Skip to main content

Toothpaste and razor-less in Amsterdam



 A man in Amsterdam airport


December 21st, in a Radisson hotel at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport which I chose in a momentary panic of having nowhere to sleep after my transfer flight to Manchester was abruptly cancelled flat. I had milled around the terminal, contemplating if spending the night on a bench was really worth it.


45 minutes later I was on a bus to the hotel, alone. The ride was novel; in a mere 5 hours I’d picked up more Dutch than I ever learned French at school. Did you know that ‘Sauvignon Blanc’ in Dutch is ‘Sovignen Blank’? Or that ‘Telephone’ is ‘Telefoon’? 


At the hotel I had a bath, tried my best to clean myself until sparkling as I had only a single pair of socks and underwear to last me two days. I listened to some Frank Sinatra and took a few photographs, I danced around in my fresh white towel and lamented on how a hotel could provide facial lotion yet no toothpaste. A solemn faced reporter from BBC news informed me of a tragedy in Prague. 


At the bar downstairs, a beer for my troubles. A solitary and handsome young bartender span around his workspace with the grace and efficiency of a ballroom waltzer, opening bottles, filling glasses with gin and tonic.


A Scotsman eating crisps beside me. Old people dotted around the lobby like ink blots on a canvas, each sweatshirt a different colour.


Lives interlinked and lives lamenting on missed connections, weddings cancelled, visits painfully postponed. A girl about my age in the airport fretting over her travelling companion, a bemused housecat in a crate. Angry, fuming people and bored people alike. The hotel is quiet, and it brings me an ethereal sense of comfort. I’ve always liked hotels. I am not Dutch, I don’t know a single soul in this country - perhaps this entire continental landmass? I’m alone, but I’m not. Each stranger is kind, humble, and wonderfully helpful. 


I’m hundreds of miles away from my family, stuck inbetween two countries that I call home. Whittling time away with my camera and a hotel pencil, and a cup of complimentary instant coffee. A haiku;


Dutch sandwich breakfast,

Salvation from hunger pangs.

Tonijn Salade.


That night I dreamt of something comforting. I don’t remember what it was.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Letting go of the things you love

See you, Brady-san! I'd be lying if I said this year hasn't been full of tears. Underneath the bold, black lettering reading '新幹線 Shinkansen', I wrapped my arms around Brady, giving him one final hug before he crossed the ticket gates with a suitcase in each hand. Mauli, Ella and I waved until he disappeared from view and waved a little more after that. The bittersweet memories of whole year of adventures, jokes, and endless laughter played through my head and weighed heavy on my heart for the rest of the day. I thought about the first time we met in Umeda school - how we shared our love for jazz and Chet Baker, and ate Bento in the back room at lunch. I thought about all those times sitting on the rooftop of Namba Parks, drinking a beer and talking about life, the bowling and arcade days, skiing together and weekending in Korea. It hurts to say goodbye to your best friend. It's far from the first time I've felt this way over the past 6 months. It was under very...
Post a Comment
Read more

The curious incident of the bicycle in the night-time

Loretta & I. Friday, December 13 th – 2024 Criss-crossed by the mesh screen over my apartment window – Osaka parts its bleary eyes and wakes, stirring to a wide azure sky which stretches from the jagged incisors of Nara’s mountains to the Yodo river’s floodplains far in the north. Children pacing clumsily to school with their yellow safety hats bobbing like rubber ducks in a brook, elderly folks stopping in doorways to chatter through blue surgical masks and sighing “Samui naaaa…”, as if some long-revered mantra. A hot black coffee is my companion to sip at as I regard these fleeting scenes of neighbourhood life from my high-rise castle. It’s a Friday, and I have to work. But the thought of that is utterly trivial in my mind, driven to inconsequence by the thrill that builds in my chest at the reminder of the biggest event of the year – the company Christmas party on Sunday! The chance to dress to the nines in polished dress shoes and an elegant tie, to chink glass upon glass of...
Post a Comment
Read more

A secret mission to Family Mart

Note: The first half of this blog was originally written in early March 2025. Sat in a notebook for 4 months. Thursday winds down, and into my little apartment I slump. Chores to do, and lunch to make, to keep the Joe of tomorrow going. What's in my fridge? 3 eggs, a half-empty bottle of mayo, and 4 rolls of 35mm. It's nights such as these that call for a convenience store mission. In the words of my good friend Vinny, who wrote about this quite recently, the convenience store truly is the lifeblood of Japan. On every street, from the bustling heart of downtown where tourists fill their baskets with egg sando and souvenirs, to the suburbs where housewives grab Omurice essentials to feed their hungry elementary school kids. On the steppes of Nagano, the rural villages of Kyushu, the rice paddies of Shikoku, and the palm tree-lines streets of Okinawa. The conbini is omnipresent. I throw on what's warmest, a mishmash of colors topped off with my Blundstone boots. Though March ...
Post a Comment
Read more