the word and guessed that it had some sort of alternative, less overtly homosexual pronunciation.
"No, it's Cock-fosters", said Georgina. She was kind enough to retrieve me from Heathrow; a blessing since otherwise - considering the bunny-in-the-headlights mindstate I was in - I would probably still be standing wide-eyed in the Arrivals Hall.
I spent my first night in London on the floor of Georgina's modestly-sized dorm room. Well, not quite on the floor, but close enough to it to feel solidarity with the thousands of pioneering Kiwis before me who have arrived on these shores with a small wad of cash and nothing to sleep on. In other words, the only from here was up.
Back at my bench, I'm now witnessing a young American couple bickering over which tourist attraction they should argue at next.
"We didn't come to London to be in a park all day!", says the man in an aggressive tone. "You could do that in any city. We came here to see London".
"You're the one who wanted to come here!", she screams back.
Americans, of course, are famous for talking unnecessarily loudly in public so that everyone has to hear them but still pretend that they aren't listening. Working in the library for two years, you learned to recognise the familiar nasal twang of an approaching American at least half a minute before you saw him, penetrating the solemn silence of the building. I never minded it so much, but I did feel sorry for the unfortunate students who came to the library on a Monday night to study polymers and Greek mythology but ended up learning more about how Jay had this, like, total wipeout at Cardrona on Saturday and it was, like, totally sick, dude.
As much as I'd love to carry on enjoying the chatter, I have a city to explore; quite a large one actually. Counterintuitively - given that this is London - it is a hot, sunny day. Not quite equal to the searing heat of midtown Manhattan, but warm enough to make you skirt along the side of the walkway to stay in the shade. Perhaps an afternoon spent wandering through London's many user-friendly parks might be the ticket. With the aid of Georgina's map book - which I refer to surreptitiously inside my bag so as not to look like an amateurish tourist, which I most certainly am - I make my way past Westminster through St James's Park and towards Buckingham Palace, through a garantuan throng of tourists at the Palace Gates, and down Constitution Hill.
Largely by accident, I find myself passing by the New Zealand and Australian war memorials. Given the subject matter, I can't help but feel they could've chosen a more serene location for the memorials than the middle of one of London's busiest roundabouts, though on the plus side I suppose that means they get seen by a lot of eyes.
Our war memorial is a little unconventional - 16 cross-shaped bronze shafts scattered over a small area rising diagonally out of the ground - and it's not much liked by our English friends, it would seem. One particular art critic-cum-pompous wanker has even deemed it a "bristlingly unlovely installation" and a Frankenstein monster". He goes on to say that "it obscures certain views in that area", suggesting that in his opinion we should've opted for an invisible memorial, or perhaps no memorial at all.
You can imagine what sort of individual the above art critic is: a crusty old Hooray-Henry who eats steak and kidney pies and enjoys it, regards anyone born outside of London as an uncultured savage and believes that rogering your manservants at high tea while listening to "Land Of Hope And Glory" on the gramophone is still the truest affirmation of British values.
Well, I don't care what he gets up to with his servants - as long as they're cool with it, of course - but I don't agree with his summation of the New Zealand memorial. It may not be stunning, but it doesn't look like one of those mass wall-mounted urinals at rugby stadiums, and the Australian one sure does. If anything, it does aptly sum up the regard in which Aussies are generally viewed overseas, but whether or not it was the deliberate intention of the designer to create this effect is unknown.
London is purported to have the best parks and public areas of any city in Europe and I find it hard to disagree as I stroll around Hyde and Regent's Parks. Firstly, they are massive, so you can get lost on your own in them, along with a million other people. There are no shortages of benches and attractive lawns to rest up on, either. Nor are there any shortage of locales to visit and enjoy. In Hyde Park alone I wander past the Speakers' Corner, through Italian gardens, across Serpentine Bridge and past youngsters paddle-boating through the lake, and finally to my intended destination at the Princess Diana memorial fountain.
Unbelievably, as I'm standing looking at the fountain, the young American couple walk past, and they're still arguing. He must really hate parks by now, I think to myself. The argument appears to be going along the same lines as they stop talking to look at me for a moment, see that I'm preoccupied writing something down in a diary and so carry on arguing. The advantages of travelling alone are clear: I can choose to visit whichever places I want, don't have to buy anyone an ice cream and will never get told off for listening in on other people's conversations.
