Axl Rose once asked us to take him down to the Paradise City. Confession: I never answered this man’s request — until last weekend.
In September, when my abroad friends asked me to help them plan to do the same thing, describing the Paradise City as Amsterdam, I answered with a big smirk of approval.
We arrived in Amsterdam on Friday night. The city was gorgeous and all very new to me, but for some reason gave off a familiar vibe.
However, this feeling of familiarity flew away once we got a whiff from the coffee shops. The scents were not typical French vanilla or mocha aromas or those of any type of coffee at all — just a certain, peculiar scent mixed with freshly baked brownies. By now, Amsterdam definitely didn’t feel like any other city I’d ever been to.
After some nighttime exploration of the city, including the discovery of eye-opening shops and clubs in the Red Light district, we settled into our hostel. The hostel booking happened at the 11th hour, and I’m lazy about researching that kind of stuff, so I told my fellow travelers to put me down for wherever they wanted to stay.
The only place with enough space was a religious hostel. Not that there is anything wrong with that; I’ve been riding the Irish Guilt Express since I was born, so I never mind earning some points from the Big Guy. It just seemed a little strange that we’d be in a religious hostel in Amsterdam, which claims to be the actual City of Sin. Sorry, Vegas, but I saw the T-shirt on sale in the E-Z Times Coffeeshop gift store.
Nevertheless, the hostel turned out to be a great place. Not only was it the first place to offer us breakfast in the morning, but it had no curfew or extra charges that some other, more “liberal” places I’ve stayed have. Even the Church was chill in the ‘Dam.
Well, up until Saturday it was. Unfortunately, the hostel only had space for eight people and wouldn’t allow us to pay to sleep in the kitchen or in the lounge for the second night. Because we still follow the buddy system, we walked out into the Amsterdam night with little money and nowhere to stay. Let the adventure begin, right?
We split up during the day, so we all met up again for dinner and caffeine to start the night. We ventured off to a few places, played some pool, got freaked out by the large number of old people walking in and out of the sex museum and realized we had no money or shelter and seven more hours until daylight. So, one would think, “late night adventures in Amsterdam? Man, oh man. You crazy kids . . .”
Like so many late nights in Boston, though, we ended up at McDonald’s. It was, surprisingly, one of the only places open between 2 and 6 a.m. It was then I realized that we didn’t know each other as well as we thought we did after three months together. With six hours to go on the night, we were about to learn more.
The conversations we had were inspired by a 12-hour adventure in Amsterdam and sleeplessness, but at least they were engaging. At one point, we talked about time travel, and one friend passionately explained her life goal to discover it. She also admitted to a recent trip to Tijuana none of us had expected to hear about, which sparked a communal confession of unknown personal facts.
In between “I’m lovin’ it” jingles, McDonald’s played some old Top 100 tunes that brought us all back to middle and high school dances. We bonded over embarrassing moments and the sad truth that we still know the lyrics to every song.
We watched the most messed-up guy in the place try to fight passing out in his chair. The entire room joined in with us on this one, emitting an excited “ooooh” when it looked like he’d fallen asleep and would fall off his chair and a disappointed “awww” each time he caught himself.
We talked about first impressions of each other, the first things we’ll do when we return to Boston and how different (for lack of a more precise term) window shopping in Amsterdam is from back home. Let’s just say that the mannequins were real women, and they were neither wearing nor selling clothes.
The characters in McDonald’s at 4 a.m. were something special. We laughed at their behavior until we realized that we were among the characters there as well, and we could not have cared less.
By the time the sun rose and it was finally time for breakfast, we were all about to fall asleep on our plates. We made it, though. We survived our adventure in Amsterdam with a new appreciation for each other and for window shopping in America.
Megan Murphy, a junior in the School of Education who is studying in Dublin this semester, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at [email protected].