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Ah, Amsterdam.
The land of BICYCLES. Forget the other "attractions"
Amsterdam is famous for, this city is all about transportation.
There are more bicycles than
people in Amsterdam. I think I might be serious about
this.
You call that a
lot of bicycles? Pleeeeaaaase.
THAT'S a lot of
bicycles.
My sheer joy at the
near-infinite number of bicycles in Amsterdam almost made me
forget about the awful 3 hours I had to spend in the dumpy
Brussels, Belgium train station sitting in a cold chair and
trying to keep my butt away from pickpockets.
By some miracle, the weather in
Amsterdam was near-perfect every day I was there.
This part of my trip also really
felt like the beginning of a new chapter. I started
worrying less about where I would sleep as I grew steadily more
excited about my foreign surroundings. After tossing most
of my worries to the curb, I got comfortable and started going
crazy with the pictures. Some of you may choose not to
believe this, but my trip to Amsterdam really didn't have all
that many nail-bitingly interesting stories attached to it.
The hostel I stayed at had great food, but the internet and
front desk were laaaaaaame and the sleeping
accommodations were pretty gigantic and crappy. Unless
you're totally into watching really boring Jesus slideshows
during breakfast, I wouldn't recommend the place. For the
sake of preserving its dignity, I won't mention its name.
The second day I was in
Amsterdam, I met up with another friend of mine (a native of the
Netherlands who is 6'5", wears giant boots, and has long hair
with a beard... awesome) and he showed me
around the city. It was excellent, even if I was
carrying around a backpack that weighed about as much as a small
truck. I took most of my pictures during that time.
And now, a visual tour of
Amsterdam:
The city of
Amsterdam is full of canals. Some of them are small, some
of them are large, and they're all lined with boats.
Cruise boats, motor boats, and rotting little rowboats half-sunk and
filled with leaves resided along every canal's edge. I
didn't take one of these canal cruises (see above picture) while I was here, but
they were very popular. Some of them featured live music
and food!
The boats added to
the wonderful sounds of the city. Cars honked, people
yelled, bicycle bells chimed, busses quacked and scooters
chirped while the boats added to the din with a crisp
"clang-clang." Every hour on the hour, the clocks of the
city would chime at the same time with a slightly different
melody, like school kids all yelling to try and get an answer
right. It may be hard to tell from the picture
above, but buildings in Amsterdam are wacky.
Maybe it's a little
easier to see the wackiness from my drawing... this drawing is
the same view and set of buildings as the photo pictured above
it. While I was
drawing, somebody came up to me and asked me for directions
around town. I guess I looked like a local, or something.
Personally, I think the unwashed hair and lack of make-up kind
of just made me look homeless.
Homeless, local
"artist," or both? You be the judge. To my credit, I
usually don't look quite as much like zombie as this. By the
way, that scarf? Everybody in Europe has one of those.
It was the only thing that really tied me into European culture,
since most Europeans don't look like homeless American zombies.
By the way, you know
how I mentioned that Amsterdam has both a lot of bicycles and
canals?
Well, I suspect they
don't always get along. A couple of people from the hostel and
I sat along the water speculating how many bicycles lined the
waterways of downtown Amsterdam. My guess? Many.
Also, they had been smoking one of Amsterdam's local "specialties,"
making the conversation all the more interesting.
It's a little easier to see the
wonkiness of Amsterdam's buildings in the above photo.
Notice how they lean out over the sidewalk. Apparently,
Amsterdam was originally built on a swamp, and the buildings
sunk into the ground after their construction, causing them to
lean. There is a lot of work being done to preserve these
buildings, as some of them would inevitably fall completely over
if nobody took care of them. Some buildings have been
replaced entirely, but great care was taken to make them blend
in with the older buildings. The woman on the left is in
sheer awe at the majesty of it all.
For the life of me, I cannot
remember what building this is. I want to say that it's
either the town hall or the courthouse, though, so it's probably
one of those. It resides in this big square, where hot dog
vendors (American hot dog vendors, according to that
truck on the left) and street performers are out catering to the
public as people speaking every language imaginable walk by.
"Madame Tussaud" is
the name of this place, and it's a wax museum. I Googled
the name to find out more... turns out there are several of
these museums worldwide. You probably already knew that
though, didn't you? I didn't go in there, but I sort of
wish I had.