From Hyde Park I enjoy shady stroll back into town along a horse trail, past the utter tourist chaos that is Trafalgar Square and back across the Thames, where I'm joined by gathering throngs of workers making their way home for the evening.
A glorious summer day has turned into a glorious summer evening when I meet my cousin Katie at Liverpool Street Station. There are more trains at the station than there are in New Zealand currently and the main concourse is crawling with commuters moving every which way and bouncing off each other like atoms in a particle accelerator. I stand outside a French bakery thinking about what a miracle it would be if Katie actually found me, but she does in the end, my ongoing bunny-in-the-headlights expression obviously causing me to stand out amongst the commuters.
It's a Wednesday evening but every bar with an outside area is packed. We end up at The Globe, near the station, where businessmen have liberated themselves and are crowding around on the outside lawn drinking plastic cups of beer.
"This is what happens in good weather", says Katie knowingly. "People never know when they're next going to get a nice day in London, so when the sun's out, everyone drinks while they can". It seems like a commendable attitude to me.
Katie moved here from Wellington a fair while ago and is a good source of advice about London. "It's definitely scary at first, but in a few months you'll be fine. Just don't live in the stabbing areas".
How do I know if I'm in a stabbing area? Do they have signs?
"Hah, just don't go too far South. Or East".
The fact that so many Kiwis are prospering here makes me feel a lot better about my chances of survival in this big, scary place. After an enjoyable dinner, Katie pays for my beers and walks me all the way home, where Georgina is waiting out front to let me in.
There's no way I'm letting myself get stabbed on my first proper day in London, you see.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Yankee Stadium
Of all the famous sporting grounds around the world, Yankee Stadium might well be the most famous and rich in history. Each sport has its own hallowed grounds that might be considered its "spiritual home" - cricket has Lords, golf has St Andrews, rugby has the Waikaia Domain - but no stadium transcends sport like Yankee Stadium. You don't have to be a fan or even know much about the sport to recognise names like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle. All were men who arrived at Yankee Stadium as baseballers and retired as legendary figures in American folklore.
But at the end of 2008 season, the bulldozers are due to show up and demolish the 85-year-old stadium, with a brand new ballpark to house the Yankees from 2009 onwards. As the New York Times so eloquently stated on June 8, "this season is your last chance to catch a game in the Old Yankee Stadium, before The House That Ruth Built is replaced by its modern cousin across 161st Street, the House That [owner George] Steinbrenner And Taxpayer Subsidies Built".
With so much history about to be forever lost to the city and the game of baseball, seeing a game here was top of my priority list while in the city. And so on this sultry Sunday afternoon, my father and I have joined 55,000 others at the old stadium to witness the 30th-to-last game ever to be played here. It's the New York Yankees versus the Oakland Athletics: the teams aren't important, the occasion is.
The current Yankees line-up boasts two players who may one day be considered equals to the four legendary Yankees of years gone by that I have already mentioned. They are Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, two vastly different men launched into superstardom by the lucrative Yankees marketing machine. Jeter, the club captain, is a loyal-to-the-bitter-end Yankee lifer having come up through their junior system. He's like the Caleb Ralph of baseball, except that he's actually a good player and popular with the fans.
A-Rod, on the other hand, has endured a less harmonious relationship with the club and its fans. Those generally considered the best hitter of the past decade, A-Rod's perceived arrogance, fallibiliy in pressure situations and new allegations that he's been shagging Madonna have seen him receive more bad press than good since his move from Texas in 2004. At the end of last season, he opted out on his Yankees contract to become a free agent, only to discover that no other team was willing to meet his astronimical wage demands. Reluctantly, he signed a new, 10-year, US$275m deal with the Yankees. Okay for some.
The game gets underway on one of the hottest New York afternoons of the year. We're already dripping with sweat before the first pitch is thrown, sitting high in uncovered stands with the sun hammering down in our faces. A beer would be nice, but $9 for a Becks seems a touch unreasonable, so I take my empty water bottle into the bathroom and fill it up there instead, displaying Kiwi ingenuity far beyond the capablities of our American friends. We're lucky enough to be witnessing a duel between two of the game's higher-profile pitchers: on the mound for the Yankees is veteran Andy Pettitte, while Athletics starter Justin Duchscherer is having a career-best year and leading the major league in several pitching categories.
