Amnesia

Hello again, my fellow red-eyed munchkins. I return yet again to the glorious land of nether (Netherlands) to educate you on the grass on this side of the border/ocean/whatever.

Just look at that. Just, just look at that white Goddess.

Amnesia is one of the most rare weeds in this town, and by far one of the greatest too. With a whopping price of 12€/gram you’ll definitely want to go with at least a dimebag. (That’s the correct term for a bag of weed for a tenner, right? I’m too lazy to check.) I found this gem at the Metamorphose coffee shop, which has recently become my favorite one, and made a plan to report the quality of this product in almost real time. That is, I’m going to spark that dank on my ol’ faithful Longbow and write this report under the influence, updating it on the go.

This is what I hope it's not going to be like.

Wish me luck.

T

Okay, first three rips down, and I’m still able to write. That’s good. I put Comedy Central on, and I’m definitely high. Yep. Stoooned. Family Guy’s on, it suits the mood. I think I wouldn’t be able to do much else than sit on this couch and watch TV. And write. I feel tingly. On my temples (those things on the side of your head?) and, well, pretty much all over my body. It’s difficult to keep writing, it’s as if I… forgot. Oh, there’s the amnesia right there! This is incredible, dazzling, amazing, and the list goes on. Amnesia is the shit.

Alright, I need to continue this later.

T+2:30

I'm starting to come down a little bit and I'm rolling a joint. I’m also starting to remember more. I’ve browsed the internet’s most popular weed-related websites and posted God knows what, how, when, and why throughout the cyberspace. I’ll report back when I’m done with this j.

T+3:30
Forgot to smoke that j.

Pictured: Amnesia + a relaxing weekend

T+50:00
Yeah, it was a good weekend alright. Amnesia is truly worth the price. I recommend to buy it at the instant you spot it anywhere in the coffee shops, 'cause it's one of the rare treats only found by the lucky visitor. Smoking Amnesia is another level of toking compared to your regular strains, and definitely worth a try. It's an experience you'll never forget (...regardless of what the name suggests. Although I kinda forgot how to describe it more accurately. All I seem to remember was that it was like chillax squared). Okay, to summarize, it's going to get you stoned, and you're going to feel that warm stone resting inside your head.

Amnesia Haze (weed):

Stoned, Body, Mind-blowing

Overall: 5/5

Price: 2/5

Strength: 5/5

Mind: 5/5

Body: 5/5

Coffeeshop People

Even though putting people into categories is instinctively wrong and all of my professors at the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences would kill me for promoting stereotyping, I’m going to pursue this loathsome act in order to produce enjoyment in a rather novel addition of writing about the different people in coffee shops.

The Couple

The Couples are a quite self-explanatory category, consisting of two lovebirds spending a mellow time at the interior. They draw relatively little attention to themselves, as they are most likely caught in an exclusive discussion about their friend who got pregnant while enjoying a cup of tea and a pre-rolled joint. (Pun intended). The Couple spend a moderate amount of time at the coffee shop, and they usually leave after they are finished with their tea/joint. Being the essence of normality, the Couple is a welcome guest to any good-mannered coffee shop.

Honey, what if like ... peanuts.

The Regular

Buying a cup of tea, sitting at the counter, rolling joints with remarkable skill and chatting with the clerk for hours are the essential characteristics of the Regular. He (most commonly a man) is the heart of the coffee shop and knows everything about the place in question, from the selection of the strains to the next song in the playlist. When encountering foreigners, the Regular may appear indifferent at worst and snappy at best, asking you politely if there were any monsters in the bathroom (‘cause you're still staring at the door in hazy confusion).

He's also almost as cool as Chong.

The Gang

They arrive with great enthusiasm, pick the largest table available, start drinking coke, and smoke away. Usually quite calm, the gang occasionally engages in roaring laughter over the matter of God knows what, retrieving then to their delightful chit chat. Rarely obnoxious (it’s a coffee shop, not a sleazy pub), the gang might only pose a problem to the visitor if space is under great demand. The natural solution to this is to join the group and offer them Red Bull. Yeah, I don’t know.

"There's this car that runs on water, man!"

The Lone Girl

The Lone Girl sits alone and starts a phone conversation at the exact same second she sparks the joint. To this day there are no explanations why she has to talk to the phone while smoking but one educated guess is that if she doesn’t, your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body. She oftentimes seems to ignore the presence of other customers and is thus very difficult to approach. After the joint and the phone discussion, she leaves, never to be seen again.