The weather lent itself
to lots of nice outdoorsy Amsterdam experiences. My friend
(who I mentioned before) and I got pints of Guinness and drank them
in the sun in front of an Irish pub, while a street performer
harassed passers-by. It was great fun.
The above tag is the
remaining evidence of an advertising campaign that I still don't
entirely understand. Somebody handed me this thing, and tied
to the tag was a single puma sock. I ran this translation from
Dutch to English through Babel Fish, and the translation reads:
YOU CANNOT WITH 2
IN 1 SOCK..?
TODAY FREE YOUR SECOND SOCK TAKES AWAY IN THE PUMA STORE
I think the idea
was to have one person handing out a single sock, while your second
free sock resides in the Puma store, where you would have to go and
get it, and then presumably spend boatloads of money on other Puma
merchandise. Here's the other side, and translation:
PUMA SOCK EVENT
FOR FREE your second sock
catches up with your PUMA Store + moreover 20% discounts at purchase
of minimum 2 stuks as from a spending of 80 euro! with this flyer
and sock
No clue what a "stuk"
is, but I guess this was promoting some kind of sale, provided you
bring in the single sock and the flyer. The real trick to this
promotion was the fact that not more than 2 blocks away from where
they were handing out one sock, there was another person also
handing out socks. They were a slightly different size, but I
managed to pick up two clean, fresh socks in the streets of
Amsterdam to supplement the pile of already stink-ridden and
festering old socks that I had packed. I have no idea why, but
my feet stunk extra bad in Europe. I'm sure you wanted to
know. I seriously considered disguising myself and walking
back and forth between sock promoters to reap the full benefits of
this sock deal.
Here is one of the
socks. I am very sad to report that the second sock appears to
be lost. Although it may be in my apartment somewhere, it is
another equally realistic possibility that the sock is adrift; taken
from me by the cruel hands of travel and circumstance. I hope
to find it again someday. In case you were wondering, yes, I
did put the above-pictured sock in my scanner. I will probably
find amusement in this fact for years to come.
I apologize for
spending half of this page on SOCKS, but you have to understand....
socks are really something you take for granted. By the end of
even a short backpacking trip such as my own, socks are a luxury
item.
The end of my stay in Amsterdam is
kind of a blur. Not because I don't remember it, but
because there was a lot of miscommunication and hopping on and
off of trains. The friend I keep mentioning was gracious
enough to offer me a place to stay at his house in the city of
Zwölle. Since I'm way into the whole
posting-way-too-much-detail thing, here's the train ticket I
used to get there. The ticket machines in Amsterdam were
much easier to use than the ones in Germany:
Here's the rest of my adventures in
the Netherlands, in a nutshell: I hopped the 2-hour train
to Zwölle where my friend and I ate Burger King cheeseburgers
together (something that was A MUST, since we'd talked about it
since practically our first conversation and figured we'd never
get the chance to actually do it). There were a bunch of
anime characters in the Burger King.... apparently some kind of
big expo was going on in town, so everybody was dressed up for
that. I attempted to drink a lot of beer, but I was so
tired I could scarcely finish two and then fell asleep.
In the morning, my friend cooked up
these AMAZING little breakfast sandwiches that included (upon
later inquiry), chicken schnitzel, seasoned eggs, and bread with
curry ketchup. You must try curry ketchup, by the way.
The kind I had came in a tube, not at all unlike toothpaste.
It had a unique and delicious flavor. I think it's generally
considered a Dutch item, but I still plan on trying to get a
hold of some here in the States, if I can.
After leaving Zwölle that morning, the plan was
to take a train to Amsterdam and from there, to France.
Unfortunately, upon arriving in Amsterdam again, I found out
from a (rather rude) lady working the train ticket desks that
there was no way in the blue blazes I was going to be catching a
train to Paris that same day... they were all reserved.
Too tired to really panic or be disappointed, I asked her what
was open the next day. She found me a train, and I spent
the rest of the day sleeping in the same silly Jesus hostel I'd
stayed in before. They all kind of gave me the evil
eyeball when I'm came back, probably because I'd already given
their hostel pretty crappy ratings for the service. Oops.
The next day, I finally set out for
Paris.
Stage 5 -
Paris (Part 1)
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