The reason why I will probably never go back to Europe.

In 2002 I made the monumental mistake of skipping Spring Break. This was my first year at a university that had spring break, and I didn't really realize exactly how awesome they were. So I stayed in town for the week, alone, and it was absolutely miserable. I decided that to make up for it, I was going to go to Amsterdam as soon as the semester was over. I had a friend studying abroad and dating a model over there, so it was a no brainer. I also heard that Iceland was a great place to party, so I threw that into the mix for good measure. I recruited a good friend to go with, and as soon as the semester was over we hopped on a plane to Reykjavik, Iceland to start the first leg of our 10 day trip. The two of us are spontaneous guys, and had made no reservations... at all.

We found a hostel and started drinking liquor at about 7:00 pm. Our flight left the next morning around 10. We ran into some kids our age from other countries who spoke English, so we drank with them and got ready to go out. The water there reeks of sulphur, so it was kind of hard to smell nice after showering but you could always blame a fart on the water. We were slammed by about 9 and ready to go out, when the hostel woman informed us that no one goes to the clubs until midnight. We drank more, piled in a cab, and headed downtown. One of the girls was from England and I kept demanding that she buy me drinks to make up for us bailing their asses out in WWII. As expected, she had the irritating accent and looked like she had been chewing on rocks.

We went to two clubs, Astro and NASA, which were both ridiculous. I got separated from the entire group while dancing with an Icelander, who taught me how to say "no" in Icelandic. That was right around the same time I tried to french kiss her. I closed down the club at about 8 am with no sign of my friend, which was bad news because our flight left in a few hours. After walking like four miles back to our hostel I found and dragged him out of bed, convinced the bus driver to let us on even though he could tell we were wasted, and somehow made our flight. Which put us in Amsterdam.

I'm not a huge fan of Europe. For starters, everyone there is a European, which starts them off with two strikes. The security guy who decided to indulge in some heavy petting of my genitalia wasn't the coolest either. Still, Amsterdam was probably the best I could hope for out of the continent, with every vice possible at your fingertips. The chronology of my time in Amsterdam is not important, because it all kind of blended together in a Purple Haze. The most noteworthy experience was the last night we were there. Janna (pronounced Yanna) was the model that my friend was dating. She rounded up some of her modeling friends, and we all headed to the club. It was called Dansen Bij Jansen, and it was straight out of a Jay Z video. A Jay Z video where all the girls are white. The viking bouncers patted us down and the drinking began. Since this was back in the days where I actually had game, I went and quickly got shot down by a couple of ladies. That's a lie, I never actually had game. But I did used to have balls, so the statement stands. The time rolled around to five or six in the morning and we were all wasted again. But this was our last night in Amsterdam, and we were going to make it count by heading into the red light district.

My friend, who came with me on this trip, should probably stay anonymous for this next part, so we will call him "Bill." So we're walking around, trying to find Greg a hooker for like two hours. Some of the hookers there were drop dead gorgeous, too. They sit in glass windows and kind of shake their asses and show off their bodies until business comes up. Greg and I were hot items on the hooker strip because we were the only caucasians there, and are both pretty good looking guys. The hookers would tap on the glass and try and get us to come inside. Even though some were hot, I couldn't do it. Not even close. Greg though, was another story. We walked up and down the hooker strip a couple of times to find the one who was just right, then decided to explore and see if there were any more hooker streets deeper in the red light district. That's when I got mugged.

Whoever invented the Euro currency is an idiot. It's all like giant Monopoly money. They made bills of increasing value colorfully brighter and physically larger, so the 100 Euro bill is bright blue or green and doesn't even come close to fitting in a normal wallet. You either have to fold it like a love note, or it sticks out of your wallet for all the pick-pockets to target. You might as well have a bulls eye on your back. The most reasonable solution, I figured, was to fold up my cash and put it in my front shirt pocket so I didn't have to spend all day watching my wallet.

Worst Idea Ever.

Still in search of hookers, Greg and I walked to a street corner where there were three drug dealers. This is nothing new, they are EVERYWHERE. They hang out on street corners and when you walk by they say quietly, "Coke? Ecstasy? Heroin?" It's not irritating at all. There was a huge black guy and an Arab on our side of the street, and another huge black drug dealer on the other side. The Arab guy walked up and stopped right in front of me. I didn't think he was especially shady, because I'm used to all Arabs being especially shady anyway. I didn't realize that he had seen the huge rainbow of paper in the front pocket of my shirt.

He said something in Dutch and grabbed the cash and yanked. My whole front shirt pocket came off with the money in his hand. I was pissed. First, he had just ruined my nice Banana Republic shirt. He also had about 300 of my Euros (about $400) and I was just drunk enough to do something about it. I caught his wrist as he pulled it back and tried to free the wad of cash with my other hand. He yanked again and broke free from me and took off running down the street. I took off after him, yelling Greg's name at the top of my lungs. Greg hadn't been paying attention, and it took him a few seconds to realize what was going on, and once he did, he began running too. The two large black drug dealers joined the race, to total five of us running down the narrow brick street.

This was back in the days when I wasn't such a lethargic, sedentary fatass, and luckily I was faster than this Arab. If any of you remember the commercial from the early 90's sponsored by the Partnership for a Drug Free America, where it says, "I always wanted to be a track star" as a man is running down the street, and then a cop grabs him by the collar and drags him to the ground, what happened next was a lot like that. I grabbed him by the collar and leaned my weight on him as we were both running as fast as we could, and basically rode him to the ground like a Sumo racing a Shetland Pony. We went down hard. He fell flat on his chest and chin while I smashed my knee on the ground and my cheeks bounced off the pavement. We both spent a moment on the ground recovering from a daze when I saw that his shoe was lying next to me. I grabbed it and we both got to our feet. He wasn't going anywhere.

I threw his shoe down the street and grabbed him by the shirt and backed him up against a wall, just as Greg and the two drug dealers caught up to us. Suddenly, I realized that we were outnumbered, out muscled, and this guy still had my money. None of that mattered because I came up with the most brilliant idea ever. I turned to the two black drug dealers, pointed to the Arab, and said, "I'll pay you $20 to hold him down." ...AND THEY DID. They held him down by his arms so I could punch him in the face. It turned out I didn't even need to because he surrendered. He started swearing and took my money back out of his pocket and gave it to me. I handed one of the drug dealers $20, told Greg to run, and we got the fuck out of there. I should have shouted something like, "DARE to keep kids off drugs.....bitch" to add some American flare to the domination I gave him. Four hours later we were on a flight back home, and the hell out of Europe. Thank God.