 

... And she's certainly not wondering which seat can she take! Haha! ... I'm sorry, I really couldn't come up with anything better, I didn't really get any sleep at night. I mean, I still shouldn't take the easy road. Oh, nevermind.

The Childhood Friends

They wander into the coffee shop on a sunny afternoon, buy some dank weed and start a game of chess, whilst enjoying the joints they take turns in rolling. There are no worries surrounding them, and they are both covered by a divine aura as they play away the day. If you run into the same coffee shop at the same time as them, the Arabian legend tells that you become blessed until the next Sabbath. Try to share a joint with them and be introduced to a warm feeling of happiness.

So divine.

The Foreigners

Usually seen travelling in packs, the Foreigners get stuck looking at the price list until finally ordering something with either an authentic or broken American accent. If you observe a group of Foreigners, you may notice that one out of three of these phrases: “God, I’m so high”, “Legal weed is awesome, man”, and “Dude, imagine owning a coffee shop”, are uttered within the first hour and repeated during the second. They are constantly amazed by their surroundings, the decorations, the people, and the multiple bags of weed they stuff in their pockets, even though they would have already spent several months in the country. They are as children brought to this magical world. Yeah, self-irony rules, man.

Also, one of them is Slater.

Tune in for some new additions some day, some time, when you least expect it!

Oasis

It was yet another lazy day and having a lot of free time at hand, I decided to spend it in the most productive way…getting high. Since it was officially Friday, I too pondered through a difficult dilemma as Rebecca Black, but instead of the front/back row seat dilemma, I had to choose what coffee shop should I take my talents to.

After having adventurously explored much of the Groningen pot scene in the past, me and my Finnish buddies democratically decided to pay a visit to a coffee shop, which we grew very fond of and consequently made to our chill out spot, this coffee shop is called oasis.

According to my hazy memory, it looks kind of like this.

Oasis coffee shop takes its pride in offering the best hashish in town, as well as having a wide selection of different assortments of weed. The interior of the place is made of various wooden decorations and some weird Hindu statues, while half of the seats at the coffee shop are presumably stolen from the cinema (I wasn’t complaining).

Once we arrived, we quietly settled down and got started. After my failed attempt of ordering a Charlie Sheen drug, I at the end settled down for a gram of white widow and 2 hash joints, while my buddies ordered the orange crush and snow white (if I remember correctly?). We started off with Hash, which was sensational and gave us the ultimate chill out experience, without that burning tongue/throat sensation. After engaging in some intellectually stimulating conversations on the potential economic benefits of legalizing weed in Croatia and Finland (ok, it was mostly my monologue), we decided to roll up some white widow. After those two joints, we were glued to our seats and could barely move our muscles or faces, in a way we were a perfect cast for a Keanu Reeves lead role.

Is it called acting, or just being stoned?

After a while I managed to move out of my seat and go to the bathroom, where I noticed that my eyes were glowing red, which I refused to attribute to anything else other than my infrared vision. Once I got back from the bathroom, we all decided to go to McDonald’s, and those hamburgers tasted like heaven. Later on we all said goodbye and headed home. Once I got home I took a nap and woke up several hour later, around 1 a.m., with enormous munchies that made me feel like I could devour a horse. After my failed attempt of prank calling a few friends, I decided to hit the town and find a store or any shop where i could get something to eat, which is an exceptionally hard task around here, since everything closes so god damn early in this town. After an epic Lord of the Rings like weed-induced journey to closed Burger King and Alber Heijn, i felt defeated. At that moment my search for food seemed as futile as agent Fox Mulder's search for the truth.

I want to believe... there's an open McDonald's somewhere out there.

Nevertheless I wasn’t ready to give up, and by great fortune found a working grocery store, WINNING! Once I got there, I ordered McFlurry and a Big Mac…and was met with a confusing look from the shop keeper. At the end I had to settle down with 2 Milka chocolates and Choco cakes.

So advice for all of you, always have some food in your fridge, cause there is nothing worse than not being able to satisfy your munchies.

Oasis (Hashish)

price 3/5

strength 3/5

quality 5/5

mind 5/5

body 4/5

overall 4/5

Oasis (White Widow)

price 3/5

strength 5/5

quality 4/5

mind 4/5

body 3/5

overall 4/5

Two New Contributors

Ladies and gentlemen, we have two new writers. Tune in for some never-seen-before variance in our fine blog in the future!

Peace.

