More of Enschede, or, Kickin' it in the Netherlands

So, after the trip to Berlin, Samantha and I had a week or so to relax before we were off to Prague (just wait, that’ll be some good footage!). In that time, here’s a few things we managed to get up to:

On the 18th, the AKI exchange students (Sam and a lot of her friends here) had a gallery opening. The show was called “Transformations” and featured a bunch of the exchange student’s work. Sam put a few pieces in, but most notably she hung her Polaroid-a-day project, which looked awesome… Over a hundred daily self portrait polaroids all tracing their way along a wall. Another piece woth mentioning would be Lily’s ceramics of mutilated dogs. So very cute.
So here’s a little footage from hanging outside the Gallery, just after most of the students finished hanging their work…

(Oh, I feel I need to make a mention here. This next clip mentions something called “the gnome story.” The gnome story is perhaps the funniest anecdote I’ve ever heard, a true story regaled to me by my buddy Carey, aka, The Fatman. In fact, it’s so good I don’t think the re-telling would do it any justice at all in written form, it must have the cadence of expression and life behind it, so I’m not going to tell it in full here. However, I will let you in on the fact that it’s about campers tripping on ‘shrooms and finding what they thought was a garden gnome. Of course after chasing, beating and bagging it, the next day they discover it was a missing handicapped 4 year old in a bright orange blazer, and upon returning him to his town they are received as hero’s. You may cry bullshit, god knows I did, but believe me, I read the news article about them returning the kid, mentioning that “at first the campers said they thought he was a garden gnome.” No. Seriously. The funniest thing I’ve ever heard.)

The night the students hung their work, Samantha made sushi (as all the AKI exchange students were making food from their home countries for the opening, Sam opted for the native cusine of Vancouver… Sushi. Can’t figure that one out? Don’t strain yourself…

During that week I also made a little day-trip back to Amsterdam to grab Samantha Polaroid film while she worked on school stuff. And of course I made a little side trip to the best freakin’ coffee-shop in all of the Netherlands, Grey Area. It’s run by a young American guy, and it get’s all the High-Times Cannabis Cup winners. I must recommend the ’07 and ’06 winners, the 'Chocolope' ('Chocolate Thai' and 'Cantaloupe Haze' cross) and the 'Big Buddha Cheeze'. God damn they’re good…

Here’s just a little fragment of what you see while biking along the streets in downtown Enschede:

Oh, and of course I found out that butterfly knives are legal in Holland. However, upon purchasing such a good, however would I get it home? Well, I constructed a little video, purely for entertainment purposes, on how such a thing might conceivably be done. Keep in mind, this is a work of fiction :P

And on the 20th, it was Samantha’s birthday, so after a day of chillin’ in, and drinking very alcoholic coffee’s, we went out to the Bolwerk, also known as the AKI students bar. It’s in town, its quaint and Dutch, and it has Hoegarden on tap. Yummy. Anyhoo, here’s a quick clip of the Bolwerk from the inside, and the morning after…

Coming Soon: Adventures in the Czek Republic!