Both pitchers are having good days too, and after four innings it's still 0-0. The crowd is fairly muted, only occasionally chanting "Let's go Yankees!" when prompted by the ground announcer and yelling "charge" when the organ plays the traditional trumpeted battle call. Even though you can sense the rich history of the stadium, a lot of the older features of the stands have been replaced so that it doesn't really feel like an old school ballpark. Oakland, a mediocre team with no big-name players, don't particular inspire excitement like a visit from bitter rivals Boston always does.
Finally the crowd gets something to cheer about in the 6th inning when Jason Giambi blasts a solo home run into the cheap seats in right field. On the back of some flawless pitching from Pettitte, the Yanks hold on for a 2-1 win.
I thought I could not come closer to being cooked alive while sitting in the sun at the stadium, an opinion I quickly have to revise as we pack into the steaming hot subway train with thousands of other departing fans. The level of commitment shown by Yankees does rather show up New Zealand sporting fans. The Yankees play 81 home games a year and almost every single one draws a full house of over 55,000 despite the obscene price of tickets - a good seat near home plate will fetch over $100. Super 14 teams get six or seven home games a year, in far smaller stadiums, and continually fail to sell them out. Whether the apathy of New Zealand fans compared to Americans is down to matters of finance, transport or simply weather is anyone's guess. I've been down to Carisbrook on some pretty brutal winter nights, however, and the level of discomfort experienced there was almost was bad as the heat we endured today.
Our Yankee Stadium outing is one of my final acts before leaving New York and crossing the pond. Tomorrow, my family flies back to New Zealand and I fly in the opposite direction, to London. It will be the farthest I've ever been from home.
I'll be sad to say goodbye to New York. I've had three weeks in the area but would've needed closer to three months to do it justice, I reckon. The most pleasant aspect of the city was that all the cliches surrounding it are wrong: New Yorkers are not rude and obnoxious at all; they are friendly, up-front, occasionally in your face but usually good-humoured. New York does not look or feel like a dangerous city. Okay, so the taxi drivers are lunatics, but they have mini-televisions in the backseat to distract you from the on-rushing traffic about to hit you or the abuse being spouted at your driver from the unfortunate driver who he's just cut off.
The one cliche that does ring true is that the city never sleeps. You can get whatever you want, whenever you want, which is a pleasing novelty when you come from a country where you can't get a beer before noon or a meal after nine. And you can't get pastrami at any time of day.
But at the end of 2008 season, the bulldozers are due to show up and demolish the 85-year-old stadium, with a brand new ballpark to house the Yankees from 2009 onwards. As the New York Times so eloquently stated on June 8, "this season is your last chance to catch a game in the Old Yankee Stadium, before The House That Ruth Built is replaced by its modern cousin across 161st Street, the House That [owner George] Steinbrenner And Taxpayer Subsidies Built".
With so much history about to be forever lost to the city and the game of baseball, seeing a game here was top of my priority list while in the city. And so on this sultry Sunday afternoon, my father and I have joined 55,000 others at the old stadium to witness the 30th-to-last game ever to be played here. It's the New York Yankees versus the Oakland Athletics: the teams aren't important, the occasion is.
The current Yankees line-up boasts two players who may one day be considered equals to the four legendary Yankees of years gone by that I have already mentioned. They are Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, two vastly different men launched into superstardom by the lucrative Yankees marketing machine. Jeter, the club captain, is a loyal-to-the-bitter-end Yankee lifer having come up through their junior system. He's like the Caleb Ralph of baseball, except that he's actually a good player and popular with the fans.
A-Rod, on the other hand, has endured a less harmonious relationship with the club and its fans. Those generally considered the best hitter of the past decade, A-Rod's perceived arrogance, fallibiliy in pressure situations and new allegations that he's been shagging Madonna have seen him receive more bad press than good since his move from Texas in 2004. At the end of last season, he opted out on his Yankees contract to become a free agent, only to discover that no other team was willing to meet his astronimical wage demands. Reluctantly, he signed a new, 10-year, US$275m deal with the Yankees. Okay for some.