Power Plant

After completing some educational challenges, I return yet again to blabber about the many hazy experiences I've encountered during my journey in the Netherlands. Today it's all about Power Plant.

'Nuff said.

I was in a hurry and ended up going to a weird pick-up coffeeshop called De Medley, if I remember correctly. The variety was scarce to say at the least but they had something special to offer. P.P. - Power Plant. It sounded interesting, so I ended up investing my money on that. It was I recall, around 8€/g, quite an average price for weed around this town. The shape and smell didn’t strike out in neither a good nor a bad way. All in all, I couldn’t really say anything about the strain at the time, save for the super cool name.

Power Plant - High voltage

That night was one of those Mondays we took the bull by its horns and went to enjoy a night out in town, The Pacific to be more precise, even though it meant paying for an overpriced taxi when we had to go home. The Pacific is known for their international student nights on every Monday and the crowd was according. In a nutshell, it was a good night despite the occasional breathtaking swim through the crowd to grab some beers.

Grabbing a beer at The Pacific was kinda like this.

Our stamina was depleting and we decided to call it a night. We wandered to the Main Square, Grote Markt and took the first taxi we could reach. When we got to our destination, we were hardly ready to go to bed, so we said good nights to the girls and had a smoke-in at my friends’. First, we made a Tiger Strike out of a weed named Glory and the Power Plant I had bought earlier. The bowl was quickly diminished but we hungered for more. The next bowl was purely Power Plant and the effects came in much clearer.

"THEY, THEY, THEY BLEW OUR MINDS."

A splendid amount of energy ran through our bodies and we felt thunderstruck. Like nothing could stop us. We had some nice talks until one of us submitted himself to sleep. Me, and my American fellow continued on, planting ourselves deeper into the power. During the next hours, he made a long-distance phone call to his buddy and we presented a freestyle rap session over the sea. Next thing I know I’m recording him trying to climb a tree via a tall fence and gloriously faceplanting on the branch-covered other side, ensuing in him breaking his lip and me having yet another story to tell. We stayed up until the first rays of morning light, when we finally made the insightful decision to get some sleep. All in all, with the remarkable energising effect, Power Plant was and is one of the best strains I’ve run into so far.

Power Plant (weed):

High, Body

Overall: 4/5

Price: 3/5

Strength: 4/5

Mind: 5/5

Body: 4/5

  

Haze

Warning: This post will describe some disturbing events. Do not try this at home.

Americans might be familiar with this brand, or at least that's what an American companion of mine told me. Haze is a strong and relatively expensive sativa found at an awesome coffeeshop named The Glory, which I will also describe on a later occasion.

Jesus Christ.

We had our first house party at our student “village” which included a lot of alcohol. I had brought my longbow and we had a peace pipe session with the Thai skunk that I still had left, for obvious reasons. It got us a mellow buzz, and along with the growing tipsiness made an enjoyable evening. Later on, when the host ran out of beer and we switched to the liquors (read: everyone was pissed like giggling teenagers) my American buddy started rolling a blunt from the Haze he had bought earlier. (Blunts seem to be an American thing too, in Europe it’s all the rage with joints; of course, hashish is impossible to smoke in a blunt and that was a new thing to the visitor from across the great ocean too. Anyway, back to the story.)

'MURRIKAH, FUCK YEAH!

The blunt went around in a small circle and I got really god damn blazed. My only option was to chug up on whiskey and have challenging conversations with the people around, I acted like I was suffering from a malfunctioning hippocampus. You know, like the guy in Memento. Suffice to say, I have little recollection about the events that lead to the next chapter.

Me, pictured.

Too many decilitres of whiskey later, we continued with the blunt, which was a mistake on my part. Not many minutes later, I felt an excruciating urge to vomit. That I did as soon as I reached the bathroom. So I was playing tetris, which is ridiculously difficult when you’ve just thrown up. Damn blocks move too fast and controlling them was like pole-dancing.

Above, pole-dancing

Then I woke up. On the bathroom floor. It took me actual seconds to realize where I was. Panic. I got to get out of here. Right fucking now. I grabbed my jacket and went out without saying a word to anyone. I just had to get out. I couldn’t have been more thankful for living just a few hundred metres away. After a dozen trials I finally got my door open. My neurotic roommate was staring at me from the kitchen like a deer in the headlights. She said hi, I said hi, and disappeared into my room like a ninja. Some crazy dreams later I woke up and went to gather my stuff I had left at the party. I was destroyed.  

Haze, you are my K2.

