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Published: July 22nd 2008
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Before I get into my time in Amsterdam, I´d like to share some random observations with Europe:
1) They LOVE dated, random American music. Every cafe and bar play past hits from artists such as Paula Abdul, Mili Vanilli, Lionel Richie, Ace of Base and so on... keeps me amused to say the least.
2) Public toiletts have tariffs. I mean, these old women just sit there and make you pull out anything from .30 - .50 euro cents, which is almost $1.00 dollar to do what nature requires. Whatevs.
3) Don´t bother getting American Express travelor checks, especially if they are in American dollars. Trust me, they´re useless and you get fined way too much for their worth.
4) Eurorail passes also suck. I thought purchasing these expensive tickets would assure me total freedome and flexibilty on the trains in Europe. NOPE, you still need to make reservations, which can ONLY be done in train stations (with long wait lines), and additional booking fees. Oh, and they only allocate a certain amount of Eurorail seats per train. Therefore, many are already at capacity in these busy summer months. Moral of the story is to not buy
such a pass, but rather buy regular tickets and do the occasional cheap flight. Just trying to help future travelors out! 😊
AMSTERDAM...
Amy and I took the lazy route and flew into Amsterdam instead of training it. We had originally planned to
couchsurf, but since our schedule got expedited (as Amy wanted to meet a friend in Amsterdam before he left), our host was unable to accomidate the new dates. Amy recalled that a friend from highschool, Mike, was living in Amsterdam. Literally the night before we flew to Holland, we crossed our fingers and sent an email to Mike. He responded positively, even though he hadn´t seen Amy in about a decade, or ever met me.
Mike even went to the trouble of meeting us at the train station, and helped get us oriented. Can we ever thank him enough?? We literally dropped our bags off at Mikes and went off to meet up Amy´s friend Yannik and his brother. We went to some traditional bars - a very popular location that Oceans 11 or 12 filmed at. This bar had a resident cat that just chilled at the bar, and I thought it was
The cat
I told you! about the funnies thing I´d ever seen.
Later that night we fulfilled our munchies by eating the local fav of french fries topped with a crap ton of Mayo and ketchup. We wondered the canals, and of course checked out the red light district. I´ve never seen anything quite like this, and it made me a bit sad. I did learn that the women did have a lot of suppot, like personal security, panic buttons, etc. I also learned that they must undergo health tests on a bi-weekly basis. At least it´s evloved to this level, which made it a bit easier to process.
The next day Amy and I went to the Anne Frank house. It was a good history lesson to see first hand how this family, only one of many, had to endure the extreme prejudice and insanity of that time. It´s humbling, and a must see.
Mike introduced us to his very good friends, Onno and Ivo. We had dinner together, and they showed us more local hangs. Ivo hosted us our third night in Amsterdam, as Mike had other friends visiting at that time. I swear, the kindness of people on this
The gang
Mike, Ivo and Onno showing Amy and me a great time!! trip has flabberghasted me. I can´t beging to express how grateful I am!
Only other word to the wise I will leave is... bring your sweaters, rain coats and umbrellas to Amsterdam. This novice travelor was under the impression that July would leave even the Netherlands a bit warmer. WRONG! 😉
We used our Eurorail pass to get to Paris, the first time use. We again, nievely thought we could just pick the train time we wanted. WRONG AGAIN. After waiting well over an hour at the station, the train booker asked where we were going. We cheerfully chimmed, ¨Paris at 3pm!¨ ¨Um... no,¨she replied, this is all booked... I can get you on the next train to Lille in 5 minutes, and then a transfer...¨ Our eyes crossed at this random itinerary which was not the direct train to Paris we assumed we could get. All of a sudden this woman hands our these tickets and says to hurry to platform 11 to catch this train in 5 minutes. Once we are on this train, I am able to get my barrings and read the itenerary more closely. Still fresh with reading military time, I notice something
¨Oh shit.¨I say. Amy asks ¨Oh no, what now?¨ We have 4 mintues between tranfers of trains. The train employee on board says ¨Ha, don´t bother, this is impossible to do¨. She was right, it was impossible, despite a valient effort on our part to run through a foriegn station with 40 pound backpacks in toe. We made it to Paris eventually, jumping on a train one hour later then we had reservations for (playing the I dunno, confused card when the conductor asked for our tickets). Worked this time...
Paris is next. Read on.
Peace and Love,
Natalia
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