The game gets underway on one of the hottest New York afternoons of the year. We're already dripping with sweat before the first pitch is thrown, sitting high in uncovered stands with the sun hammering down in our faces. A beer would be nice, but $9 for a Becks seems a touch unreasonable, so I take my empty water bottle into the bathroom and fill it up there instead, displaying Kiwi ingenuity far beyond the capablities of our American friends. We're lucky enough to be witnessing a duel between two of the game's higher-profile pitchers: on the mound for the Yankees is veteran Andy Pettitte, while Athletics starter Justin Duchscherer is having a career-best year and leading the major league in several pitching categories.
Both pitchers are having good days too, and after four innings it's still 0-0. The crowd is fairly muted, only occasionally chanting "Let's go Yankees!" when prompted by the ground announcer and yelling "charge" when the organ plays the traditional trumpeted battle call. Even though you can sense the rich history of the stadium, a lot of the older features of the stands have been replaced so that it doesn't really feel like an old school ballpark. Oakland, a mediocre team with no big-name players, don't particular inspire excitement like a visit from bitter rivals Boston always does.
Finally the crowd gets something to cheer about in the 6th inning when Jason Giambi blasts a solo home run into the cheap seats in right field. On the back of some flawless pitching from Pettitte, the Yanks hold on for a 2-1 win.
I thought I could not come closer to being cooked alive while sitting in the sun at the stadium, an opinion I quickly have to revise as we pack into the steaming hot subway train with thousands of other departing fans. The level of commitment shown by Yankees does rather show up New Zealand sporting fans. The Yankees play 81 home games a year and almost every single one draws a full house of over 55,000 despite the obscene price of tickets - a good seat near home plate will fetch over $100. Super 14 teams get six or seven home games a year, in far smaller stadiums, and continually fail to sell them out. Whether the apathy of New Zealand fans compared to Americans is down to matters of finance, transport or simply weather is anyone's guess. I've been down to Carisbrook on some pretty brutal winter nights, however, and the level of discomfort experienced there was almost was bad as the heat we endured today.
Our Yankee Stadium outing is one of my final acts before leaving New York and crossing the pond. Tomorrow, my family flies back to New Zealand and I fly in the opposite direction, to London. It will be the farthest I've ever been from home.
I'll be sad to say goodbye to New York. I've had three weeks in the area but would've needed closer to three months to do it justice, I reckon. The most pleasant aspect of the city was that all the cliches surrounding it are wrong: New Yorkers are not rude and obnoxious at all; they are friendly, up-front, occasionally in your face but usually good-humoured. New York does not look or feel like a dangerous city. Okay, so the taxi drivers are lunatics, but they have mini-televisions in the backseat to distract you from the on-rushing traffic about to hit you or the abuse being spouted at your driver from the unfortunate driver who he's just cut off.
The one cliche that does ring true is that the city never sleeps. You can get whatever you want, whenever you want, which is a pleasing novelty when you come from a country where you can't get a beer before noon or a meal after nine. And you can't get pastrami at any time of day.
New York City, NY Part II
There was a time when you would be caught dead walking through many parts of Manhattan. Things got pretty out of control in the '70s and '80s, and it's only recently that the city has cleaned up its act and been restored to the safe and accomodating city it had been for hundreds of years. I haven't felt at all threatened here at any time, and I've walked down just about every street in the past week.
Neighbourhoods that were previously plagued by urban decay have suddenly blossomed again. The gangsters and drug addicts have faded away and been replaced by trendy hipsters, Hispanic kids kicking a football down the street, and punchdrunk tourists pointing cameras at everything that moves.
"It's the gays", Shelly explains, rather cryptically at first. "The gays move into a neighbourhood, buy up the cheap property, do places up, make them habitable, then everyone else moves in. They did it in Williamsburg, East Village, West Village, Soho"...
Innovative homosexuals with an eye for fabulous interior design are America's 21st century urban pioneers, or so it seems. Davy Crockett must be spinning in his grave.
"And the city has never been safer", Shelly continues. "You wouldn't believe the number of undercover cops they have in this town. Thousands! Dressed like bums and low-lifes too, so you'd never suspect 'em. Of course, they can't stop everything from happening, but they're pretty close to it".
