AMSTERDAM’S LITTLE BO PEEP

Later that autumn, the scheduling department assigned Connie, Robin, and me to fly for the next few weeks between the East Coast and Europe. The first part of the trip we worked a flight from JFK to Amsterdam, where we enjoyed a three-day layover in the Netherlands’s capital city.

“Hey, let’s get some culture,” I said.

“I want to see the Dutch Masters,” Robin responded. As a fine arts painter, she often encouraged us to visit museums during our layovers.

“And I want to see Anne Frank’s house,” said Connie, a substitute teacher on her off days.

The three of us hired a taxi and toured the historic Rijksmuseum, the national museum. Rembrandt and Vermeer were some of the Old Masters whose paintings were on display. Van Gogh was represented among the Impressionists. It was a dream comes true for Robin. She took notes and informed us about painting details and odd brush strokes.

From there we took a bus to Anne Frank’s house. We learned that the teenager, her father, mother, sister, and four other Jewish people hid in a five-hundred-square-foot attic for over two years. The staircase to the attic was hidden behind a small revolving bookcase, which looked like all the others in the house. Because she never left the attic during this period, Anne’s only connection to the outside world was looking upward through a skylight. She saw birds and a chestnut tree and wrote about them in her diary.

While on the grounds of the house looking at the famous tree, we chatted with other young tourists. They told us about another place we should visit.

“The Erotic Museum displays art and artifacts,” one said. “The history of sex in Europe is really interesting.”

We took another bus, this time to the center of the oldest section of the city. De Wallen is a wide street divided by a canal and located in the red-light district. On each side of the canal were three-story buildings with large display windows on the middle floors.

Prostitution is legal and regulated in Amsterdam. The country has allowed and taxed brothels since the 1500s. The windows displayed the women whose attributes were for sale. They wore accessories emphasizing their specialties: whips and chains, toddler clothes, short skirts with spiked heels.

We crossed a stone bridge and found the museum on the other side of the canal. To enter, we had to step through a gigantic vagina, complete with foot-long pubic hair around the sides. Once indoors, a docent greeted us. She explained the numerous artifacts displayed in the glass case near the front door. There were penises in many sizes and colors, mock-ups of women’s private parts and condoms in all shapes and material.

From the main room, we moved to a small movie theatre that smelled of cigarettes and marijuana. There were only a dozen upholstered seats in the dark room. We watched an erotic version of the cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Although no ratings existed, it must have been XXXX. To the music of “Whistle While You Work,” Snow White performed oral sex on the seven little men. To say the least, this was quite a surprise for Robin, Connie, and me.

We left the theatre, passing hundreds of bicycles, and strolled back to the windowed apartments.

“Hi. What are you doing here?” asked a young U.S. soldier who approached us on the other side of the canal.

“The same thing you are,” I said. “Sightseeing.”

The soldier’s name was Steve. He was standing next to a tree with another soldier named Paul. We learned that Jim, a third soldier, had left to experience one of the hookers. He had chosen the cute one with boots and a cowboy hat.

As we chatted, the five of us stood a few feet in front of a window exhibiting a woman dressed like Little Bo Peep, complete with a shepherd’s hook. She waved to us from the window and we waved back. Before long she came out to the landing and beckoned to us, yelling something in Dutch.

“What does she want?” I asked.

“She accepts women,” Paul guessed.

“No way!” Connie exclaimed.

We returned to talking, our backs to the woman in the window. In a few moments I saw Bo Peep walking toward us. Her angry eyes were like olives, black and bulging; and she carried a gray bucket in her hand. I watched in horror as she hurled the contents toward our little group.

Robin received the worst of it. She was drenched from head to toe.

“Holy shit!” she screamed. “What happened? What is this?”

Fearing the bucket might have contained urine, Robin mopped madly at her face and hair. We panicked and rushed to her rescue.

Once we realized it was only water, we erupted in laughter. We now understood the prostitute’s waving. If we weren’t going to be customers, she wanted us to leave her territory.

Jim soon returned and stared at the five of us, still hooting and hollering.

“What’s going on?”

Then he looked at Robin.

“What happened to you?”

We were laughing so hard we could barely explain. After the hysterics abated, we said our good-byes and walked to a taxi stand.

What a day we had. We started out viewing some of the best paintings in the world and ended up in the red-light district, being attacked by a prostitute.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-27