Oh Amsterdam...



Amsterdam
A.Dam
Amsterdamage
The city stuck in teenage party land

God damn! Amsterdam is a hard town to figure out. Of course everyone internationally knows the city. It is quite famous for the windmills and cheese and bikes and Anne Frank and Van Gogh and for being a "party town". But underneath all of that, it is hard to really understand. I can understand why, with so many tourists invading the city every day, I would try and hide my "real" self as well. So the city ends up looking like a tourist trap with canals and bridges. The Red Light District is a shopping mall of skin and sex. The Coffee Shops are a shopping mall of drugs and the streets are littered with "British Bachelours" and, well, litter.

The "British Bachelours" are loud and obnoxious. Are they like this all the time? Are they like this back at home? What an annoying bunch of people... loud rude and acting like they rule the world (news flash, its been hundreds of years since you did). They cross over to Amsterdam, partake in the sex and drugs and then go to the hundreds of "British Pubs" that they have in Amsterdam... which leads me to ask; Why didn't you just stay at home if you are just going to do the same things here? I wish more of the cool brittish folk would travel and start fixing up this tarnished reputation.



Bikes... everyone in Amsterdam rides a bike. Bikes rule this town, and they ride like they know it. Cars are afraid of bikes, they stop and cower. Cars will always give the right of way to bikes (as they are outnumbered) and will feel the wrath of the scorned cyclist if they ever step out of line. When the war between cars and bikes begins, this will be the headquarters of the bikes.



If you ever need to go to the bathroom in Amsterdam (assuming that A) you are a man and B) you only need to urinate) then you are in luck. They have mastered and perfected what they call the "Pissoir". It is a urinal on the street that you simply enter and relieve yourself at, it takes but a few minute, they are everywhere and you can piss and watch people on the street at the same time. No doubt it was invented out of necessity after having to many drunk "British Bachelours" fall into the canal.

So we did some workshops and did a show in Amsterdam and everything was over in a flash, and it always is in Amsterdam. You leave wondering if it all really happened. And you leave wondering where the real Amsterdam is, and if next time you go you will get to see a glimpse of the shy Amsterdam that hides underneath and behind the out going tourist trap party animal.

Next time maybe...

The Lube 2008


Ljubljana, Slovenia


Ljubjana (or "The Lube" as Crumbs so affectionately calls it) is a nice little town nestled safely in the middle of Slovenia. It has that mediterennean feel to it (whatever that means) while have less of the machismo (and we all know what that means). Being part of the former Yugoslavian empire (or state or whatever) had its impact of course. But we feel it most with there humour. First, as the country fought with its own identity and the collapse of communism, it was reflected in "transitional humour" and then later with "post transitional humour" as the population needed to deal with these massive changes on a sub-conscious level. It is quite hard for anyone else to understand the humour and jokes of these periods, as most would not even recognize them as jokes or even funny, labeling them "weird". But holy jeez, the Lube is beautiful and the people there that we hang out with are among the nicest and most interesting people around. If you ever get a chance to check out Theatre Narobov and their "post-transitional humour" do it, and then do it again.

Don't jump on Trampolines


Trampoline:

A trampoline is a gymnastic and recreational device consisting of a piece of taut, strong fabric stretched over a steel frame using many coiled springs to provide a rebounding force which propels the jumper high into the air. In a trampoline, the fabric is not elastic itself; the elasticity is provided by the springs which connect it to the frame. It is also very very very very very very dangerous.

first, a little trampoline history

Now back to the cautionary tale,

Lars is the "coach", it is a nickname we gave him several years ago in Gottingen (note that Gottingen should really have an umlaut over the o but the constraints of my North American keyboard limits the languages I can type in). Lars is the the Gottingen Comedy Company who put on the improv festival there and it is always good fun. Lars also is the person who first got me "into" zombies, though for right now, that piece of information is not really important.

We arrive in Gottingen and everything seems fine, although it is not Lars picking us up at the train station. We find out that it is because he is in the hospital. It turns out that Lars had a little bit of a trampoline accident. It also turns out that it wasn't a little trampoline accident at all, it was quite a large one, at least in impact. Two weeks ago Lars was enjoying his new favourite sport, the sport of trampolining. He had done, what at the time was not a particularly high jump, or difficult jump, or even an eventful jump. That is until it turned out to be just that, an eventful jump indeed. Lars had landed on one of his legs first (his left) and his knee had given out, more correctly it had bent like a knee bends, just it the complete wrong direction. He was beside himself in pain, while is bottom leg was beside himself in physical geography. He had been rushed to the hospital and told that he might loose his leg. Mission one was of course to save it, which they did. Then they got to work on saving the knee, which they did. So two weeks in the hospital, with an operation every couple days, another two weeks left, and many boring hours and hours spent lying down, was the life of Lars.

A quick visit to the hospital brought smiles and a couple of beers. He told us that the beer helped him sleep. He looked as bored as anyone would be, his leg attached to a large metal rod. It looked like rebar was sticking out of the concrete of a demolished building. He said that he read a lot. We wished him well, and he wished to us that he could play in the shows we were going to do.



We thought of him when we played. The shows were funny of course. We played with the Gottingen Comedy Company after all. We were also there with Theatre Narabov and Isar 148 who are always fun to play with as well. We thought of the good times we had jumping on a trampoline not two years ago while at a festival in Antwerp Belgium (it is in fact one of the happiest pictures I have ever seen of Lee, somehow though the picture is missing, perhaps it never existed and the memory was created). And we vowed, in the name of Lars, to never jump on a trampoline again. We also thought to buy Lars a book to read while he lay in healing, a book about a zombie invasion.