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Published: March 29th 2010
Well, its been a week since my Amsterdam trip, I just got back from Prague which so far is my favorite place I have been, but I am going to have to give Amsterdam a close second. I really did not know what to expect in Amsterdam, besides a liberal and tolerant town. However, trusted sources told me not to miss this place if you get a chance so I went in pretty excited, ready to make the most of my time. I got about two hours of sleep the night before we had to leave. It was the day after St. Patricks day so we all had a fun night out in downtown Verona. I got back at around two and we had to meet in the lobby of our residence at 5:50 because our flight was from the Milan airport, which is about a two hour train ride. Burak told me to make sure we didn’t leave him in the morning but ironically I was the one that slept through my alarm. He called me at 5:45 in the morning and in a matter of seconds I threw on some clothes, grabbed my stuff and headed to the lobby.
I felt like Maria Von Trop when she heard the bells in the Abbey when she was in the mountains and realized she was late and rushed out of there (Sorry couldn’t resist the Sound of Music Analogy). We arrived at the Milan train station in plenty of time and took a traffic jammed taxi ride to the airport. Milan is like the New York of Italy. Modern, congested, business hub, fashion capital of the world, it is certainly a place worth seeing. I plan on doing so when I come back from Barcelona on the 25th of April. Bryan reserved us tickets to go see the last supper by Leonardo daVinci that day. We will probably check out the Gothic Duomo that day too, which looks incredible. Our flight is KLM, a dutch airline will 7 foot blonde haired women as stewardesses. They speak perfect English and are very friendly. For the amount we paid round trip I am taken aback at how great the service is. We get a meal and two rounds of drinks. They also sell watches, ipods, and other gadgets on the flight which was somewhat strange, but interesting. There is a National Rugby team
on the flight as well, they are apparently quite popular in Amsterdam. When we get to Amsterdam, it becomes apparent that we are going to have few problems communicating. All the signs are in English and everyone speaks it fluently. We take a really nice train from the airport to the central station which is where our hostel is near. I think a guy tried to pickpocket me at one point. He briskly walked buy me a very quickly grabbed at my bag but found that I was staring at him so he just kept walking as if nothing happened. After that episode we head out of the station and get a good first glimpse of the city. The canal is in view along with pedestrians and the unique architectural design of the buildings that box in the streets of the city. I had been told there were about as many bikes as there were people before I came here. I look to my right and see how this is possible now. A two leveled deck packed with bicycles lined up side by side is quite the sight. We head to the flying pig hostel and find it quite easily.
Dam Square...
Where the town originated... it was a dam at first, and expanded out from there.Then we wander the streets. The smell of marijuana from the coffee shops occasionally catches my nostrils. One thing I did not know was that marijuana technically is not legal here. You cannot advertise it. This is why "coffee shops" imply that is where marijuana is. The reality is, it is just tolerated here, but not technically legal here. Prostitution on the other hand is legalized, in 2000 was when it happened. Before then, it also was tolerated. We get maps and get our bearings straight, it isn’t too difficult to find one’s way around here. I explore for about an hour then head to one of the canal tours. It was relaxing, but almost too relaxing. The three hours of sleep hits me on this slow ride and I doze off about three times. Later that evening me, Bryan and the girls go to an improv comedy act called “Boom Chicago” that was started by some Americans about 15 years ago. It is very similar to Who’s Line is it Anyway (not quite as good of course, but still really funny). There were a few parts that had me laughing uncontrollably. One of them being when the four guys
sat in a circle and represented a different nationality. Before the sketch started they asked the crowd for a suggestion of a goofy love song. Someone shouted out “I’ve had the Time of My Life” from the movie Dirty Dancing. Then the sketch began. The guys would start singing the song in English then one would pipe up and say “no lets sing this song in my native tongue… Russian.” We would watch on an overhead projecter they had above them as the tech guy in back would take the lyrics of the song and translate it via Google Translate from Russian to English. They would start singing it in Russian but then quickly give up and say… “lets go back to English.” Then the guy from the back would take the translated version of the song in Russian and revert it back to English which completely jacked up the lyrics of the song, and they would sing that version. They did this about four times, for four different languages. At one point, the song sang like this, “Now I’ve had a sufficient life in this time. And I am your debtor…” It was really funny. This show was about
The Canals
