The Trip to Kuwait - Amsterdam

I left Okinawa on the 19th of March. Nearly a day later, I landed in Tampa, FL. My three days in Tampa were a waste. I filled out a few forms and got a new set of orders to Iraq and some plane tickets. I met another USNA Marine, Lt Doug Orr, there, and we hung out for a few days, waiting for the flight. We left Tampa on Wednesday, March 22 and flew to Newark. We switched planes and then flew to Amsterdam. Normally, you can’t count switching planes at an airport has having “been to the city,” but luckily, we had an 8-hour layover there, and four other Marines and I hopped into a taxi. We headed for the city center, not consciously intending to find the red light district. We found it. It looked like it might have been a pretty happening place at night. At any rate, it was interesting during the day. Sex shops full of enormous dildos and leather contraptions. Bars advertising shows involving animals. Cannibis seeds sold here. Babes and beer. Almost everything was closed; but Amsterdam never sleeps. We saw a place that still had a few women sitting in the windows waiting for customers. We could see that the “day shift” lacked what the night shift must have been like. These were not beautiful and skinny Eastern European dames; the only one I could see clearly was an enormous 30-something North African. Iraq is a bit hotter than northern Europe in March. So we weren't quite dressed for the 10 AM Amsterdam windchill. I was wearing a light snap-up shirt that was cool for Kuwait... but in the Netherlands I was freezing my ever living ass off. Most of the other guys felt the same way. A couple of ladies passed us by. They were warmly dressed American tourists, and they were aghast at our level of clothing. One of them said she was going to tell our mothers. We finally found a small pub and had a few beers. The bartender, a red-headed lady with a South African accent, told us where we could find some food. We found a place to eat. I had a baguette with smoked ham and an unexpectedly huge plate of fried mushrooms. I also had two jugs of Heineken… my freedom to drink beer was quickly approaching its end. We left the bar and found another place called Eurobar. It was mostly empty, but we bellied up and ordered.
I had a couple of Guinnesses while we talked to the two bartenders. One was Spanish, one Chinese. Both had been born in Amsterdam. The Chinese guy understood Chinese, but couldn’t speak it… I think he said something like “my parents speak it but not me… fuck that.” The Spanish girl was young and pretty, with plans to move to Los Angeles soon. She spoke several languages, probably all very well. I told her L.A. was a shithole; go to San Diego. She said she was planning on "going into marketing there." She was twenty and totally clueless, but I think she'll figure out the deal when she gets to L.A., and hopefully she won't try to become a porn star. Everyone I’ve ever met from The Netherlands has been pretty interesting, all the way back to the backpackers I met in Yunnan Province in China. We made it back to the airport in time to have our last beer—mine was a Corona I think. I bought some wooden shoes and boarded the plane for the six hour flight to Kuwait.