Rijksmuseum<\/a>, bidding me a last farewell then heading back to their respective bunks to get dressed for their day. \u00a0I was there alone by my bunk, feeling the void of finally separating from the hive mind we had created together with Butch\u2019s amazing hash and all Amsterdam\u2019s other intoxications and inducements. \u00a0I suddenly felt like the lamest of lame ducks, with no time left to really go anywhere other than hit the grocery store for food for the day and then make my way to the train station. \u00a0I quickly dressed, packed my backpack, donned my down jacket and then shouldered my big pack. \u00a0With that fifty pounds weighing me down again, my entire home of sorts on my back, I then managed awkwardly to cover it and me with my poncho and headed out of the bunkroom and its persistent smell of hashish and down the stairs to exit the hostel.<\/p>\nGreta was at her post at the front desk, slouched in her office chair with her bare feet up on the desk as she read a big unfolded newspaper. \u00a0She was wearing what looked like an old high school marching band jacket over a tie-dyed sweatshirt and ratty old bell bottom jeans, covered with sewn on patches of various random fabric, but still a few holes and rips unmended, including one on her butt that revealed a peek at her black underwear. \u00a0Her toenails were painted a shiny black. \u00a0She sized me up through her round metal rimmed Janis Joplin glasses and noticed the big hump on my back under my poncho. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look like you are leaving us!\u201d she said, and then putting on her best mock TV commercial English, \u201cThank you for choosing the Amsterdam Christian Youth Hostel!\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
I nodded with a bit of a grimace. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAch\u2026 sad face!\u201d she noted, followed by, \u201cRemember\u2026 Tot heil des volks\u201d, the words above the door of the place, \u201cThe salvation of the people\u201d in English, spoken by her with a big toothy grin and a wink. \u00a0That finally got a smile out of me.<\/p>\n
Yes I wanted so much to go home, but there was a part of me that wanted to stay. \u00a0To buzz up on Butch\u2019s killer hashish once again with the rest of them, and continue to explore this friendly, rainy city with the rest of the \u201cAmsterdamned\u201d, within the intimate connection of our shared intoxicating altered state of consciousness. \u00a0Continue to get to know the three of them, particularly the intriguing Gwendolyn as she continued to peel her own onion, even if as Burton\u2019s girlfriend. \u00a0Limited as it was, the gestalt or what the four of us had created together, our hive mind of four unique but connected souls in a unique moment in time and space, would never exist again forever. \u00a0Sure other moments of connection were obviously ahead with other people, some that would hopefully turn out to be even more compelling. \u00a0But a thing was, then it wasn\u2019t, and we moved on, anticipating that next thing.<\/p>\n
All this ran through my foggy mind, still recovering from yesterday\u2019s hash fest, as I wrestled the hood of my poncho over my big hair and soldiered my way out the door of the Christian Youth Hostel and down to Willemsstraat. \u00a0It was still chilling, but more of a light rain this morning than the ubiquitous drizzle, the city\u2019s Goddess\u2019s cold wet kiss all over my exposed face.<\/p>\n
I headed down the street to the grocery store to provision for the day ahead, which I anticipated would be on trains and ships and the stations in between, all of which I knew from experience would likely feature very expensive food. \u00a0I only had a few guilders left in cash, but they were willing to accept one of my three remaining $20 American Express traveler\u2019s checks. \u00a0In my intense fiscal frugalness, I struggled a moment with cashing it and being left with all those remaining guilders that I would have to exchange when I got to England, always feeling like I was getting ripped off in those exchange windows. \u00a0<\/p>\n
I plotted out my food needs for a whole day. \u00a0A full loaf of unsliced rye bread. \u00a0A full pound of inexpensive hard salami. \u00a0A half pound of hard cheese, Jarlsberg in this case. \u00a0Hard always kept better. \u00a0Two tubs of yogurt. \u00a0A bag of dried apricots. \u00a0A package of cookies. \u00a0A plastic bottle of Coke. \u00a0I managed to cram it all in my backpack, which along with all the stuff I had brought with me from the States (minus the items I had lost along the way), included the Christmas gifts I had bought for my family, particularly that large glass decanter I had bought for my dad in Italy.<\/p>\n
