Encounters

I had a very simple plan yesterday, to go to my favourite Irish pub, have a pint and read or write in the sun for an hour or two. Instead, I was careless enough to strike a conversation with an elderly Dutch geographer who would tell stories about lion cubs in a hotel room in East Berlin, a Napoleonic war reenactment in Grodno, and even spending two weeks in Šilutė (!). He kept on paying for the rounds, so how can I say no, but five or maybe six beers and a similar number of hours later, on my way back home I got seriously lost. I think it was my first drinking and driving event of this magnitude, and I have pleasantly surprised myself by not getting into an accident, but at some point I found myself on a highway towards, perhaps, the Hague. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. What probably tipped me of is that there were no more biking lanes - something that never really happens within the confines of Amsterdam. And all this, by the way, in spite of me consulting my GPS-ready phone all the time (while driving, naturally). Amsterdam is tricky. What saved me in the end, perhaps, is that the farther from the center you go, the less intricate and knotty its roads become.