Before Holland

You should get the taxi back with us.” Neil suggested.

Na. It’s alright. I’ll still be able to get the night bus back… but thanks anyway.” I replied with a slight slur. There might have been a hic-up too.

It was the big night out with my friends before I moved to Holland. The farewell night in London Town and I was drunk, very drunk but still convinced I had enough of my senses about me to get home alright.

Neil and his girl friend KD were trying to convince me to take the cab back with them but they lived quite far away and I really just wanted to get home. After they had left I discovered my mistake. All the trains and buses had stopped running. I was stuck in the middle of London. Looking back now I realize I should have simply got a cab but drunken logic was at the helm. I got the idea into my intoxicated head that if I could not survive a night in London (a city I know) how could I survive in Amsterdam.

At first I thought I could wait until morning for public transport to start running again. However, after about an hour of walking around and having sung my way through most of Queens greatest hits I realized just how bored I was and how much my feet were starting to hurt (but still not realizing how drunk I was). I needed to find something to do till morning….. but what?

Like the Northern Star guiding lost sailors my prayers were answered in the form of a glowing M, a large yellow glowing M no less. I had just found the McDonald’s at Charing Cross station and it was open 24 hours.

I had no plans to eat burgers continually until morning. I knew there was already a hang over on its way and I did not fancy adding a heart attack. However, beer vision made those hard plastic benches suddenly look very comfortable. You can probably now guess where I am going with this. Yes, I decided to sleep in McDonald’s that night and it seemed I was not the only one who had the idea either. There were a few other clubbers who had obviously gotten themselves into a similar situation and drunkenly passed out in the quiet down stairs section of the restaurant for the night.

It was not the most comfortable sleep I have ever had and I think it made my hang over much worse. In the morning I literally must have looked like a zombie as I stumbled down the road sober-ish but to tired to keep my eyes fully open. No matter how terrible I felt I had a bizarre feeling of accomplishment. I had survived a night trapped in London. This must have meant I was ready for Holland….. Right? Well….. I never said hung over logic was better then drunk logic.

I just hope I will never be forced to do the same in Holland with Febo.

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.