Looking For Charlie In Amsterdam

Looking For Charlie In Amsterdam

There are a lot of shady looking characters who hang around Amsterdam. They silently wait by street corners and alleyways. Anyone who has lived in the city long enough knows how it works. Sometimes they quietly wait to be approached, other times they advance with out warning. However, they always ask the same question in the same hushed whisper. It’s a question I have been asked many times myself. It is only a single word but we all understand what they are asking…. “Charlie?”

Since my name is not Charlie and I don’t know anyone by that name I am never able to give them the information they seek so I simply shake my head and carry on walking, leaving them to ask the next passer by (which by the sounds of it they do a lot).

I often wonder who this Charlie is. Why is he so popular? Why have so many people decided to dedicate so much time in to searching for him? Does he owe them money? Is he a lost friend or relative? Could he be their missing leader or a secret spy contact? Why is he so important to them?

Whoever he is he is a very allusive man.

What about the people who spend all their days trying to find him. There are a lot of them who appear to have been looking for him for a very long time. Are their efforts combined or are they all searching for him for their own individual gain? Do they wake up every morning truly believing that today will be the day they finally find Charlie? Do they later return home, feeling crushing despair after yet another day of fruitless searching? What keeps them going? How long will they be able to continue their search?

They have been unsuccessful in their quest for such a long time. It is finally time for us to aid them in their search for this mysterious man. It is obviously very important that he is found (otherwise they would have given up by now). This is why I am setting up the ‘Help Find Charlie’ appeal.

Do you know anything about this Charlie they seek? Maybe you have seen him, maybe you are friends with him or maybe you even are him. Any information you can provide, no matter how small, might help us find Charlie.

If you wish to show your support for the appeal you can print out the poster provided below and display it somewhere that Charlie might see (or at least someone with information about him).

Looking for cocaine

At the moment we know absolutely nothing about Charlie or where he is but with a little hard work I am sure we can find him and end the search that has lasted for so long for so many shady looking people on the streets of Amsterdam.

Thank you for your support.

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.

17 Responses

  1. BlondebutBright says:

    Where exactly are you hanging out in Amsterdam?
    ;)

  2. Invader Stu says:

    zed – Are you saying you want to give him away to them? :p

    Jake – I love the smell of bad puns in the morning

    suus – I’m starting to wonder why they want to find him. He sounds very strange.

    BlondebutBright – Don’t you start getting the wrong idea as well :p

    Mike Thomas – I’d be happy to take part in the interview