I went to the Netherlands beach yesterday for the first time. They didn’t have any good eats nor a boardwalk to get some food so naturally I was hungry when I got back to Amsterdam.
While riding my bike on the way to the fast ferry to get to the beach, I rode by a juice bar on Harlemmerdijk. As I rode the fast ferry back from the beach I could not stop thinking about food and how hungry I was. The thought of the juice bar kept popping up which I think is due to my body’s vitamin C deficiency and my focus of eating paleo.
Lucky for me the juice bar wasn’t that far away from the loading docks nor my house so I got to the bar in a jiffy. To my dismay the juice bar was closed. The door was locked, no one was in there, and there was no sign for their hours. I was waiting for the bike traffic to clear to cross the street to hop on my bike to the next potential food place when I heard yelling.
I looked around for the shouts because for some reason my intuition was telling me those yells were for me. Coming from the 2nd floor across the street, a man was yelling out the window something about juice and being right down and pointing to the bar. I gave a simple thumbs up that I’d wait for the guy and then proceeded to wait outside on the sidewalk a couple of minutes for the dude to get down from his window.
When he got to me he grabbed my hand and seriously pulled me inside. I think he was from somewhere in South America. He had a tan and long hippy hair pulled back in a ponytail. I would say he was a man in his late 40s. Definitely not Dutch.
I ask him what his hours are and says in a thick Spanish accent (I’m just guessing here), “Whatever you need them to be.” Seriously, that’s what he says.
Then he goes behind the high counter and motions me to bring up my right arm. I go along with it because honestly I don’t know half the stuff the guy is saying but it just seemed like the right thing to do. He takes my hand and starts giving me a hand massage. Twisting and pulling on my fingers and talking about energies. He doesn’t stop at my hand, he starts massaging my forearm, then my bicep, then get’s to my shoulder. He stops at my shoulder.
He’s says, “Don’t worry. I do this with all my customers.”
A red flag goes up in my head but then I thought, “ehhh, why not?”
He tells me to give him my left arm so I bring that one up to the counter and he places my arms next to each other and wiggles them a bit. He starts giving my left hand the same treatment as my right and I begin to notice that his hands are quite sticky. They have the stickiness of someone who’s just ate fruit, at least that’s where my mind was going since we were surrounded by fruit in a juice bar.
He continues the massage up my arm and says I have very nice soft skin and strong arms. Why yes I do, thank you. Notice his choice of words “strong.” Not big but maybe he was just feeling up those big strong muscles of mine. He points at a couple of red marks on my left shoulder and says “bites.” Why yes, I did just get that mosquito bite, thanks for stating the obvious. Are conversation was going in a very interesting direction.
Then the guy says he put a lot of energy into me and that I should pass it along to someone else. I told him thank you for the energy shot but he kept talking about this energy and other stuff I couldn’t quite understand. Frankly, he was making me slightly uncomfortable and most importantly I was starving as hell (I hadn’t eaten since 10:30 and it was now 4:30).
Oh, yeah. I think what really turned it uncomfortable was when the guy places a sticker on my tank top and said “Have a great J Day (because his name is J. Maybe J for Juice, idk).” Though he really had to reach over the counter to place it on my top right about my left breast. Slightly awkward.
Sorry. My camera didn’t want to focus.
Probably not even 5 seconds after the massage/placement of the sticker I say, “I’ll take the orange sunrise, please.”
J says, “Oh, you get straight to the point.” Why yes J, I’m friggin’ starvin’.
But I really did love the experience even though it was an extremely awkward one. I will be going back because even though J awkwardly touched me, the juice was delicious and quite cheap! Curious to see what the next juice experience will be and also if other people really do get this type of treatment every time they walk into this place.
kristin goes knowmadic 