A few short stories....

Alright as requested (Thanks, Magalie for reminding me :) ) here is a post....



Living in Amsterdam and working at a hostel you meet some interesting characters. Since I've been here I've had my fair share of weird encounters. Some of been funny, some have been scary, some have been sad, and some just downright bizarre. Here are some of the more memorable incidents here in Amsterdam.



1. My first reception shift- A former cleaner with mental health issues came up to the window next to the reception desk and started banging on the window, repeatedly ringing the doorbell, and screaming at the top of his lungs. In the past he used to stage protests outside the hostel because he convinced himself that he had been wronged by the staff. But I've never seen him since that day.



2. The Cat- The hostel has a cat and one particular long term guest became very attached to the cat. She had been coming to the hostel for years, but had become very difficult to deal with. She was finally asked by management to check out and on her last day she decided that she wanted the cat to come with her. SO right before she left she went into the cafe, threw the cat out the window into the alley, and ran like heck out the front door to get the cat on the outside. Two staff members jumped out the window and rescued the cat before she got to it. She still stops by periodically and asks to visit the cat. (by the way she's a really nice lady and I very much enjoy her, but it was quite a ridiculous incident)

3. The Male Stripper-
Stop me if I've told you this one, but a few months ago a guy came into the cafe after closing and announced to the staff members who were sitting around eating that he was a stripper hired to entertain us and then started to take off his pants. We managed to stop him in time thankfully. Then he sat down at the table with us and told us a ridiculous story of how someone injected him iwth HIV on the street outside the hostel and how he needed one of us to inject him with an antidote (obviously he was under influence of a number of different substances that may or may not be legal in Amsterdam). WE made him leave the cafe and eventutally the hostel when we realized that he wasn't even a guest, but some random person off the street who'd wandered in.

4. We've had some really funny cleaners. One of the most memorable has to be, John. John, is a blind (my first reaction when they hired him was "We're gonna have a blind guy cleaning teh bathrooms?) , former football (soccer) player(the man is like 40 and LOVES to play even though he causes a number of injuries because he can't see the ball or half of what's going on) from Hungary(yet randomly speaks Italian, german, and english). Over the month that he worked with us we collected a number of funny stories, but my favorite had to be the day I found him teaching another cleaner how to mop, using a wet towel and a stick. This wasn't working so well and I asked him to get a real mop and a bucket of hot, soapy water. He begins to argue with me and tells me that he's always mopped like this and it works better. So I ask him to show me his process. So he takes me into the bathroom, runs some water on the towel, squirts some hand soap from the bathroom onto the towel, and carries the towel back to the kitchen to mop. At this point I"m between anger and laughter. I explain to him the correct way to mop (using an actual mop and hot water and mopping solution) and try to laugh as he argues with me that his way works just fine. The irony of the situation was that he'd been cleaning here for a month and it was his last day working at the hostel. Between 4 different supervisors, not one of us had noticed this for a whole month.

I'm sure there will be more to come once I have time to go back through my journal, but this should keep you guys happy for a little while, right?

P.S. I will be home in less than a month (June 3rd). I return from Camp on 14th (I think) and after that I'll be ready to hang out and catch up with everyone.