I had the decanter nestled in the middle of my pack to try to keep it from getting broken in transit, and each time I encountered it unpacking or repacking items around it, it struck me how, if nothing else, it was logistically not the best gift to have bought. \u00a0After all my thought and careful budgeting to keep a pot of money aside for buying Christmas gifts for my family, I had purchased the thing on a whim and I probably could have made a better choice. \u00a0Oh well!<\/p>\n
Leaving the store, I retraced my route from the hostel and then back to the train station in reverse, a couple blocks up the street then right on Brouwersgracht, along its big canal, pretty painted boats below with cozy townhouses on either side, all glistening in the wet. \u00a0Goodbye Amsterdamned. \u00a0Goodbye city. \u00a0Goodbye Goddess. \u00a0Be well. \u00a0Live long and prosper.<\/p>\n
In ten minutes I was inside the big train station, echoing with the sounds of bustling bodies and a thousand mostly to me unintelligible conversations. \u00a0Though unneeded now in a physical sense, it was still my cocoon, so I left my poncho on though with the hood off to fly the freak flag least it might signal other of my cohort that I was a fellow traveler. \u00a0Also from a practical point of view, if I took it off, what would I do with it. \u00a0Stow it wet in my backpack and make everything around it all wet, moldy and stinky. \u00a0When your life was in the pack on your back, a key to survival, or at least the avoidance of severe discomfort, was keeping that pack and its contents dry.<\/p>\n
I studied the big electromechanical board that posted all the arrivals and departures and found that my train to The Hook departed in about an hour. \u00a0Finding an empty bench on the departure platform I laid claim to its entirety, sitting on one side of the bench and draping my wet poncho over the rest, figuring by the time my train arrived it would be dry and i could then fold and stow it in my pack. \u00a0I scanned the platform for other backpacker types but saw none, and busied myself with eating and watching all the people.<\/p>\n
I pulled out my plane ticket and wrote all my flight information on the Aereogramme I had been saving to mail to my mom, figuring she would get it before I arrived so she would know to be at the airport when my plane landed. \u00a0It was an exciting act, another key task on the run up to my triumphant return. \u00a0But when I slipped it in a postbox by my platform it struck me that it was a British Aerogramme and I was mailing it in the Netherlands. \u00a0Had I stupidly jumped the gun to mail it here and not wait until this evening when I was back in England? \u00a0Would it even be delivered? \u00a0Would my mom not know when I was returning? \u00a0A call back home would be really expensive on my limited remaining money. \u00a0<\/p>\n
I stewed for a few minutes but finally decided to let it go. \u00a0I decided I would send my mom a postcard later today with my flight info as a backup. \u00a0Worst case I would hitchhike home from Metro Airport back to Ann Arbor. \u00a0You had to learn how to cope with those mistakes or losses, big or small. \u00a0You should learn a lesson, but also not get down on yourself, doing so merely increased the loss. \u00a0Sure it had been hard when you lose a $12 knife or leave 20 French Francs just sitting at the exchange. \u00a0That was the toughest one to cope with, what a maneuver on my part. \u00a0But I managed, and now I had no regrets. \u00a0It occurred to me that when I got back home how easy it would be to hang onto things because the quantity I had to constantly deal with would be drastically reduced. \u00a0When your entire life was carried somewhere on your person, that was a real administrative burden.<\/p>\n
It was a two and a half hour train ride from Amsterdam through The Hague and by the big port city of Rotterdam to The Hook of Holland, \u201chook\u201d or \u201choek\u201d in Dutch, actually meaning \u201ccorner\u201d in English. \u00a0Every bit off the Netherlands I traversed by train and saw out the window – cities, suburbs, woods, farms and port facilities – seemed well thought out and laid out, even pretty to look at. \u00a0Other than that view the train ride was uneventful and I read a copy of the International Herald Tribune<\/em> I had picked up at the Amsterdam train station. \u00a0<\/p>\nI read that last week the U.S. Senate had overwhelmingly confirmed Gerald Ford as the country\u2019s new Vice President and the House was expected to follow suit later this week, Ford to replace Spiro Agnew who had resigned under a legal cloud. \u00a0Some commentators speculated that Ford could become the first unelected U.S. president if Nixon was actually impeached and convicted. \u00a0I was now old enough to vote, though I had not had a chance yet to do so even in a local election, and was looking forward to casting my first ballot for president in 1976 for anyone but Nixon if he was still in office at that point. \u00a0It felt good reading the U.S. political stories in the Tribune, even the deepening Watergate scandal, because it was beginning to get me back in the flow of things at home.<\/p>\n
