MIDWAY upon the journey of our life I found myself within a dark forest, they call it the Amsterdamse Bos. My dear sister had warned me that a life of fine wine, women and song could only lead to bad things. If only I’d listened to her.

The last thing I remember was standing on the Roelhof Hartplein after an evening of drinking at the College Hotel. I’d successfully dodged several cyclists that were flying along the pavement while looking at their phones. I recall seeing a scooter rider coming towards me at high speed and then, here I was standing in the middle of the Amsterdamse Bos.

Grotere kaart weergevenIn front of me stood an old man in a white suit, with a long grey beard and white hair. “Is that a Hugo Boss suit?” I asked. “The brand of the suit is irrelevant, your obsession with all things shallow and material has led you to be where you are now.”

The old man took me through a large set of Iron doors from behind which were a set of stairs. Down we walked for what seemed like ages until we reached the first level. “You lived a life dominated by carnal desires, vanities and conspicuous consumption. He opened another set of doors. Suddenly I appeared to be in the PC Hooftstraat a place I knew well. It looked exactly the same apart from the fact that the old man and I were the only people on the street and it was eerily quiet.

I decided to pop into some of my favorite stores, starting with the ICI Paris to buy some of my usual Chanel face cream and some appropriately named Egoiste after shave. As I entered the store I realised that something was definitely not quite right. All of the usually elegantly dressed staff were wearing jeans, a nondescript leopard skin patterned top and all three women that worked in the store had wet hair. Even worse they all had cigarettes in their mouths and were smoking while also intermittently checking their smartphones. I walked out of the store in disgust.

I walked further on, planning to cross over the road to go into the Church’s shoe store. Now suddenly a horde of cyclists rode along, all were in jeans and texting while cycling. I managed to cross the road unscathed and entered the store. Again it was staffed by women wearing jeans. Their hair was wet, they were smoking and texting, shouting loudly at each other, smoking and texting. I left, shell shocked and as I entered multiple stores, the same story repeated itself. Women with wet hair, jeans, cigarettes, irresponsible cyclists. “I’ve got to get out of here” I said to the old man. “No problem at all” said he and with a wave of his hand suddenly a Taxi appeared. We got in and I said to the driver “take me to the Dylan Hotel, I need a drink. The Dylan hotel?” asked the Taxi driver, “you’ll need to direct me, I don’t know where that is” he said. I held my tongue and started to give him directions. The radio in the taxi was turned up loud and was playing a dreadful song by Lady Gaga. The stuff of nightmares.

I asked him to turn it down and he ignored me. We’d only just left the PC Hooftstraat and yet the meter was turning over at high speed and was already at 15 Euros. “What’s wrong with your meter?” I asked. “It’s already 15 Euros and we’ve barely moved.” The driver threw back his head and laughed and laughed, “the price is what it says on the meter, I can do nothing about it.” The journey to the hotel took forever and the Lady Gaga song played over and over again.

(Mum mum mum mah)

We walked into the Hotel bar and I knew something wasn’t right, the usually elegant crowd in the bar was full of men with identical bad hairstyles, cheap suits and brown shoes. The women all had wet hair, were wearing jeans and badly color co-ordinated tops. They were all smoking and texting. The noise levels were incredible, I went to the bar and tried to order a drink but the barmen was busy with his smartphone and no matter how much I tried to get his attention he just ignored me.

I looked at the old man and said “what’s going on why is everything like this?” He smiled and said, “how you lived and judged others is how you’ll spend eternity, welcome to hell.”

Compulsory color shoes in the Netherlands

 

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