I lived there for a year, 1983 - 1984, attending the University
of Amsterdam on a government scholarship.
Last revised March 16
2008
John the tramp
from England found it hard to get work in
Amsterdam. He said : “People don’t want
to give me a break because they know I’m just a tramp.”
So he steals from
the shops for a living, small items of clothing and the like, he sells
them for cheap in the bars.
He carries around
two bottles of beer for food and warmth. He likes to talk to me but
backs away in fear when I excuse myself to go.
He showed me the
gash in his scalp, someone had broken a bottle of beer on his head. He
didn’t or couldn’t go to the doctor. “At first it hurt and bled, then it
got infected, but now it’s healing up
okay.”
He insisted on
giving me a scarf he’d stolen, he didn’t want any money for it. But he’d
take the price of a beer if I had it, but not as payment for the scarf.
It was not a salesman’s
tactic, I could see in his eyes that he meant
it.
He asked me how I’d
got my scholarship, as I’d told him that that was where my money came
from and how I could live in Amsterdam. He said that he’d like to
have a scholarship too and asked me how to go about it. I had to tell
him that you already need a university degree just to be
eligible.
One day I saw him
with his two bottles, it was very cold but he had no jacket, maybe he’d
had to sell it. He didn’t see me, I was at a distance. He was dancing
down the street like in a musical, joyfully leaping into the air.
Something had made him happy that morning.
When you talk with
him you see that he is really a gentleman in his way, but he can’t even
go back to England as they’d put him in
jail for debts, he explained.
Like many of
Amsterdam’s forlorn, he has no passport. He sleeps on the
docks.