Tales from the Edge: Amsterdam to Berlin, part 3 of 3

Continued from part2: http://www.scribd.com/doc/58530597/Talesfrom-the-edge-Amsterdam-to-Berlin-part-2-of-3

After I had been kicked off the train, I reflected on a feeling I had in the morning as I was leaving my container in Amsterdam, that today would either be an amazing day or a complete disaster. My next thought was 'How could this be an amazing day when my only aim is to get somewhere successfully?' I prayed for a normal day instead. I turned out to be wrong. It was now clear to me after meeting Ben the gnome, blazing like a madman, fighting with the conductor, getting kicked off the train, and losing my luggage that it WAS an amazing day, by way of being a complete disaster. And I had the sense that fate had thrown me into an adventure that I wouldn't easily forget.

In reality, to say that my mood was good was not exactly accurate. I mean, I was having some great moments at this time, and in the days that followed, but overall, my frame of mind could best be described as manic. I don't quite know why. I have my bad moments, like everyone, but generally I'm pretty stable, despite what you, the reader of this crazy tale, may think. I don't really drink that heavily in general. I think these crazy events were mostly Dutch weed fuelled, that stuff is far stronger than what I'm used to, and I've lived in Canada! Combined with all the crazy chance events which happened during this trip, it put me into a manic state of mind. And upon returning home, I subsequently went on a 2 month detox, which aided in my recovery.

But for now, I was in Groningen, a university town in Northern Holland, and I had a head full of steam which I needed to blow off. I bought a notebook in a newsagents, because I just wanted to write, to record the events, and my thoughts. The first thing I did after checking into the hostel was go to a coffee shop. It was quite a dodgy place, with dodgy people, and my previous experience made me extra wary, so I went to another coffee shop, which was more my kind of place. I chatted to the owner for a while, told him some of my tales, and got even more high. Then I went to a bar, and befriended pretty much everyone there.

I gave them a present of a Blaxploitation CD that Jan had given me in Amsterdam after my week's work, but not without copying it onto my laptop first. They were super happy with this, as they were really big fans of old funk, and soul.

I left this bar a few hours later as they were closing, and to be honest, my memories of subsequent events that night are very patchy. I do remember this; I was fucking wound up to hell after the previous few days' events and I was thrown out of literally every single bar I visited, and that's quite a few bars. I do remember turning to one bouncer as he was throwing me out and saying in a drunk voice 'I have an anger deep within my soul', which isn't technically true, I was just wound up and drunk/stoned. He emitted a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a shout and rightfully kicked me the fuck out of there, kindly enough, without causing any damage to me. I think he knew I was just some harmless drunken fool. Luckily for me, Groningen is a peaceful town, and I made it through the night safely and woke up the following morning in the hostel with nothing more than a bad hangover and a limited recollection of the previous night's events.

The hostel in Groningen was fantastic, cheap, and run by a big friendly Dutch guy with an eyepatch, who would have made a great character in a Tarantino film. I decided that I was going nowhere that day, and was just gonna chill. I befriended two Tazmanian Dutch guys in the hostel - Kyle and Mark. Unlike the actual Dutch, these guys were slightly shorter than me. I'm pretty sure the Dutch government put something in the water after World War II, to make a race of giant warrior people. They're fucking big.

So, I spent the day just relaxing with Kyle and Mark, playing football in the park, doing normal shit, teaching them Gaelic Football. It was very calming to my frayed nerves. That night we went barhopping around Groningen. We basically just spent the night drinking and chatting up girls, good honest fun. A very cute Dutch girl with a boyfriend kissed me at the end of the night. I wasn't complaining.

The next day, I felt that my stay in Groningen was overextended, and it was time for me to leave, I needed to get to Hamburg, and onto Berlin. On the way to Hamburg, there were two stops in Germany, the first one was in Leer, the weirdest village I've ever visited, and the second was in Bremen. I just couldn't resist the urge to blaze again on the platform in Groningen. It sure felt good to be finally heading for Germany, not that I didn't enjoy Groningen.

On the train to Leer, I had a very strange experience. I met a guy from Amsterdam, a dancer, and a dance teacher, in his 40's I think, but a young guy. He was talking to me about expression, and right in mid-conversation, he started rubbing against me. Not in a sexual way at all. My perception of it was that he was trying to pass me a message, an unspeakable understanding, shared via touch. I know it's fucking nuts to say it, but I think I got something from it.

During this whole day, I was seriously wondering if this volcano had altered reality. It was like the video to Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun, mixed with some David Lynch movie kinda vibe. Just weirdness all around. Every conversation was tinged with strangeness. I took a walk around Leer. It's a strange village, long and narrow, one street deep. As I was walking on the street, people were coming to the windows of shops to look at me. I don't think they got many tourists there. Some of them were laughing at me. I didn't get why, and I still don't, but they were friendly. I went back to the train station to continue the journey, and took out my notebook, and wrote nonsense for an hour while waiting for my train. My mind was super charged and firing on all cylinders in many directions, like a monkey on speed. But it was nice to write.

I went onto Bremen, and stayed a while. Very uneventful, just went for one beer and chatted to the barman about Engineering, which he was studying. Then it was onto Hamburg. In the train station at Bremen, I realised I had lost my ticket to Hamburg. So, I went to buy another. Some guy approached me as I was buying and told me that he'd take me on his 'family ticket' if I paid him a few euros, I can't remember how much. I agreed, it was cheaper, and this overrode my general distrust of people since my

mugging. He took me to meet 'his family', i.e. other travellers like me. One was a 22 year old Argentinian German girl from Hamburg, who didn't speak at all to me. She just smiled and laughed a lot. She was very very good looking and she was staring at me for the whole trip. As the train stopped everyone else got off, and we just stayed there. I asked her if she wanted to go for coffee, and she just kissed me. We went to a bar and had a very passionate drink. I was destroyed after everything, just burnt out, and this was just another in a long sequence of bizarre events. The strangest thing was that she barely talked at all throughout the whole encounter. She gave me her number and told me that she'd meet me later that night, as she was already on her way to meet someone else.