After seeing all the huge cranes and other port facilities of Rotterdam off in the distance, I was a little surprised that the train station at The Hook was small with just a single outdoor platform with what looked like a small beach town around it. \u00a0The rain had mostly stopped and since it was just a short walk to the ferry terminal I braved it without pulling out my stowed and dry poncho, for fear I would have nowhere to dry it off again on the boat. \u00a0The ferry itself was huge, by far the biggest vessel I\u2019d ever been on, the first that was actually a \u201cship\u201d rather than a \u201cboat\u201d. I queued up with a thousand other people and eventually got on. \u00a0I had the option to check my pack as baggage, but that felt too weird not to have it right with me all the time.<\/p>\n
The ship\u2019s whistles screamed at different low discordant pitches, and I felt the vibrations of the big engines below, as the propellers churned up the water behind us. \u00a0I stood on the stern rail for some time watching the Continental coast recede from view, and the ship moved out into the stormy roiling sea. \u00a0Goodbye people speaking languages I mostly did not understand, though with a little more understanding now than nine weeks ago. \u00a0Goodbye Continent! \u00a0I wondered how many years, decades, if ever, I would ply its roads, rails and rivers again.<\/p>\n
Goodbye my fellow backpackers, I would miss you most of all. \u00a0The place was all yours now to explore without me. \u00a0Keep the adventure alive and take care of each other. \u00a0And keep our shared dream of a transformed world that we would together make happen someday; full of peace, love and joy (and the necessary sex, drugs and rock n roll to help us keep on keeping on). \u00a0The yet unrealized dream of the \u201chippies\u201d that came before us. \u00a0The following the road they had paved, against the flow of hierarchy, violence and tragedy, perpetuated through time from centuries past. \u00a0The road my own cohort hoped to traverse more easily based on their work, into a better future.<\/p>\n
Getting farther out from shore, we were now firmly in the grasp of the Goddess of the sea. \u00a0With each big swell we traversed I felt the ship rising upward underneath me for 30 seconds or more like some monstrous elevator before peaking and then heading back down for another 30 seconds. \u00a0It was scary how profoundly awesome and powerful the sea was compared with the much tamer terra firma I had traversed for the last ten weeks and pretty much all of my life.<\/p>\n
Click to read the next chapter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was Wednesday December 5th and I awoke in my upper bunk in the Christian Youth Hostel in Amsterdam, the smell of hashish and tobacco in the air as it usually was. \u00a0I had not slept well, my mind buzzing late into the night with so many thoughts. \u00a0Returning from our journeys yesterday, we had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[1783,1774,289,368,515,1775,1661],"class_list":["post-5557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","tag-1970s","tag-autobiography","tag-backpacking-through-europe","tag-coming-of-age","tag-human-development","tag-memoir","tag-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5557"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5580,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions\/5580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/images.dailykos.com\/images\/389743\/story_image\/Storm_on_North_Sea.jpg?1492369171\")
It was Wednesday December 5th and I awoke in my upper bunk in the Christian Youth Hostel in Amsterdam, the smell of hashish and tobacco in the air as it usually was. \u00a0I had not slept well, my mind buzzing late into the night with so many thoughts. \u00a0Returning from our journeys yesterday, we had actually smoked one more round of Butch\u2019s stuff and played cards, my favorite game Hearts, until about two in the morning when we all collectively were about to pass out and agreed to call it quits. \u00a0No one wanted the day to end, the four of us having certainly done that day to the absolute max, for me my last full day on the Continent before returning to England and then flying home to the States.<\/p>\n