New Lows in Parenting

We just got back from a great weekend trip to Amsterdam. I will blog later about the beautiful weather, the wonderful museums, picturesque canals, good restaurants. But now I am going to write about a new twist in our family vacations. As I mentioned before, Amsterdam has many cultural pursuits in which to pass a Saturday afternoon. It also has some more, shall I say, tawdry activities.

Amsterdam is home of the original Heineken Brewery. It was like the mothership calling Chizz home. After checking that there didn't seem
to be a problem with minors taking the tour, we went on over. There was a line but it moved fairly quickly and there was entertainment. No, not in the conventional way - no dancing green bottles. But there were several bachelor parties. Amsterdam is very popular for bachelor and bachelorette (or 'Hen' as they say in the UK)parties. There was a good size group of young men all dressed in silk pajamas and being loud and generally obnoxious. It was amusing. When we finally reach the register, we learn that the admission price includes tokens for 3 beers. FOR EVERYONE!!!! Chizz & I received tokens and Kiki & Snake received tokens. I am not really surprised about Kiki because it is generally assumed in Europe that most 15 - 16 year olds drink. When we go out to dinner, she is always given a wine glass and at bars she seems to have no difficulty ordering. (Sigh) But this trip I found out that in the right circumstances even Snake can get served. When we flew into Amsterdam, the flight attendant misheard Snake and gave him a beer. He had said coke (and I heard him) but Chizz ordered a beer and so she gave them both one. (KLM, Snake & Chizz's favorite airline by the way. Snake for the reason I just said and Chizz because
they don't charge you for alcohol!)We went through the tour, which was educational for most of us, for some of us it was just something to do in between times to turn in your beer tokens. They had a fun little display where you find out what it is like to be a bottle in the bottling plant. You watch videos of commercials, learn about hops, yeast etc. But mostly it was about drinking the beer. Truthfully, and thankfully, Snake doesn't really like beer - yet. Kiki drank all of one glass and the slack was picked up by Chizz. Couldn't let "free" beer go to waste.

So after an afternoon of drinking with our children, what could we do to top that? I know! Let's take them to the red light district. Of course, we did. Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands. Prostitutes have unions, pay taxes, have health benefits etc. While I will stop short of saying it is an honorable profession, it is a legal one here and there are plenty in abundance. We decided that this was part of Amsterdam and at their age it wasn't something we needed to hide. So off we went. We made sure we went fairly early in the evening because later in the evening as the alcohol level gets much higher there can be trouble. This is definitely a tourist attraction and there were several
tours, the ever-present Japanese tour group, a group of older women, quite a few families such as ours. Although legal, it is still seedy. We walked by a few sex clubs with their hawkers outside, one of which offered us a "family discount" - ewwwwwwww! Most of the women sit or stand in windows to be gawked at, dressed in variety of short skirts, bathing suits, shorts; all of them heavily made up and not as young as you would think. Kiki was kind of "sketched out" by it all; Snake I think felt a mixture of revulsion and fascination.

Yep, I am pretty sure we don't need to make room on our mantle for that Parenting of the Year Award. Of course, we didn't take them to any of the "Coffee" shops (specializing in everything but coffee) in Amsterdam. That would have been wrong, just wrong. The bar may be low but it isn't on the ground!!