11-II-1976.
Tour of Amsterdam. Went with Arie to university first, where we had breakfast in the students' canteen. It was self-serving, with lots of fish stuff, including some raw fish, somewhat pickled. Had to try that, wasn't too bad. He said the other girl at the counter was a yugo, and there are many doctors around here with surnames ending in -ić.
Went to the dentistry class, where a bunch of students were sculpting dentures. Practice, practice. He had to meet someone there. Later in the day I heard that it was all about some friend from Algiers, Tunisia or Yemen or whichever, who ran out of money but had a 500g lump of hashish that he was peddling, and they were helping him. Then he got caught, and they were all busy severing all ties and removing traces - going through photographs and letters and destroying any mention of him. Everyone was kind of nervous, this could cost you a career. He was checking with a friend to hear if there were any news and if he remembered any party where wrong photographs could have been made.
Me on Dam.
Went to Dam square then, had a beer at Hoppe. The guy had all the possible banknotes glued to his counter wall, and if you bring one he doesn't have, it's a free beer. Found the yugoslav dinars already there, no free beer for me. I think we had an Amstel, the eponymous river being nearby (but I wouldn't know it from all the channels).
Don't remember what we did for lunch, perhaps that was the time when dorm folks made those beans, not bad at all, though too mild. Around noon we split for perhaps an hour, and I took my time to exchange half of my money into guldens, and then went to a shop next door and bought a 30mm lens for the praktika. The rest of the shots are made with it, and many more shots in the next 30-some years. It became my main lens.
Went to see Fellini's "Satyricon" in a movie theatre - I just couldn't miss the chance. It was on one of the early FESTs, perhaps four years ago, but was never distributed and wasn't on TV (and if it was I guess it would be edited for content). The movie was in italian, there were dutch subtitles (they don't dub, the Germans do), and Arie translated some bits, so I had some impression about the movie. This cost me 13 guldens, he didn't want to go but then if it's on me then OK.
This shot was made somewhere after the movie, this should be the Waterloo square, a flea market, when they're already packing up. This atmosphere made me think of the Wajda's film „Everything's on sale“, at least by the title. Much later I found that I completely misremembered the movie, as the plot as I remembered it made me think that it can't be named thus. But it is.
In the evening we went to a cafe, somewhere in a basement of an apartment building, where we drank jenever (juniper, meanwhile exported to England where it became gin). There was a long dispute over the poster on the ceiling, saying "stop / with those drugs / sex is better". It wasn't exactly glued, it was pinned and sagging a bit, so depending on where you sat, you'd see the first line or not. So, is sex better than drugs, or with them?
After a couple of drinks we went to psychology students' club, which was in the basement of a condemned building. The ground and upper floors were in shambles, but they cleaned the basement neatly. There weren't many chairs, and they had no glasses. They had a keg with dark beer, and regular bottles with ceramic spring-loaded corks, which they refilled regularly. The beer was 2 gulden, IIRC, and quite good. I think dutch students simply don't tolerate bad beer.
There was a guy who was the spitting image of a character in some american police movie, just an episode but quite pictoresque, who was being interrogated but would only say "fuuuuuuck you", with the first word being an octave higher. I mentioned it to this look-alike and, miraculously, he remembered the movie and the scene and actually said it in exactly the voice.
Mentions: Ariejan Verschoor (Arie), praktika, yugo, in serbian