Shelly has been kind enough to lend us his vacant apartment on the Upper West Side for a few days and is now driving us to Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan, where we are to board a ferry. Shelly was best friends with my father and Larry David at high school. After university however, he did not take my father's noble path of getting a doctor to write him a phoney medical report declaring him unfit for military service and subsequently joining the peace corps and being posted on a remote Fijian Island to avoid getting his ass shot off by Charlie. Shelly just stayed in New York instead. As it happened, he didn't have to go to Vietnam - much less get his ass shot off - and he's lived here ever since. "I can't imagine ever leaving this town", he says, and I don't blame him.
New York's harbour isn't as visually stunning as Sydney's, or even Dunedin's, but neither of the latter two can boast having the Statue of Liberty in their centre. Regardless of the vantage point - and at 305 feet it can be seen from pretty much anywhere - the statue casts a hugely imposing figure. From its creation in 1886 until the advent of commercial air travel, it was the first image that greeted newly-arriving immigrants to the country.
The second image, and the structure considerably less clogged by tourists on this sunny July day, would have been Ellis Island. Sitting adjacent to Liberty Island, Ellis housed the immigration station through which every man, woman and child enterting via the Atlantic was processed. Twelve million people passed through this island during its peak years between 1892 and 1924, hoping for a better life in the land of opporunity. These days, many of the people who come here are retracing the steps of their distant relatives.
100 millions Americans can trace their ancestry back to Ellis Island: that's almost a third of the population. Standing in the midst of a common starting point for new Americans from all over the world - Europe in particular - provides me with a peculiar and melancholy feeling. Most of the immigrants who arrived here owned nothing but the clothes on their backs. A century on, their identities have been completed absorbed throughout America but their contributions to their adopted homeland are evident throughout the staggeringly multicultural city of New York. Over 200 different languages are spoken in this city alone.
It's easily overlooked by mindless anti-American bigots across the world who view the country as one large redneck haven, but the U.S. is far and away the most multicultural nation on earth. Long dependent on new arrivals for its livelihood, it has welcomed waves of immigration that have taken in every region of the globe: British and Spanish in its early years, the African slaves, then the Irish, the Eastern Europeans, the Jews, The Chinese, and finally, the Latin Americans. The result is a patchwork of different races and peoples who came to American with a common goal in mind. This is superbly illustrated in the thousands of photographs and first person immigrant accounts now on display in the museum which stands on the Ellis Island site.
It must be said that immigrants from New Zealand have not played a significant part in shaping America's national identity. One of the first displays we encounter upon entering the museum is a massive world map displaying the flow and volume of settlers from different regions of the globe to America. While New Zealand can be made out on the map as two small bits of green next to Australia, there is a distinct lack of arrows pointing in the direction of the U.S. from our South Pacific haven. This could mean one of two things: either our migratory population is fairly insignificant in the greater scheme of things, or New Zealand just hasn't had its turn to shed a great wave of outbound migration to America yet. I'd be willing to bet on the latter.
After lunch, our sightseeing tour of the city doesn't get any less melancholy. We are at Ground Zero now, gazing down at the improbably large hole in the ground where the World Trade Center towers once stood. To say that the hole is immense doesn't begin to do it justice. It doesn't just take up one city block; it takes up about four. Reconstruction is already underway and one of the new buildings, WTC 7, is already complete. "Fuck you, Osama", it says as it towers 226 metres above the former rubble of Ground Zero, and the tallest building in the complex is due to top out in 2011 at a height of 541 metres.
Given Americans' penchant for tackiness and overblown patriotic zeal, I am pleased to report that the Ground Zero viewing platform, and indeed all the WTC memorials scattered across the city, have been designed with a tactful restraint and respect for the dead. The viewing platform I'm on is free of anti-terrorist rhetoric and commercial notices. It simply features a long stone wall, upon which the names of each victim of 9/11 is engraved. Likewise, many of the fire stations and police departments in Manhattan feature understated but touching tributes to their men who were killed that day. Even for someone who had no connection to anyone killed or involved in the events that day, the emotion of these memorials is overwhelming.
In the evening we take a stroll across another of New York's iconic landmarks, the Brooklyn Bridge. In a city that boasts remarkable feats of architecture at almost every turn, this bridge is one of the finest of them all. When it was opened for use 125 years ago, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world and its towers were the highest structures in the Western Hemisphere. What is more remarkable is that its designers could never have foreseen that the bridge would one day carry six lanes of heavy traffic (145,000 vehicles a day in fact), yet it has stood largely unmodified to this day. The walk across it is long but spectacular, offering views both ways down the harbour and a jaw-dropping panorama of Manhattan's soaring skyscrapers every time I turn around. And there's lots of pubs on the opposite shore.
