Arun, Subramanian & Venkataraman Go To Amsterdam

One of the good things about living in Munich is the ease with which one can travel to most of Europe's top tourist destinations. Last week, I had been to Amsterdam. It was Queen's Day, a day-long party festival in Amsterdam. Knowing what is legal there and how people party, I knew I was going to meet some "interesting" people. But the turn events took was far from my wildest imaginations!

I reached Amsterdam on 30th April morning, after a bus journey I will remember for life. The route was wonderful with beautiful mustard fields, green mountains, slight rain and overcast skies that made me feel I was in Kerala traveling from Palghat to Cochin. :)

I straight away went to Keukenhof tulip garden, which was the main agenda of my Amsterdam trip. With eighty acres of tulip gardens and miles of tulip fields outside, it was a colorful spectacle. After walking around for more than six hours, I finally gave up trying to cover the entire place and decided to go back to the city. I dint have any accommodation finalized, the plan was to go to the airport by midnight and sleep there in a waiting lounge.

I reached the city by around 7 PM and found it in total chaos. It was like Chennai T.Nagar Ranganathan Street during Diwali shopping; one main difference that more than 80% of the people were totally high and were causing total havoc!! There were groups of people sitting on the streets smoking Marijuana, with their hukka pots and other interesting smoking devices. There was a guy giving free weed for everyone and felt insulted when I kept ignoring him!

I roamed around the city and reached Central railway station by 11 PM, only to find that all trains to airport were cancelled due to an accident. There were special buses that took passengers to airport, but one had to show the flight ticket to get in that! That royally blew off my ‘staying in the airport plan’, I decided to go to another smaller subway station, which I knew had some comfortable armchairs. I was there by midnight and was glad to find a group of 8-10 students from France waiting there to take a bus to Paris the next day morning.

I sat in a comfortable armchair and slept almost immediately, glad to get some rest after a hectic day of walking. It was short lived though, I was woken up at 1 AM by security staff, they were there to lock the station! I still don’t get what is the need to lock a railway station! Reluctantly, I came out of the station.

Netherlands doesn't have windmills for nothing, it was crazily windy. The temperature was around 8 degrees, but the wind made it feel like 4 degrees. I was dressed in just one wind-cheater and cotton jeans (seriously, what was I thinking!), I knew I had to find a place to spend the next few hours. The only available place was a tiny telephone booth. It had glass doors, but they didn’t close completely, there was a good one foot opening at the bottom of the doors. I couldn’t sit down, so spent the whole night standing. I even managed to sleep in that posture for a while, before I fell backwards and hit my head on the glass door. :(

At 6 AM, the security guys were back to open the station doors. I had walked more than 10 kilometers the previous day and then spent a good 5 hours of the night standing in cold. I was not sure if my legs still functioned, but was glad to find them moving! Slowly I came out of the telephone box and just when I thought it was the end of adventure, I saw them.

They were three of them; one of them was 7 feet tall (seriously), two others of medium build. Their eyes said what they had smoked and noticed one of them holding a small knife. The 7 foot giant said something in Dutch; though I dint understand the language, I understood what he wanted, they wanted me to hand over my backpack and my wallet. I was being mugged!

One of the smaller fellows came near me, roughly punched my arm and tried to take my backpack away, the other fellow stood there with the knife while the giant kept talking in Dutch. I had my laptop, camera, passport, id cards and return ticket in the bag, I couldn’t imagine losing all that stuff. I also knew this was no movie where I could hit three hefty guys, compared to them I had the muscle definition of Linguini from Ratatouille! I realized my position and made a split second decision, I pushed the guy near me as hard as I can and ran !

Linguini from Ratatouille

I ran into the station and noticed that the muggers were running behind me. I ran through the empty platform to the other exit of the station and saw the security guys opening some doors there. I reached them panting, skidded to a halt and pointed at the three guys chasing me. Then followed some yelling from both sides, the security guys and muggers exchanged some “nice Dutch words” and after couple of minutes, when they realized I was not going to come out of the Lakshman-Rekha I had drawn around myself and the security people, the muggers just walked away.

I thanked the security guys and finally, tried to get some sleep in one of the comfortable armchairs. Now that I was safe, I thought what heroic alternatives I had other than running and hiding behind someone. My logical half said what I did was the right thing; one vegetarian Indian guy with Swedish meatballs as muscles and Potatismos as flesh versus three hefty African guys who also had the added energy of dope, no chance. But in that sleep deprived state, the other half of the brain screamed, ‘Dude, remember how a guy once mistook your name for three different guys; Arun, Subramanian and Venkataraman? Maybe you are equal to three guys, should have taken them down.’

Smiling to myself, shaking my head and trying to quell the argument, I nodded off to a deep sleep at 7 AM, praying God to make the rest of my trip boring and eventless. I dint want only Amsterdam to be in my exciting memories, there are other places I am yet to visit. I just told myself, “Wait for it….”