The Siroker Brothers

Stewardessing Across Europe Part 1: Amsterdam

It's midnight and I'm sitting on the patio at Villa Saint Exupery in the city of Nice, in the south of France. This is where I will write the beginning of our story. What follows will be the first in a series of retellings of our adventures stewardessing across Europe during the summer of 2005. Why stewardessing and not backpacking? Well, because we all brought silly luggage thingies on wheels commonly used by stewardesses. Not huge-ass backpacks.

Matt and Eric unaware of the horrors to follow.

Matt’s cranky from a long flight.

The characters in our story consist of three good looking 22-year-olds recently out of school: my twin brother, Eric; one of my best friends, Matt; and myself, your humble narrator. The three of us left San Francisco airport on June 21 and arrived roughly ten hours later in Amsterdam, the capital of our motherland, The Netherlands. My 18-year-old cousin, Floris, and my mom, who had arrived a few days earlier, met us at the airport. After a quick stop for koffie drinken (Dutch coffee break in between breakfast and lunch) we said goodbye to our mom and left for an afternoon of tomfoolery in Amsterdam with my cousin.

The first misfortune our trio encountered occurred on the train from the airport to Amsterdam Central Station. My cousin, Floris, who was our tour guide for the day, thought it was best to forgo the task of “validating” our Eurail train passes and just let fortunes hit the wind on the short train ride to the Central Station. To his credit, he did ask the security guard at the gate whether or not it was okay to go ahead without a validated Eurail pass, and the security guide said something in Dutch to the effect, “Just go use those machines,” and pointed to some small yellow boxes that stamp ordinary Dutch train tickets. Since our passes were 10-day Eurail tickets, they didn't exactly fit so Floris said we should just go ahead.

Five minutes later, while we were comfortably sitting in the train, the conductor comes walking by and asks to see our tickets. Floris shows his ordinary Dutch train pass, the three Americans show our Eurail pass and the conductor proceeds to explain, in Dutch, how these tickets need to be validated at a main station before use. If she were to validate it, it would cost us 30€ (roughly $36) for each pass. That's more than a hundred fricken dollars for all of us! Being the only one of the three Americans who barely understood Dutch, I proceeded to shit a brick. Fortunately, Floris began to use his means of persuasion and cunning Dutch charm. After a few puppy dog looks and some explanation about how it was all his fault and that we were just visiting from America, Floris was able to convince the conductor to just ignore our transgression and allow us to move on to Central Station completely free of charge. It is nice to have a native Amsterdamer with you when you get in trouble.

The Dutch have a very interesting mentality when it comes to issues of money. Eric and I are somewhat familiar with it since we are half-Dutch. Matt, however, had his first introduction to this mentally as soon as we got out of the Central Station. Floris thought it best to save a Euro or two for us collectively (fifty cents a person divided equally) to walk a bit further from the train station to get a cab closer to our destination for lunch. It wasn't really a big deal carrying all our luggage and backpacks walking for a few minutes into the city. The major conundrum came when we realized that all the cabs that were passing us had passengers already in them who had obviously been picked up at the train station. Lesson learned: the hardest place to find an empty cab is a few minute walk outside a train station. After about ten minutes, Floris calls a cab on his cell phone, and after another ten we are comfortably on our way to lunch. The best fifty cents we ever saved.

Here is a picture of the four of us at the lovely restaurant where Floris works. We all had club sandwiches and a few beers. It was absolutely great to sit outside by the canal with a beer in hand and in good company. Our vacation had officially begun.

Eating on the patio at Floris’ restaurant.

After a great afternoon in Amsterdam, Floris helped us get back to the train station and on our way to Paris. It was super helpful to have Floris with us on the first leg of journey. He provided a great introduction to the continent we were about to explore.

Eric and me on the train from Amsterdam to Paris.

Proceed to the next installment of our trek across Europe.