Tired and sweaty, we stop in for a beer at an inviting old school pub in the Dumbo (Down Under Manhattan Bridge - don't ask me what the "o" stands for) district. In one small back room of the pub I find a tribute, replte with names and pictures, to the 30 or so workers who lost their life during construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Some were crushed when stone blocks fell, others died of the bends while diving to secure the towers' foundations. One poor bastard even had an epileptic fit and fell from the top of the tower. It occurs to me that epileptics are probably best served not working on herculean construction projects. Thankfully his misfortune has been memorialised in this small, humble room, providing thousands of historically-conscious alcoholics the opportunity to silently toast him and his ill-timed bout of uncontrollable dizziness.
Back at the table, ESPN has switched from showing the World's Strongest Man competition to footage of the baseball All Star Game Parade through the city streets. Governor Richard Paterson and Mayor Mike Bloomberg are wandering about looking pleased with themselves.
"Did you see what these guys did at the Pakistani Day Parade a few months ago?", asks Tony, who has joined us for the walk across the bridge and the beers. No, we did not.
"They were leading the parade, so when they got the call to start, off they went, marching down the street. Trouble was, they were marching by themselves. The two separate factions of the Pakistani marchers were brawling at the start line so they were just walking ahead by themselves, waving to the crowd and all that. But of course, they didn't think to look behind them, and no one bothered to tell them what had happened".
The mental image of a Jew and a Christian walking together side by side through through the New York streets and saluting their adoring citizens, while a large throng of Muslims beat the shit out of each other some distance behind, nicely encapsulates the multicultural spirit that pervades this fine city.
After dinner, we head out onto the street and back towards the bridge when I notice a man walking two peculiar-looking dogs on the street ahead of me. They are very short and squat, and I've never seen a dog's tail wag like that before. Perhaps the beers have gone to my head already. I get a bit closer and - to my immense surprise and pleasure - that the man isn't walking his pet dogs, he's walking his pet pigs . They're on leashes just like dogs, they're frantically sniffing about the place just like dogs, but they're fat little pigs.
"They're really affectionate", says the owner, pausing while people gather round to take photos. "I'll get these guys home, and in five minutes they'll be lying on my lap on the couch watching TV". Why you would want two pigs lying on your lap while watching TV is still unclear.
"They don't smell, they don't shed, they're extremely smart. They make better pets than dogs, really". By now, a crowd of about 50 people has formed at various points on the street corner, some taking photos, others approaching the owner thinking of a suitable question to ask him but having the words fail them, others still just standing a respectable distance away and squinting hard at the pigs, as if wondering whether it's time for a new pair of spectacles. Cars are backed up in every direction, the drivers craning their necks to see what has caused the commotion. It must take this guy forever to walk the pigs anywhere, given that a similar ruckus must surely form on every corner.
Eventually it all dies down as the Brooklyn locals go back to their own pig-free existences. Nothing surprises me about New York anymore, I realise, still vaguely aware of grunting and foraging noises wafting through the night air from across the street. This town is so diverse, every neighbourhood and locale so unique, that you could get away with pretty much anything and no one would bat an eyelid. We walk back across the bridge, the skyline now lit up from the Statue of Liberty on our left to the Empire State Building far away to our right. We walk through bustling, living streets feeling as safe as always, and jump on the Subway which is quick, cheap, efficient and well lit. It's been an emotional but instructive day, and I've seen a few things I definitely would not see anywhere but here.
I still can't shake the feeling that if I owned a pig, I'd come home drunk and hungry one night and... well, you know. Come on, I'm only human.
Neighbourhoods that were previously plagued by urban decay have suddenly blossomed again. The gangsters and drug addicts have faded away and been replaced by trendy hipsters, Hispanic kids kicking a football down the street, and punchdrunk tourists pointing cameras at everything that moves.
"It's the gays", Shelly explains, rather cryptically at first. "The gays move into a neighbourhood, buy up the cheap property, do places up, make them habitable, then everyone else moves in. They did it in Williamsburg, East Village, West Village, Soho"...
Innovative homosexuals with an eye for fabulous interior design are America's 21st century urban pioneers, or so it seems. Davy Crockett must be spinning in his grave.
