Twenty Euros

Twenty Euros

One of the notable landmarks and locations in Amsterdam is the Dam square. The imposing gothic constructions adorn all sides, modern department stores, hotels, and pubs are scattered around. The summer palace of the Royalty cannot be missed! The Square is always thronged with tourists and the Dutch who always fancies outdoors on a sunny day. Pigeons have virtually taken over the middle of the square and the imposing old buildings around. Jugglers, ventriloquists, makeup-artists in various costumes, street performers, tramcars, and exotic horse carriages resembling the ancient especially add to the romantic air. The square itself overlooks the central Railway station just about a kilometer ahead. The Dam square bustles with life in the height of a summer day and cold rainy days. The fickle Amsterdam weather can one moment by warm and bright in the radiant sun and the next moment dreary cold and drizzling.

Further behind, once you enter the ubiquitous alleys by the side of those huge buildings, there is the famous tourist attraction- ‘the glasshouses’ and the nightclubs. The coffee shops frequented more for Marijuana and other light drugs that are legal in Holland are also about there. You can smell more of burning “grass’, than the cappuccino or the Columbian, burnt coffee. It is one of the liveliest of all foreign destinations. Not to forget the countryside which is simply laid back and exquisite

I described a bit of the square and its periphery to tell a very amusing and comical story, a joke that went practical. And when the person who was the center of the whole story told me, we laughed our guts out sitting in one of the pubs there in the Dam square. He was a Dutch gentleman in his late fifties and represented one of the garment brands in Amsterdam. He worked in Amsterdam but lived in a town called Breda some two hundred km by car from Amsterdam city. A summer weekend he and his wife drove down to Amsterdam and decided to hang around Dam square and the nearby wharf. They spent the good part of the day moving around, having occasional coffee, beer and popcorns. By late afternoon the gentleman was having rigid legs and he longed for the comfort of a pub or to park his arse somewhere. His wife was keen to do some shopping at the nearby  Bijenkorf department store. He was quite at odds with walking around supermarkets and department stores. So he told his wife that he will sit by the fountain ledge in the square feeding the pigeons while she shops at the store. Our hero sat by the fountain in the square. Sometime soon an escort girl came up to him and began to prospect. She told him that she can spend the day with him for one hundred Euros. Obviously, the girl took him for a tourist. Our gentleman friend, who by nature was a wisecracker, tried to play something funny and told her that one hundred Euros was too much for her and he can offer twenty Euros. The girl huffed and puffed before she went away in anger.

Sometime later our friend’s wife returned after her shopping and they began to walk back to the car park. And some way down the walkway they ran into the same escort girl. She came up to our hero and told him close in the face, pointing at his wife by his side, “this is what you will get for twenty Euros”.

Our middle-aged friend thence decided to be careful before he pulls a practical joke on someone.