anonwhymous

So..."SGUK Amsterdamage", kind of sounds like the members of SGUK were going to damage Amsterdam with their craziness but instead I feel as if it was us who got damaged.

I have not had that much fun in such a long time. Everyone and everything was awesome!

Day One was quite intense. Waking up early, making sure you have everything when you are not awake enough to really remember what you had for dinner the night before is pretty difficult but everyone seemed to manage it. The plane was delayed but I think this worked in our favour, because when we landed it was late enough for us to start checking-in to the hostel. There were a few room issues but in the end I think everything worked out. When we got settled we went to the nearest coffee shop, called Noon, where we ended up smoking too much of too many varieties of weed too quickly and got fucked WAY too early. After a well-needed rest, while we waited for everyone else to arrive, we headed off to Wagamama and luckily found a nice coffee shop nearby, called Cookies. Afterwards I ended up having a cool chat and drinks with Causy and Snowy. Later that night I locked myself out of the room, could not wake my roomie, gwtr and ended having to walk down to the reception / bar In My Pyjamas to get a new key.

Day Two started a little earlier than I would have wanted but there was free breakfast. However, despite the early wake up, I started the day as I wished to continue it as we had a few joints / pipes in the hostel's smoking room before getting ready to go out. As Umeko and I were already dressed to go out we went for a bit of a wander, trying to get used to our surroundings and to look for local canal boat trip companies, the canal boats were easy to find and when it came to getting used to the surroundings the now named "Human Compass" (Umeko) got to grips with it all scaring quickly. We all then made our way to the red-light district, taking pictures along the way, as we hunted down a couple of museums. The Hash And Weed museum was so poor, so much random crap with no English information, but there was this awesome purifier that filled a ballon with smoke and it was SO good. After this we had a great lunch in a little Italian restaurant where we got bread and garlic butter, which made me giggle, and the pizza base was so nice - very crispy base. We separated into two groups after this, one group heading to see a Van Gough exhibition, the other group going to see the sex museum - I was part of the second group. Umeko (aka The Human Compass), Snowy, Prawn, Causy (who prior to this was in coma after day one) and myself had such an awesome time looking through the Sex Museum. This museum was so cool, not only was it cheaper than the first museum but it was MUCH bigger too, full of some really funny pictures and moving models. The five of us then went to see a Two-Minute for Two Euro peep show, which I must be honest made me feel awkward but I gave into peer pressure and it was pretty funny, but I did feel screwed over as my Two Euro went on mainly seeing the lady setting up for her show however I did see the lady spank her arse at Causy which was SO funny. In the aim to see The Red Light District at night we went to a very cool coffee shop just behind it, after we had some weed and started to make our way back through the district it began to rain, so we braved the rain taking pictures but as we continued to walk in hope to find a tram the rain became too much and those without umbrellas bought one. Now as practical as this sounds sadly it did not work out as it stopped raining pretty much as soon as we left the store . Snowy went her separate way to grab her bags from the other hostel, as she originally could not get a bed with the rest of is but the large room now had a spare bed after randoms left, and the remaining four of us got changed out of our wet clothes so we could go out for some food while the others did mushrooms. Without much persuasion I got the guys to go to Hard Rock Cafe, so I could get another HRC T-shirt for my touring collection and you cannot buy a T-shirt without eating/drinking there, well I don't think so anyways. In the restaurant one of the waiters came up to me and congratulated me on my sideburns, I just wished I asked him to take a picture with him stroking my sideburns in awe, as that would have been so awesome (to me). By far this day was the best day as I had a whole day with awesome people doing awesome things.

Day Three was a sad day as the majority of people, minus "The Human Compass", gwtr and myself were heading home. Minus "Team Vegan", we all had an awesome breakfast at a local pancake restaurant. Afterwards we once again split into separate groups, some headed to the torture museum and the others making a second attempt at go to the Van Gough exhibit (I have no idea what went wrong on the first attempt). The Human Compass, Prawn, Causy, gwtr and myself headed to see Dutch torture through the years and had a nice wander around in the new sunny day via the coffee shop that was featured in Ocean's Twelve. When everyone said their farewells the remaining trio, gwtr and "The Human Compass" - who now joined us in the private room rather than stay on her own -, tried to smoke everything we had left and The Human Compass decided to consume a mushroom some guy left in the hostel's smoking room as he was going home. That night will forever be known as "The Night of the Blue Shoes". Despite Umeko being the one who took mushrooms I was the one of our group who would be sick that night, I think it might have been down to the insane amount of munchies I had, others say it was the McDonalds - Golden Arches Haters! haha

Day Four was a very chilled out day. We woke up, got ourselves packed and checked out pretty easily, then got some 24 hour canal boat tickets so we could leave our bags at the train station lockers and see Amsterdam in a different way. When stopping off, in hope to see the Anne Frank House (and seeing the massive queue), we got some lunch in a small Indonesian restaurant and bumped into a bored Ms Zombie who was taking part in one of the free walking tours that they do throughout the city. After that very tasty lunch we popped into one last coffee shop, which at the time seemed like a good idea, to smoke one last pipe. On the journey to the airport and going through Dutch "security" the quick smoke progressively seemed like a bad idea, as we were all feeling pretty mashed and we had somehow fly home feeling this bad...well I say bad, it was pretty good, but not when you have to get through passport controls. Luckily the three of us started to level off before our flight and it actually made the flight fly by *giggles at one's own pun*. Then we went our separate ways because we were all heading in completely different directions. As much as wanted to avoid going to work, there was no trains to London Bridge so I was forced to get the Gatwick Express (for free ) to Victoria then I snuck onto my train home without any of my colleagues seeing with possible pink eye.

I had work the next day, luckily late shift but I still felt slightly stoned throughout the shift, which made me crap myself because if I made one "out of character" slip up I would have had to take an alcohol / drugs test and when I was found positive I would be fired...luckily it was a good day and I still have job - Despite this nervy day I still think that farewell pipe was a good idea haha. After my second day back at work 'Dam just felt so long ago but I won't dwell, I will just look forward to next outing, which was Doctor Who Live at Wembley Arena

It was AMAZING, it was like being part of an episode. Nigel Planer was superb as the lead/host "The Magnificent Vorgenson" and the clips/scenes with Matt Smith were like The Proms but SO much better. The bits with the monsters were brilliant, pretty much the same as The Proms but it was great to see them walking around in front of you, then as part of the climax there was even a flying Dalek - I would spoiler this but my friend has told me it is on the website - and this gave me a little nerdgasm. I was very impressed that we had Ben Foster conducting, sadly not with his full orchestra but the band who performed the scores gave an interesting twist to the already great music of the Doctor Who series, there was also operatic singers like the performances at The Proms for added levels to certain scores. Yes Matt Smith did not appear live on stage but how the video clips and the plot itself were put together you did not find this annoying in the slightest.

My view:

A picture of me (in my very own Doctor outfit) and my "companion" :

The programme is pretty cool, details about the monsters and our host, I also got this amazing t-shirt and my friend got this one

Next thing I have lined up, as long as I can get someone to work my Sunday, is volunteering at the all-nighter event of Sci-Fi-Londons Oktoberfest.

That is all for now

ttfn

Anonwhy?mous