The opium den

I am now safely back in Rachel's house in Amsterdam after being dropped in crazyland for a great 24 hours. After the internet cafe yesterday, Dana and I returned to the boat and I was left to myself for a few hours until the show started while they warmed up and got ready etc. The show is called "Vanishing Currents" but since the audience kept leaving before the show ended the cast has kept the name a review gave them calling the show the "trick of the vanishing audience".

When we got back, chairs were being dropped over the brick wall onto the beach and the crew were setting them up. Apparently they were expecting about 300 people because the entire evenings block of tickets was purchased by the contractor of the apartment building across the river and all of the tenants were invited for free and given free drinks! So I was reading and reserving seats for Rachel Pieter and Dana (she starts in the audience) and people started to come an hour and a half early! The were happy and friendly with each other and chatting happily and enjoying the beer. I couldn't help feeling weird for them because I didn't know if these same happy people who were here to enjoy free theatre would soon leave in confusion before the show ended! Anyway, Rachel and Pieter got there and found the boat with no problem (much to my amazement because the ship is on the Utrecht "beach" and it is off my map and looks like a bit of sand poured onto the edge of a dock area...with a little tiki bar...and you definitely wouldn't want to swim. Oh, and the beach washrooms were what all 20 of the crew were using because the toilet on the ship was full and had to be pumped out...sound familiar? anybody? anybody? mom?
Okay so the show started at 9pm. The refugees (actors) were seated in the audience and when their number was called they were hauled onto the set by another actress. The basic premise is that a United States sound-a-like has declared all of the people that we consider refugees to be terrorists and so they put them on this ship and were taking them...somewhere...The had a tower off of the ship with large TV screens set up where they had a mock CNN. The CNN was pretty funny actually. TERROR SHIP-exactly the kind of sensationalism that media does so well. The refugees were put into a container inside the boat. You could see into it because the walls were mesh. Good for the audience but unfortunatley not so good for pictures. There was this narrator charactor hanging from a circus hoop high up in the rigging and singing all kinds of neat poetry "-all aboard for the river Stix" and so on. Kind of like he narrator for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Each refugee had a story to tell through a combination of very nice monologues and chanting songs. One only danced and one only played instruments. Eventually, the refugees convinced the new first mate that they weren't terrorists but only trying to live their lives and that his country was the evil one...then there was a mutiny and they trapped the ships captain and crew (other than the first mate) inside the ship and took it over -that was when CNN called it a Terror Ship with possible weapons of mass destruction.

Then the plot sort of... went out the portal. Apparently they were approaching some dock and planning on putting on "some kind of performance"...?...so there was a huge build-up to this performance. When the performance started, it started with two "silks" performers. You know those acrobats who tumble down a big hanging piece of silk...well they did that. Only it was dark and they used black lights on their costumes. That was my first wtf moment. Then, there were 3 actors dressed in black light reflecting skeletons costumes doing some martial arts display with a staff. Then 2 dances were attached to rappelling cords and bouncing and spinning off the wall. More wtf. Then they all twirled fire on batons or ropes (supposed to represent them chasing away the army by making them think the ship was on fire? I don't know. Then they all celebrated that they had gotten away...and one of the actors came into the audience on STILTS trying to sell weapons...not real ones of course...and then someone asked him if he had any toys in his bag...and he took out something and started whirling it around. and then the cast started singing their final song about how art is the weapon of mass jubilation. No I'm not kidding. The end. Amazingly most of the audience stayed.

After that we showed Rachel and Pieter the boat and they drove home. Dana and two of the other actors and I went to a local coffee shop. Definitely Maroccan or Turkish. There were only men in there playing Bacci and smoking. We stayed there for about an hour and then returned to the boat. Dana kindly offered me her bed and was going to sleep into the salon. She sleeps on the bottom of three bunks in a room smaller than my bathroom. as I was lying down I wondered when the last time she had washed these sheets was...and then I wondered if my hepatitis B immunization was up to date (Sorry Dana). Fell asleep only to be woken up again when Dana's roommates came back from the disco and then again when Dana gave up on sleeping in the salon. I call the salon the opium den because it is richly decorated with rugs and cushions.

Yesterday morining we got up and took the train back to Amsterdam and met Dana's friend Laura at the train station. We went out for pancakes. They are like crepes only unfolded and topped with much more stuff. Too much food for one person really but live and learn. I had one with peaches and vanilla ice cream, cherry liqueur and whipped cream.

We then went to the Anne Frank Museum and waited for 30 minutes and got in just as it started to rain. There is no furniture in the rooms at the request of Otto Frank but you can still see the pin-ups of movie stars and other pictures on the walls of Anne's room. That is pretty surreal. Original old photos of Ginger Rogers and children picking flowers. Most of the staircase is not accessible to the public but we were able to climb through the book case door and up the stairs into the annex. There was some looping footage of Miep (one of the helpers) describe the day that Otto Frank asked her to help hide his family, and a woman who was in Bergen Belsen with Anne but she was in a section that was for non-Jewish prisoners and she describes throwing food over the wall to Anne...I had never heard that story before. The museum is small and really only served to tell that one story. If you want a museum about the Holocaust, go to Yad Vashem.

In sharp juxtaposition to this, we then walked through the red light district. Now when I said a city is a city...that no longer applies. There are people-sized windows and the women are right on the other side of the glass in their lingerie beckoning to the men walking through the narrow cobblestoned streets. And it didn't feel sleazy despite the nature of the area. We then accidentally found Chinatown which is really just the typical Amsterdam buildings with Chinese signs. Kind of cool. I feel like that part of the city had a lot of character then you can'tget elsewhere so I hope to get a chance to explore that a bit more tomorrow when I meet Dana again.

Today we got up late and helped packed their place up a bit. I then explored the closest dike and river system. There are two kinds of ducks and even herons that live here. Pretty interesting. Anyway, I don't want to be rude any longer because Rachel's friend Jennifer is here and tonight we are going to a party. So I'm going to go and help pack.