Amsterdam and beyond

It seems the cool thing to do lately is share stories from your past on your blog. So, in my never-ending attempt to be a cool kid, here goes:

I back-packed across Europe with my then-boyfriend and 4 of his friends from Maine in the fall of 1996. I won't use names, and i also don't ever see him stumbling across this thing, so i feel ok about sharing this. But since i'll be referencing him, i'll call him Jude. Amsterdam is a favorite destination of back-packing kids, whether you smoke pot or not. Amazing museums, architecture, people, and of course, coffeeshops. I regret now that of all the countries I visited, I have absolutley no photos from this one. Well, we all had a pretty great time while there. All except Jude.

Our first day there we indulged at a coffeeshop, and upon exiting, he dropped to his knees. He stayed there for a good 5 mintues, unable to speak aloud to tell me what was wrong. Later he would explain that when we stepped into the bright sunlight, his vision slowly changed from color to black and white, like someone dragged a squeegee down and erased all the color. It understandably freaked him right out. After he recovered normal vision, we continued with our day like nothing had happened.

There were 3 girls, and 3 guys. We all decided to have a "girls/guys night." To cut this short, us girls had a fabulous time, and the guys tried, they really did. They pooled all of their money trying to hire a hooker for the one that was single, but came up too short. So they ended up just drinking in the hostel we were staying at. When we got back there, they were asleep. But while putting my clothes away, i noticed the pants Jude was wearing that evening were soaking wet. I panicked, and paced back and forth, wondering what could have happened. I finally calmed down enough to wake him up, thinking he must have gotten so drunk he fell in the canal or something. Turns out he did get incredibly drunk, but only enough to pee his pants. And his solution? Climb in the shower...with his pants on. Mystery solved.