Evil Eyes Of The Shrimp

Although Kat and I are in the midst of an exercise extravaganza, we keep shooting all of our body perfecting efforts in the foot. Despite the fact that we spend on average of 9 hours on our bikes a day, we haven't lost that much weight. We've been eating so much ice cream, apple cake, chocolate, morning pastries, and stroopwaffels which wholly counteract all of our exorcising. Oh yes, one Dutch food that I did forget to add to the list is stroopwaffel. You can get them in the grocery store, but they are best fresh from the daily fish market. I know this seems like a terrible place to find a fresh waffel, yet the trick is to quickly purchase it from the waffel winklewagon, quickly run to the next block so the smell is gone but the caramel is still hot. Essentially they are comprised of two very thin flat waffelcone wafers with a thin layer of gooey caramel in between.

When we began this whole thing we had a strategem to get fit. We were going to get up, pack up camp, stretch, do sit-ups, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. We planned to finish this trip basking on the beaches of Croatia to get rid of our unflattering sports bra tans. I would then be able to confidently meet my boyfriend at the airport in Greece with a bouquet of flowers and a totally new bitchin body. This was the plan.

We have yet to do any stretching after packing up camp. First it was because it was freaking cold; then it was because we had to flee before the rest of humanity woke up and fuss at us about our clandestine camping; then it was because of the obscene amount of bugs we would inhale while we breathed into our stretches. We decided that a yoga class would do us well. I must confess that I feel a little dubious about yoga in the same way that I feel about a white boy with dreads, tribal tattoos, or the fact that I could never wear a sari with a straight face--none are aspects of my own cultural background and therefore, I'd feel completely disingenuous to co-opt them into my life. So while I can't deal with the spiritual aspect of yoga, I do love the stretching.

Kat, her sister, and I went to a Bikram yoga studio. Now, Kat has done quite a bit of yoga and was familiar with the Bikram style, all of which she purposely withheld from me, the yogic novice. When her sister found out which one we were going to, she said with a frown, "Oh. That one's quite hard." Kat figured that it would be way better that I have no idea what I was getting myself into because otherwise I'd loose the nerve to attend the class. Bikram is known as "Fire Yoga", is practiced in a room heated to 105 degrees and is more like a workout than deep stretching. Man, I just learned that it was developed by this spiritual yogi guy and a "Los Angeles, California company". This seems really strange to me, two completely opposing ideas joining together to create a new style of yoga. It would be like Donald Rumsfeld, Marlboro Man, and the CEO of Texaco combing their powers to create Captain Planet, instead of Earth, Wind, Heart, etc. Doesn't seem right.

Anyway, back to the yogic sauna. I have never in my life sweated that much. The tops of my feet had little beads of sweat. My light grey leggings slowly became dark grey as my shins began to sweat. Sweat dripped into my nose as we bent down into triangle pose. Oh god. It was so gross. I fared slightly better than the two skinny guys in speedos in front of me. Sweat dripped off of their elbows like an old moss covered fountain in Italy, a slow yet decidedly steady drip the entirety of the 90 minute class.

We took a cold shower afterwards but we kept sweating all day long, and it wasn't that hot outside. Our core body temperature had been elevated several degrees and short of jumping into the cold North Sea, we wouldn't be cooling down for some time. All in all, I'm glad we did it but none of us would ever go back.

As is our counteractive tendency, we followed up our body cleansing experience with a night full of toxins. Back in Austin, Kat and I used to go out a lot, but on this trip we have really only gone out once; that was in Sweden with Jo and we were so drunk that we could only make it as far as the trash cans which was pictured in the last post. Kat's sister, Arden, just graduated from art school in textiles on Friday and we had to go out to celebrate. The two British guys that Arden is in a fledgling folk band with, a third British guy and his wild Indonesian girlfriend, and us three American girls filled out our party for the evening. That's one thing about going out in Europe, it's always a fabulously international affair. The sun doesn't really set until about 11pm right now, so party-time doesn't start until around midnight with a pre-festivities drink until 1am. Then we were off to a bar with a cheesy Dutch cover band playing songs by the Eagles, Pearl Jam, and Stevie Nicks, because the other option of yet another Michael J tribute dance party cost 15 euros to get into. Seriously. 15 euros to go dancing to pre-recorded music. Totally bogus in my book. Then we went to another bar with more cheesy Dutch music and lots of dancing. Bars don't close until 4am here so you can get another good 2 hours of naughty fun in before they turn on the lights and play Frank Sinatra's It's Over.

During this whole time we were instructed that under no circumstance could we "fuck with the band" in any way. Repeatedly. Do Not Fuck With The Band. According to Arden, the band is a very delicate balance of forces which could all fall tragically apart if say, one's friend or sister tries to "make it with the band" (ie. get some serious booty). Thus, the band and all libido should be checked at the gate. Let me set the record straight by saying that the pot can not call the damn kettle black. Get my drift? Booty within bands, booty outside of bands, booty in general. It's happened throughout history--Fleetwood Mac anyone?

The next day we felt a little like we had all been in a train wreck, and then only way to fix that was to spend the day lying in the park and eating, of course, ice cream. I can tell I'm getting older because the day after is getting harder and harder. I know, I know--the smallest violin is playing somewhere in the background for our sad, sad life.

L-R: Kat, Kat's sister Arden, me, and Gary the wise cracking Welsh dude who's in the band. By the next morning we dubbed him Gary Google, not to be confused with another British guy, Gary Glitter. In fact, the title of this post is an ode to Gary. He was listing off things that frighten him such as keyrings heavily loaded with keys, 1 o'clock on an analog watch because of the way the hands look on the clock face, the fabric of policemen's uniforms, and shrimp because of their evil eyes.

Kat and Heinki, master Dutch tattoo artist

Us on our day trip to Marken.