25th Birthday

I’ve been in a different city on my birthday the past few years, but the result is usually the same.

21 – Atlanta, GA – Outback with Tommy, Rey, and Brittney
(totally sober, surprisingly)
22 – Richmond, VA – Various bars, broken window, blood, hospital
(blacked out…hard)
23 – Dublin, Ireland – Guinness Storehouse early & Pub Crawl late
(blacked out)
24 – Chicago, IL – Party in Wrigley
(COME ON, Wrigley?)
25 – Venice, Italy – Redentore Fireworks
(waited til Saturday, but...)

My birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, which isn’t really a party night by any account…well unless you are a raging alcoholic. Birthdays aren’t really a big deal to me, but it’s always nice to get together with some friends and go to dinner. Stephanie deviously plotted with my coworkers to throw me a bit of a surprise party on Monday. I thought I was just headed to Ristorante Dante with her, but everyone was there when we showed up.

On my actual birthday, I just went to dinner with Sveta and Tri and then played some billiards. I saved the blacking out for the Redentore Fireworks Festival in Venice the following Saturday. I don’t have any good fireworks pictures since it was dark, but it was a really good show for about 45 minutes which partially made up for missing the 4th of July. At least I got as many mosquito bites as I would have on the 4th in the US. Aside from that, Tri and I decided to dress up like guidos and blend in. I think we pulled it off.

Well...at least Tri pulled it off...ha.

Capri, Italy

My worst enemy, Stephanie, came to visit and we went to Capri for a long weekend. Without a doubt, it was the most beautiful place I have ever been. This trip was the sort of thing people do once in a lifetime, but I didn’t even have to take any time off to do it (very nice). We flew into Naples (about 1 hr flight from Venice) and took a boat over to Capri (~40 min). Just the journey to get there was probably nicer than most of my previous vacations.

The view from the boat while docking in Marina Grande

Once arriving, we hopped on the bus to Anacapri where our hotel was. The bus ride was a treacherous climb through the rocks, in which the buses almost hit all the cars and almost careen off the cliffs…definitely not good for a person afraid of heights.

The hotel was a nice place secluded from the really high rollers who vacation in Capri, which was about 15 minute ride away.

Capri Pictures

Despite having a hangover from the mid-afternoon, we did venture into Capri for dinner on the last night. Sifting through crowds of well dressed, heavily perfumed, high maintenance Italian women and travelers, we saw just about every expensive Italian store you can think of still open past 11pm…in case any spoiled rotten women wanted Dolce & Gabbana or Prada gear around midnight. It was definitely an interesting stroll through fantasy town and put things in perspective. I will never be comfortable spending the kind of money these people did on a daily basis; but that wasn’t a lesson I needed to learn.

Sunset overlooking Mount Vesuvius in Southern Italy

International Dancing

If this guy isn’t lifting, he’s dancing; Dancing all over the world. Fique sent me this link…maybe some of you have seen it. This guy definitely achieves baller status.

Baller Dance Moves

Mean Dutch Lady

I always thought Dutch people were like the Canadians of Europe…you know…extra nice and polite…Never a bad thing to say…Wear funny hats? Well, I was wrong. I ran into the biggest Dutch bitch on the plane back to Venice. I’ll lay the sequence of events out there for you. First of all, maybe I am ignorant because I didn’t know how to turn the power off on my iPod. What I have done for 2 years is press pause and leave my iPod alone, and it shuts off by itself after a minute of being idle. That’s how I do it. (Tri has since informed me that if you hold Play, it shuts off.)

OK, so I sit on the plane in the aisle seat next to a woman in the middle, and her husband in the window seat (he kinda looked like Conan O’Brien). I put on my iPod and started to nod off with my head on my hand and elbow on my knee. Well, I guess I sort of fell asleep since the flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to shut off my electronics. Ok, fine, I have no problem with that. I press pause and set it on my lap.

At this point, Bitchess von Dutchingham reveals her true colors and states that I have to “shut that off.” I say that I know…this is how I turn it off. After a couple lines trying to convey to her that it will turn off automatically, she says “well give it to me, I’ll just take the batteries out.” To which I reply, “No you won’t.” “Well, the other option is to call the flight attendant again,” she says. Finally I tell her that I do not know how to turn it off and that this is how I always turn it off. She calls me a liar by stating “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.” She continues to inform me that “There is a reason airplanes have this rule” and that I am “being rude and disrespecting everyone on the entire plane.”

I would like to remind my readers at this point, that yes I do have a bit of a temper at times, and yes I would have felt justified in calling this lady a bitch and requesting a seat change, but I did no such thing. I remained calm (mostly out of disbelief) and was very polite. I told her if she would wait another 30 seconds or so, the iPod would shut off automatically, and that I was not being disrespectful. An awkward silence ensued for about 5 seconds until she muttered something under her breath, and filed her magazine roughly into the seat back. I said “I’m sorry”? since I didn’t understand what she said. To which she replied “I was reading an article about American art, but now I’m too disgusted to finish it.”

