Amster damn dam - Summer 1996

After two months in Israel I was beginning to come unraveled. Fighting traffic out of Tel Aviv every day to drive 30 miles to Ashkelon, surrendering my passport to security at the company I was over there to visit, being marched by armed guards back to the office they had for me, fighting the communication barriers. They spoke perfect English until the questions got difficult. Picking up Israeli soldiers, kids, male and female, nearly every day on the drive back and forth thinking having an automatic weapon in the car was an added safety measure. I was fucking tense, it builds over there, it's loud, aggressive, everything is a shade of brown except for the Mediterranean which is a beautiful blue. I'd seen a suitcase that was left in the hotel entrance get blown up by the bomb squad. Some poor asshole came back to see his underwear falling like confetti. I was ordered........er, encouraged, by the US Embassy to report to them weekly on the activity levels at the company I was visiting. They were a major weapons manufacturer for the Israeli Military and there was interest in what and how much they were producing. I look like a fucking spy? Apparently. I think the Israelis watched the Embassy and so I think they were watching me. Maybe I was just paranoid, the region does that to you. One weekend I was floating in the Dead Sea and after taking one of those mud baths, which is really pretty cool, I set off down the road and found a place where the sea had evaporated, it's all salty ya know, and there were tire tracks so I thought, why not, and headed out across the packed salty sand, not knowing I crossed the freakin' border into Jordan. They picked up on it though and all of a sudden I was surrounded by jeeps and soldiers with weapons trained on my bug eyed ass and I spent a couple of hours explaining I was just out for a Sunday drive to the Jordanian authorities. I also spent considerable time in Jeruselum which is a passionate place to say the least. A Belgian businessman I met in the hotel and I snuck into Bethleham which was closed to tourists at the time to visit the Church of the Nativity. We slicked the Palestinian cab driver's hand with some extra bucks to facilitate our exit from an occupied territory. It was a lovely tension.

To say I was stressed would be an understatement of some magnitude. So when I got the call to meet someone from Lockheed Martin in The Netherlands to tour some Dutch suppliers for potential offset business I was packed and ready to go. Lockheed wanted to sell airplanes to the Dutch and the Dutch wanted new business for their factories so it was a mutual backscratching endeavor. We made the engines that go on the airplanes, hence our involvement.

On our approach into Amsterdam all I could see was green and water and it was a beautiful sight after having been so exposed to shades of brown and tan. And it was cool, 75 instead of 95. I was happy. We only got to spend a couple of hours in Amsterdam before we were met by some Minister of Commerce or some such office who was to squire us around the Dutch countryside by train for the next five days. Little Dutch towns, beautiful scenery out the train window, great little restaurants and bars, beautiful Dutch girls, bicycles everywhere, friendly people........everything the the Mideast wasn't, except for the beautiful girls.

And I was in good company after being essentially alone for two months. The Lockheed dude was a little stiff at first but the Dutch government guy and I along with lots of great beer opened him up considerably.

And, I knew the trip was going to end with an entire day and night in Amsterdam. My pulse was quickening. And there wasn't a terrorist in sight. Dodging bicyclists seemed to be the only danger I was facing. Of course there was still Amsterdam to go.