We left Paris in a hurry. It is 9:30 in the morning on November 16th, and we are on the road once again, driving on the A1 towards Lille. The goal for the day is to make it to the Netherlands before the sun sets. It is impossible to discern day from night. For the past week, all of Western Europe has been experiencing freak weather including snow in Paris and flooding in Venice, Italy. I can’t remember the last day we saw the sun.
We drive past Lille, take the E17 around Ghent and Antwerp, and then the A27 towards Ultrecht before we stop for a break at a petrol station outside Bunnik along the A12. Out of nowhere, Simon recalls his friend Pim, who he used to buy hash off of when he lived in Amsterdam twenty-something years ago. I leave the car to briskly walk around the petrol station parking lot while Simon calls his friend. When I return to the van, I see Simon has a huge smile plastered to his red face as he asks me, “Guess where we’re going?”
I type in the coordinates for the small town of Hengelo and we’re on our way once again. Simon gives me a basic history of his friendship with Pim. Pim had one bad LSD trip 30 years back and has since been living off of disability money. “I must warn you,” Simon states, “Pim has very unusual views on life, but he’s absolutely harmless.” I begin questioning if Pim is as safe as Simon makes him out to be.
One hour passes on the road and we approach the small town of Hengelo. I find myself in awe of the tidiness of the town and the quaint old brick houses that are in perfect condition. Simon says, “This can’t be right…Hengelo is right off the motorway and near the border of Germany” Sure enough, I put in the wrong Hengelo, but fortunately the correct one outside of Enschede is only a 45 minute drive away.
Before we arrive in the second Hengelo, Simon asks me how I like the Netherlands so far. I simply tell him, “I like it. I’ve never seen so much flat land before, even parts of Texas have more variety than this. But, it’s beautiful and I’m impressed by how tidy everything is.” He simply agreed, chuckles a bit, and tells me the meaning of the word “Netherlands”, which means “lowlands” in Dutch.
We arrive in Hengelo, and I meet the infamous Pim for the first time! He is around 68 inches tall, lanky, straight gray-blonde hair that goes halfway down his back, wears baggy clothes, and smells of nothing but old tobacco and marijuana. He briefly greets us into his apartment, which has clean floors but the tabletops are filled with a colorful assortment of wrappers and empty lighters. Just as quick as we went inside we left again, following Pim’s lead as he directed us to the nearest coffee shop.
I soon learned that the term “coffee shop” means an establishment that legally sells marijuana in conjunction with a bar or coffee stand. We first head into the Moby Dick coffee shop, where Simon buys enough weed and tobacco to keep himself entertained for the rest of the week. We then walk to the Innocent music venue, where Pim volunteers his time behind the bar. Everyone in the small village are looking our way as me and Simon walk through town, taking great notice of who we are.
Upon entering the venue, Pim is greeted as if he is a town celebrity. Everyone in the place knows him well, and he retreats to the smoking section of the place with Simon, which is separated from the rest through a series of glass doors. Cheap dance remix music is playing on full blast as Simon and Pim got to talking and socializing in the next room while I stay alone in the bar section. There is no one else in the room except for the bartender, who’s falling asleep behind the bar counter after smoking too much with his friends a few minutes earlier in the other room.
I go to order a beer from the bartender by saying, “May ik alsjeblieft even pils?”, which are the only words I know by memory in Dutch. To my surprise then disappointment, the bartender carried on a conversation with me in English the entire time. “So much for trying to learn Dutch from the old naked Dutch couples in all of those naturist camps in France and Spain over the past six weeks!,” I say to myself under my breath with my back turned to the bartender.
November 17th
I wake up at the crack of dawn on November 17th to Simon and Pim engaging in loud conversation; both of them are stoned out of their minds. I hear them reminisce about the good old days of running various drug bus businesses over the years and complaining about how difficult it is to be a squatter today in the Netherlands. I make myself a cup of coffee while I overhear Pim loudly exclaim, “George Bush! He and Osama Bin Laden were best friends, news came out today.”
Simon is unresponsive to Pim’s latest conspiracy theory. Simon takes another drag off of his spliff while Pim quickly turns around to face me as I’m standing in the kitchen, coffee in hand. He stares me down with his bloodshot eyes, looking at me and wearing an expression of contempt as he yells, “George Bush!” I don’t want to get caught up in political conspiracy theories. I chug down my coffee, throw on my raincoat, scarf and shoes, taking his invitation to discuss George Bush as my cue to leave.
For the next 90 minutes, I walk a total of six kilometers in 40 degree weather. A lot of people look at me as I rush past them on the bike path through town, my walking speed being closer to a jog than a casual stroll. A smile is glued to my face as I am enjoying the scenery and getting lost in my thoughts. This is the first time I’ve had some time alone in about two weeks.
I return to Pim’s place and walk through the door to hear Pim at it again with another conspiracy theory. He goes on a five minute tangent explaining to Simon how the little blonde-haired boy wearing a blue shirt on the cover of his pack of smokes is Vladimir Putin rolling cigarettes for his father as a kid. As usual, Simon ignores Pim’s statements and mindlessly rolls himself another cigarette.
For the rest of the day, Simon and Pim continue with their usual banter about how things were ‘back in the day’. I stick to my corner of the room, trying to get myself interested in the plot of the book Many Dimensions by Charles Williams. Every time there was a ten second period of silence, Pim would break it by once again exclaiming, “George Bush!” only to have his remarks greeted by more silence.
It is nearing the end of the day and I retreat to my sleeping bag, which neighbors the couch Simon and Pim have been lounging on all day. I soon learn that this move was a mistake. Instead of Pim yelling his remarks to the wall, he now tries to stare my down while yelling, “George Bush!”. Every time he tries to get me involved, I raise my book up to my eyes to cover them and pretend to be super enthralled by Charles William’s written words.
Simon wakes me up at 6:30 on the morning of November 18th. Both of us are equally eager to leave. Simon wants to leave because he wants to get to Groningen to meet his friends. I want to leave so that I can get away from conspiracy-theory Pim. Never before have I been more excited to leave a place super early in the morning. We leave Pim’s place without saying goodbye, and we are once again on the road, continuing what Simon calls ‘a bus-man’s holiday’.
Lizard's Deviant Travels 