This was completely unbelievable and offensive. She couldn’t finish an article on American art because I am an American?!? I didn’t even do anything wrong. Around this time, while holding the iPod in a direction so she could see that I wasn’t tampering with it…IT SHUT OFF AUTOMATICALLY. I held it closer to her and said, “There, it’s off. I’m sorry to upset you.”

This was my first experience with someone hating Americans for the sheer fact that I am an American. I can only assume that she pegged me as a teenage American tourist who came to Amsterdam to get fucked up and dump all over her town (she’s wrong about me being a teenager at least). I wanted to tell her that I travel full time and am actually quite respectful, but I decided not to question why she was so ill-tempered and bitchy so I didn’t have to talk to her again. As we took off, I saw her clutch her husband’s hand like it was the last donut at a 4H convention. I can only assume that she was deathly afraid to fly and thought that my iPod’s power being on would bring down the whole plane. Or maybe she was looking for a fight and pissed off at her punani husband (who just pathetically sat there looking out the window during this entire confrontation) and decided to take it out on me. Half way through the flight another woman came to give her some food (I guess she was in a group). Well, the bitchy Dutchwoman actually offered me some food, but I politely declined. I hope she felt bad for the way she acted; however never apologized. Skank.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Nothing like a weekend trip to Amsterdam to recharge…or completely exhaust myself. I met up with the always classy Amy Brooks, one of my friends/classmates/coworkers (/secret admirers) from college. She now works for a company headquartered out of the Netherlands and was there on business for the latter half of the week, so I got to mooch on her company hotel.

Amsterdam Pictures

Ames was busy with customers until after dinner, so I wandered around Amsterdam by myself all evening. I went directly to the Sex Museum, since it was on my priorities list but not on Amy’s. This place was a lot tamer than I was expecting, and actually had some funny stuff too. There were some exhibits with mannequins set up in compromising positions, drawings and comic porn, displays of sculptures and old artwork portraying sex through certain periods of history (ancient Egyptian, british American war sculptures of men still in half their uniform making it with their ladies, etc.), and even some motion activated sensors to have naked mannequins lunge out at you. Of course there were also some graphic pictures of porn from when cameras were first invented. Nothing quite like a 19^th century 3-way to get the blood pumping.

Quick side note: There was a woman, probably around my age…maybe a little older, walking around the sex museum at the same pace as me. She was also alone, and we even watched some of the big animated exhibits together, or once she looked over when I laughed at condoms inflating upon pressing a button (yeah, I know I’m mature). This was very awkward to me because I wanted to be polite and say hello, but there really is no way to not come off as a creep in this situation. It is unintentional sexual tension brought about by the surroundings. I mean…I’m a strapping young man…she’s an attractive, pierced, tattooed woman…we are looking at porn through the ages at the same pace; Very interesting dynamics…I’m not even sure she spoke English. Actually, that would be an even better story if she didn’t speak English and I was able to persuade her to join me in the padded booths with streaming video (yeah, they have those there…I stayed away from that section). What if we ended up getting together and people asked how we met? “So, we were at a porn museum…” Luckily, before it got to that point, we lost each other when I stayed in the fetish room probably 10 times longer than she did…missed connections…

Second Side Note: Why are the booths padded? Are strange creepster guys really tossing themselves around in there? Padded booths should be reserved for solitary cells at insane asylums, not erotica booths at sex museums.

Third Side Note: Did you know that anal sex was “invented” in the US? I find this hard to believe, but that’s what the plaque in the fetish room said. There were actually 2 plaques for beastiality.

…but I digress…

I emerged from the museum a lesser person, and wandered around town some more. This is going to sound dumb, but I ate at Subway and was really excited about it. Even though I was in the US about 7 weeks ago, I don’t think I have eaten Subway in at least 6 months.

I ran into Amy on my way to meet her at the hotel, still with two of her customers; my companions for the evening. We sifted through crowds of people and clouds of weed smoke to have a couple beers at an outdoor café. If nothing else, what is Amsterdam if not a great place to people watch (which happens to be mine and Amy’s favorite pastime from college). The four of us then went to another place to drink closer to the Red Light District.

Of course we took a lovely late night stroll through the Red Light District around 2am. I did love seeing a few guys come out of these booths; the shame in their eyes as they scurry away. I wonder if any of them gave their woman a kiss goodbye?...nastyyyy Anyways, I didn’t get to see all of the Red Light district. We never made it over to the Asian section or the Ladyboy street, so I will have to go back sometime.

On Saturday, we didn’t get going until after noon…oh well…got some pizza and wandered around town some more and took pictures. We made our way to the Anne Frank House, but the line was very long so I didn’t get a chance to see that this time. The four of us then took a water bus over near the Rijksmuseum to see the Van Gogh museum, which was lovely.

Chris and Justin had to leave for Antwerp for some more business time, and Ames and I hung out in a park for awhile before heading to get dinner and drinks again. What fun...a night of Argentine steak, malbec, and more people watching. I saw some of the worst haircuts and interesting looking people...drank some delicious Heineken and Bavaria, and harassed Amy with the "that's your boyfriend" game. Overall, a great weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't go to the Heineken Experience since it was closed for renovations. But really, all this means is that I will have to go back sometime.