This is the first new blog entry after my departure from Amsterdam to the United States. It's actually after four days that I started making notes of my trip and experiences on this particular trip. I will add some extra information probably, because it is very likely that something might pop into my head and might need some divulging, at least from my point of view.
It took me sixteen hours to get from one place to the other. I had to change planes in Atlanta, which is one of the biggest airports in the world. To give you a nice example, in order to get from one gate to the other you have to take a subway. A subway which almost took ten minutes to get me to my gate, which wasn't even the last gate. Before I even came to Atlanta I flew over the Atlantic which took approximately eight hours. I passed the time by watching movies, reading in the Satanic Verses and by sleeping a little. In Atlanta I had to wait for two hours, initially. I went upstairs somewhere to have a smoke. They don't have smokingrooms in every airport, but this one fortunately had. I met some guys from Boston in this particular room, which was a bit foggy. They were brothers and I forgot their names, but that happens a lot to me, especially when I meet so many people in such a short stretch of time. Anyway, one of them told me that the Boston accent was very distinctive and remarked that I hardly had a noticeable accent and so therefore couldn't figure out that I was from the Netherlands. It could have to do something with the fact that I hardly spoke Dutch the week before I went to the States, because I had been around Katha so much and we generally speak English.
It is actually pretty funny, I spoke more English in the Netherlands than I do now, because I am here with a Dutch friend, with whom I speak a lot of Dutch with.
The reason I met these fine fellows who had shared the experience of being in the same whomb at some point( although I do not know whether they did that at the same time, they looked a lot like each other though) was because they just came from California. That is something you ask when you meet each other on the airport I guess. You're not going to have a thorough discussion on politics if you've just met someone. You just talk about basic bullshit, which no one really cares about, but you're too tired of your flight to concentrate on something interesting anyway, so who gives a fuck. I didn't think that their accent was that remarkable, it just sounded American to me, but anyway I just nodded my head, because they were really nice guys and so I felt obliged to be, or at least act, appreciative of this information they had just give me. It was nice to see how they give examples and exeggerated their apparently outstanding Bostonian accent.
As soon as they found out that I was from the Netherlands, the conversation took a quick turn to the use of marijuna and the legislation of the use in the Netherlands compared to that in the States. Someone else picked up our topic and joined the conversation. I do remember his name and I also have his e-mail adress, so I will send him a link to this message, so if he's interested, he can read more about my trip. A thing other people don't want to hear about, unless they are on an airport. He'll probably be on an airport in the future, so when that happens, at least he has something to read. His name was Garry and he had spend the last four years in Florence, Italy to study. He showed me a short video of several plants he had planted underneath some trees up on a hill, just past a vineyard. The Boston brothers were by that time gone to catch their flight. We smoked and exchanged some cigarettes and our e-mail adresses. We didn't actually smoke the latter one, but we did exchange it. After a couple of cigarettes I went to my gate.