"And the city has never been safer", Shelly continues. "You wouldn't believe the number of undercover cops they have in this town. Thousands! Dressed like bums and low-lifes too, so you'd never suspect 'em. Of course, they can't stop everything from happening, but they're pretty close to it".
Shelly has been kind enough to lend us his vacant apartment on the Upper West Side for a few days and is now driving us to Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan, where we are to board a ferry. Shelly was best friends with my father and Larry David at high school. After university however, he did not take my father's noble path of getting a doctor to write him a phoney medical report declaring him unfit for military service and subsequently joining the peace corps and being posted on a remote Fijian Island to avoid getting his ass shot off by Charlie. Shelly just stayed in New York instead. As it happened, he didn't have to go to Vietnam - much less get his ass shot off - and he's lived here ever since. "I can't imagine ever leaving this town", he says, and I don't blame him.
New York's harbour isn't as visually stunning as Sydney's, or even Dunedin's, but neither of the latter two can boast having the Statue of Liberty in their centre. Regardless of the vantage point - and at 305 feet it can be seen from pretty much anywhere - the statue casts a hugely imposing figure. From its creation in 1886 until the advent of commercial air travel, it was the first image that greeted newly-arriving immigrants to the country.
The second image, and the structure considerably less clogged by tourists on this sunny July day, would have been Ellis Island. Sitting adjacent to Liberty Island, Ellis housed the immigration station through which every man, woman and child enterting via the Atlantic was processed. Twelve million people passed through this island during its peak years between 1892 and 1924, hoping for a better life in the land of opporunity. These days, many of the people who come here are retracing the steps of their distant relatives.
100 millions Americans can trace their ancestry back to Ellis Island: that's almost a third of the population. Standing in the midst of a common starting point for new Americans from all over the world - Europe in particular - provides me with a peculiar and melancholy feeling. Most of the immigrants who arrived here owned nothing but the clothes on their backs. A century on, their identities have been completed absorbed throughout America but their contributions to their adopted homeland are evident throughout the staggeringly multicultural city of New York. Over 200 different languages are spoken in this city alone.
It's easily overlooked by mindless anti-American bigots across the world who view the country as one large redneck haven, but the U.S. is far and away the most multicultural nation on earth. Long dependent on new arrivals for its livelihood, it has welcomed waves of immigration that have taken in every region of the globe: British and Spanish in its early years, the African slaves, then the Irish, the Eastern Europeans, the Jews, The Chinese, and finally, the Latin Americans. The result is a patchwork of different races and peoples who came to American with a common goal in mind. This is superbly illustrated in the thousands of photographs and first person immigrant accounts now on display in the museum which stands on the Ellis Island site.
It must be said that immigrants from New Zealand have not played a significant part in shaping America's national identity. One of the first displays we encounter upon entering the museum is a massive world map displaying the flow and volume of settlers from different regions of the globe to America. While New Zealand can be made out on the map as two small bits of green next to Australia, there is a distinct lack of arrows pointing in the direction of the U.S. from our South Pacific haven. This could mean one of two things: either our migratory population is fairly insignificant in the greater scheme of things, or New Zealand just hasn't had its turn to shed a great wave of outbound migration to America yet. I'd be willing to bet on the latter.
After lunch, our sightseeing tour of the city doesn't get any less melancholy. We are at Ground Zero now, gazing down at the improbably large hole in the ground where the World Trade Center towers once stood. To say that the hole is immense doesn't begin to do it justice. It doesn't just take up one city block; it takes up about four. Reconstruction is already underway and one of the new buildings, WTC 7, is already complete. "Fuck you, Osama", it says as it towers 226 metres above the former rubble of Ground Zero, and the tallest building in the complex is due to top out in 2011 at a height of 541 metres.
Given Americans' penchant for tackiness and overblown patriotic zeal, I am pleased to report that the Ground Zero viewing platform, and indeed all the WTC memorials scattered across the city, have been designed with a tactful restraint and respect for the dead. The viewing platform I'm on is free of anti-terrorist rhetoric and commercial notices. It simply features a long stone wall, upon which the names of each victim of 9/11 is engraved. Likewise, many of the fire stations and police departments in Manhattan feature understated but touching tributes to their men who were killed that day. Even for someone who had no connection to anyone killed or involved in the events that day, the emotion of these memorials is overwhelming.