I linked up with Ben after this. Went to his apartment, met his student friends, really cool kids, and regaled them with tales of the previous few days. I texted Yana, the Argentinian German girl, but she told me she couldn't meet me after all. Easy come, easy go, I guess. I was a bit disappointed, but whatever. I also had some moonshine left over from Amsterdam, which I offered to Ben and friends, before warning them profusely about what they were about to smoke. Ben barely listened. In fact, I think my warning had the opposite effect to that intended, and he giddily blazed like a rasta returning to Jamaica. A few hours later, his gnomish head was staring into space, wondering what the fuck had just happened to him.

The next day, it was onto Berlin. I travelled by bus and was happy, and relaxed. I took out my notebook and wrote some more. Upon arrival in Berlin, and getting off the bus, the first accent I heard was some American girl asking her friend where the nearest Subway was. Don't get me wrong, I love Americans, and have many great American friends, but I knew at this point that reality was back, and that the dream world I had been living in had vanished. One strange thing did happen in Berlin. The first people I met in the hostel Bar were the English couple who tried to help me on the train as I was getting kicked off. Strange coincidence, but not really I guess.

I went to an interview (I didn't get the job, but came pretty close. They demand a very high standard). I went to a 24 hour techno party at the weekend. Didn't take anything stronger than weed at it, and didn't actually enjoy it too much. It's old hat, and I'm bored out my mind with techno. It always seems to find me whenever I visit Berlin. I'd love to see another side to the city, because I know it exists. I went back to Ireland exhausted and bewildered. Detox followed, and normality soon returned, and everything has been great since. Standard up and down kinda shit really, nothing to write about, but then again, balance and contentment is quite boring, but rewarding.

So, no major morals to be gained from this experience, except that dutch weed is fucking strong, and Amsterdam isn't a safe city for tourists travelling alone. Such is my limited understanding of it. Incidentally, I must be the only guy in history to visit Amsterdam and fail at buying cocaine and paying for sex. By the way, if you've made it this far in my crazy tale, I salute you! ... I will include one more thing for you; A transcription of my notebook ramblings from the train station in Leer. Let me make a disclaimer right now, and say that I'm putting it here for comedic value more than anything else. Scientifically, It's not exactly technically right (rechnically tight (?)), but it's a fairly good approximation. Enjoy! And if you liked reading this comedy of tragedies, please do share and rate using the links provided...

**Leer, 21st April, 2010

Ok, now I'm at the station in Leer, waiting on a train to Bremen, where I will stop. Then onto Hamburg. I've been frustrated with writing thus far, trying to capture every thought, every detail of my adventure. It's difficult to put into words how I actually FEEL. So I've decided to concentrate more on the process and less on the details, because I can't capture every conversation. Having walked around Leer, I've decided to write more about what brought me here. The answer is 'the volcano'. This is the element that gives this story weight. A massive event that affects millions of people. It sets the scene, and inspires this trip. Everybody who's asked me how I travelled since I left Amsterdam gets a response of 'the volcano brought me here', and I'd be lying if I said I didn't

believe it 100%. The fact is, it's bloody true, whether you want to look at it in a superstitious, awe-inspiring way, or in a banal way. I'm taking a 'big picture' view of it and am awe-inspired. While walking around Leer I came to see the world in a different light to before.

The universe is essentially (from my point of view) an infinite loop of layers of energy vibrating at different frequencies. People are just nodes in this loop. Like atoms, they interact, and are part of a bigger node called the earth. These interactions are complex and involve an exchange of quite a lot of energy. Basically, what defines the world for most of us is how we perceive it. We have eyes that pick up various frequencies of light, ears that pick up various frequencies of sound. But in reality, light and sound are the same thing, with a few minor differences. They just have a much different frequency range. What about all of those frequencies that exist above, below, and between light and sound? Well our perception of them is limited, but some people seem to be aware of them, I can sense this sometimes when I meet people. I sensed it twice today already, although I still feel blind as fuck sometimes, chasing my tail like some idiot dog, but I digress. It's hard to break established habits, but it's good to be aware of them at least. So, like the atoms, protons, electrons etc. people have attractions, repulsions, and sometimes collisions.

A human heart has a tempo range of 50bpm to 180bpm approximately, and tadaa - that's the exact range of musical tempo. Any higher than 180bpm and our brain automatically reinterprets it as half that amount. Music is an interesting analogy actually because music 'breathes', it has lower frequencies also. It has phrases, and sub-phrases which repeat to make a body of work. And then there's the frequencies of the sound itself, and all the harmonic frequencies which make up the character of the sound. Somehow the combination of all of these frequencies together resonates with us, some more than others, and makes us happy, sometimes making us dance. Dancing is another expression of these frequencies. There's not a scientific instrument in the world which can measure this expression and resonance, and what defines it. This is why scientific sceptics hack me off. If they can't measure it, they don't want to know. Honestly, show me one scientific paper which adequately defines music, and then we'll talk. Music,

like life, is undefinable. But we can FEEL it. Like music, I can feel life, and sometimes that which I know to be true is unexplainable. That's why musicians and artists are some of my favourite people... because they can also sense this. And trust me, it's epic!