Haze (weed):

High, body

Overall: ?/5

Price: 2/5

Strength: 5/5

Mind: HERP/5

Body: DERP/5

  

Thai

Thai (skunk, probably) was a low-grade weed I bought from an artsy and hip coffeeshop called Metamorphose, which I will describe in greater detail in a later post. The price was extremely cheap, as expected, with only 10€/2g if I remember correctly. I had the intention of buying something natural, mild, and cheap, as I was a little cautious after The Clown and knowing that Dutch cannabis is the shit. What I got shall be described by this picture:

วัชพืชไทยไม่ดี

I had recently made acquaintance with this guy, so we had a smoke at his place with his roommate with my brand new pipe we named 'Longbow'. The weed was thick and hard, like chopped wood and it was a pain in the ass to grind it down without a grinder. We smoked a bowl and were quite taken aback by it's mild quality. The weed was also rather harsh on the throat but we managed to finish the bowl. Probably, as it didn't burn so well and was extinguished after a while.

It wasn't quite like this.

The weed gave us a mellow buzz, good for a nice chat and some easy-listening music. It didn't get us far, even after smoking more bowls so we mixed it with some hash and enjoyed a relaxed evening. All in all, Thai wasn't too good. The form was hard, the smoke was harsh, and the effects were so mild you could actually use it as a blender. One out of five, a waste of the small amount of money you put in it.

Thai (weed):

Stoned, non-body

Overall: 1/5

Price: 4/5

Strength: 1/5

Mind: 1/5

Body: 1/5

The Clown

The Clown was the first coffeeshop and also the first strain I made acquaintance with when I arrived in Groningen. Situated in a common walking street, it probably is the first coffeeshop noticed by a visitor in town. However, even with "The Best In Town" -slogan, it hardly pleased me in a desireable way. Nowadays I skip it without hesitation. The athmosphere just doesn't quite suit me. And the clowns laughing at you in the window. Gosh. It's like a Stanley Kubrick movie. But enough for the introduction, let us go into detail of this moderately wretched place.

They're all laughing at you...

I was going home from a pub with the planned action of taking a first visit in a coffeeshop since moving to town. The Clown was one of the only ones I knew, even though I had heard of some other, better places to go to. I walked in to a thick, foggy interior full of people rolling their joints or having exhaustive late night chats. A rather unsettling beat was playing in the background. I remember reading of some rude Germans inhabitating The Clown often but I couldn't spot any at the moment. The athmosphere was thick with some sort of hazy frustration with men old and young sitting quietly and watching.

My apologies to people with an irrational fear of clowns.

I bought a joint of Clown, a weed strain suspectedly grown exclusively for that very coffeeshop. I left the eerie place and went on home. I restrained myself from smoking it on the same day as I was feeling tired and drunk, but took the virginity of the joint on the next day. The high was moderate, not too strong but quite relaxing anyway. I enjoyed some Dutch television and made some drawings as I didn't have my laptop with me. It was all in all not too strong, not too mild an experience. Nothing much to say about it. Except when I went to bed.

I lay down and after a while I started feeling ticklish in my face. I don't remember if I fell asleep or just lay there with my eyes closed, but I started feeling as if something was crawling inside my face. It was a sensation nobody wants to feel and it had never happened before. Of course, I knew it wasn't possible but the sensation persisted. After a while I fortunately started to drift off to sleep and finally got rid of the unpleasant feeling. Never have I touched The Clown after that incident, yet that's only my opinion. There were plenty of people enjoying The Clown, and hell, maybe they did enjoy fucking insects crawling under their skin and the feeling of a thousand clowns laughing at you. I don't know. But I'm giving it a rating of two stars out of five.

The Clown (weed):

Stoned, Non-body

Overall: 2/5

Price: 2/5

Strength: 2/5

Mind: 1/5

Body: 2/5

The Clown (coffeeshop):

Overall: 2/5

Interior: 3/5

Athmosphere: 1/5

Variety: 2/5

Service: 2/5

A fresh start

This blog is about the Dutch cannabis culture, written in an informative and appreciative manner by a non-dutch observer. As you may all know, cannabis is tolerated in the Netherlands, that is, an adult may buy, possess, and use cannabis products in coffeeshops and other places where cannabis consumption is allowed. Basically. I'm not going to go into details now, so look it up on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands

 

As the title says, this blog contains writings about this remarkably unique cultural feature. A relaxed view on different labels, coffeeshops, experiences, and such. Enjoy your time, contribute, and tune in for future posts.

Cheers. 420.