In the evening we take a stroll across another of New York's iconic landmarks, the Brooklyn Bridge. In a city that boasts remarkable feats of architecture at almost every turn, this bridge is one of the finest of them all. When it was opened for use 125 years ago, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world and its towers were the highest structures in the Western Hemisphere. What is more remarkable is that its designers could never have foreseen that the bridge would one day carry six lanes of heavy traffic (145,000 vehicles a day in fact), yet it has stood largely unmodified to this day. The walk across it is long but spectacular, offering views both ways down the harbour and a jaw-dropping panorama of Manhattan's soaring skyscrapers every time I turn around. And there's lots of pubs on the opposite shore.
Tired and sweaty, we stop in for a beer at an inviting old school pub in the Dumbo (Down Under Manhattan Bridge - don't ask me what the "o" stands for) district. In one small back room of the pub I find a tribute, replte with names and pictures, to the 30 or so workers who lost their life during construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Some were crushed when stone blocks fell, others died of the bends while diving to secure the towers' foundations. One poor bastard even had an epileptic fit and fell from the top of the tower. It occurs to me that epileptics are probably best served not working on herculean construction projects. Thankfully his misfortune has been memorialised in this small, humble room, providing thousands of historically-conscious alcoholics the opportunity to silently toast him and his ill-timed bout of uncontrollable dizziness.
Back at the table, ESPN has switched from showing the World's Strongest Man competition to footage of the baseball All Star Game Parade through the city streets. Governor Richard Paterson and Mayor Mike Bloomberg are wandering about looking pleased with themselves.
"Did you see what these guys did at the Pakistani Day Parade a few months ago?", asks Tony, who has joined us for the walk across the bridge and the beers. No, we did not.
"They were leading the parade, so when they got the call to start, off they went, marching down the street. Trouble was, they were marching by themselves. The two separate factions of the Pakistani marchers were brawling at the start line so they were just walking ahead by themselves, waving to the crowd and all that. But of course, they didn't think to look behind them, and no one bothered to tell them what had happened".
The mental image of a Jew and a Christian walking together side by side through through the New York streets and saluting their adoring citizens, while a large throng of Muslims beat the shit out of each other some distance behind, nicely encapsulates the multicultural spirit that pervades this fine city.
After dinner, we head out onto the street and back towards the bridge when I notice a man walking two peculiar-looking dogs on the street ahead of me. They are very short and squat, and I've never seen a dog's tail wag like that before. Perhaps the beers have gone to my head already. I get a bit closer and - to my immense surprise and pleasure - that the man isn't walking his pet dogs, he's walking his pet pigs . They're on leashes just like dogs, they're frantically sniffing about the place just like dogs, but they're fat little pigs.
"They're really affectionate", says the owner, pausing while people gather round to take photos. "I'll get these guys home, and in five minutes they'll be lying on my lap on the couch watching TV". Why you would want two pigs lying on your lap while watching TV is still unclear.
"They don't smell, they don't shed, they're extremely smart. They make better pets than dogs, really". By now, a crowd of about 50 people has formed at various points on the street corner, some taking photos, others approaching the owner thinking of a suitable question to ask him but having the words fail them, others still just standing a respectable distance away and squinting hard at the pigs, as if wondering whether it's time for a new pair of spectacles. Cars are backed up in every direction, the drivers craning their necks to see what has caused the commotion. It must take this guy forever to walk the pigs anywhere, given that a similar ruckus must surely form on every corner.
Eventually it all dies down as the Brooklyn locals go back to their own pig-free existences. Nothing surprises me about New York anymore, I realise, still vaguely aware of grunting and foraging noises wafting through the night air from across the street. This town is so diverse, every neighbourhood and locale so unique, that you could get away with pretty much anything and no one would bat an eyelid. We walk back across the bridge, the skyline now lit up from the Statue of Liberty on our left to the Empire State Building far away to our right. We walk through bustling, living streets feeling as safe as always, and jump on the Subway which is quick, cheap, efficient and well lit. It's been an emotional but instructive day, and I've seen a few things I definitely would not see anywhere but here.
I still can't shake the feeling that if I owned a pig, I'd come home drunk and hungry one night and... well, you know. Come on, I'm only human.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)