These Canals loop all around the city. There is mud, sand, and an entire layer of old bikes at the bottom that people have thrown down there over the years! two hours long and very much worth it. We topped the first night out with some Dutch pancakes which are absolutely huge. We ordered three for our group of 10 which was plenty to eat. The next day, we got up early and went to the Anne Frank House. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside but on the walls were written quotes from her Diary as she was hiding in the house for the few years that she was there. We saw the very bookcase door that she hid behind. She had to hide in this house and be cooped up for some time. One of her quotes on the wall from her diary read, “I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world feel young and know that I’m free.” Another said, “I’ll make my voice heard, I’ll go out into the world and work for mankind.” At the end of the tour, there was a video of her father who was the only survivor of the Frank family after the Holocaust. He came across her diary and ended up publishing it. In the video he talked about how surprised he was when he read
The Bike Deck
And that... is how there are nearly 700,000 bikes in the city his 12 year old daughters thoughts and feelings in the journal. He was amazed at how deep some of her convictions and reflections were, as well as her self criticism. He was very close with his daughter and this still took him off guard as she never showed her inner feeling. He said something that stuck with me, “most parents don’t know really their children.” I ended up buying a book of her Diary because I had never read it in high school. After the house we went on a bike tour of the country side which was so fun. Our tour guide’s name was Neils and was the most chill guy I have ever met. He was born and raised in Amsterdam yet had lived in Florida at one point in his life. Him and I talked about rock climbing a bit because he likes to do that. During the tour we saw some of the windmills that help pump water from the ditches into the streams that go into the river. We also saw a cheese factory (reminded me of good, real cheese from Wisconsin) and a place where these wooden shoes are made. The guy that was
there was pretty goofy but showed us how he cut and shaped the shoes. Apparently they are extremely comfortable and durable. I asked him what they are used for and he said that farmers often wear them, and that they last for a very long time. He looked right at me and said, “I could cut you a pair, your feet are 29 cm.” He didn’t even ask my size which was kind of funny, he knew looking right at me that I was a size 10. I guess it comes with years of experience. I found out later from Neils that that dude speaks 14 languages… unreal. Our bike tour finished in a public man made forest with a ropes course and then Vondel park, the Shakespeare of Holland. Many people come here in the summer and stroll around with their dogs and children. Neils told us a bit about the history of the park and what activities were and now are legal and illegal to partake in there. Look it up if you really want to know! Afterwards, we go grab our stuff at the hostel and walk uptown where our hostel for the second night is. When
we check in I take a nice 2 hour nap. There are people from all over the World in our hostel, one of the guys is from Australia in our room. Another from England. Another from Argentina. When I am napping I can hear Pink Floyd blaring from one of the guys headphones. I meet him later and his name is Ollie. He is Hispanic looking so it took me off guard when I heard his thick British accent. I mention that I am a Pink Floyd fan and that I could hear the song “Money” coming from his headphones. He answers in his accent, “Oh yeah mate, I now see that album (Dark Side of the Moon) in a comb-play-teely different why-ay… I smoked before I listened to it see. It was an in-cre- eeble ex-pare-ee-ence.” Later that night we ate some Mexican food and then had drinks outside in Leidensplein, a lively area with several pubs and concert halls. While we were walking to the restaurant a random guy in the crowd quickly whispers in my ear, “Coke? Ecstasy?” What’s a trip to Amsterdam without a sketchy guy offering to sell you cocaine and ecstacy? We enjoyed our
Mexican food and later that evening, I hung out in the hostel bar for awhile and met some people from Canada and Sweden. A guy from Canada shows me pictures from the free walking tour he took which leads me to want to do it the next day. I get a good nights rest and the next morning, Van Gogh museum is our first thing on the agenda. We walk to the museum and almost get run over by a girl on a bike. We are a bit taken aback at how mad she gets (and I honestly don’t blame her). She yells, “get off the bike path, its clearly labled, bike path not walking path… idiot!” Her anger took us off guard because up to that point the Dutch just patiently and effortlessly rang the bike bells to warn us if we were in there way… probably used to the naïve tourists that haven’t seen a city with 500,000 bikes whizzing by constantly. We continue on our and snap some pictures at a large IAMSTERDAM sign that is right by it. In VanGogh, we are not allowed to take pictures but I jot some stuff down on the paintings.
There were a few that stuck out to me. One of them was the “Sunflower” painting that many consider to be his second most famous after “Starry Night” which is in New York. Anyway, he painted five of these sunflower paintings for his friend, Paul Gaughin, that had just moved into an apartment and had nothing on the walls. Gaughin later did a portrait of VanGogh painting these flowers. What’s funny about Gaughin’s portrayal of VanGogh capturing these flowers on canvas is that Van Gogh painted these 5 paintings for Gaughin in the winter. Sunflowers would not be in bloom then, but Gaughin has in the picture live sunflowers that VanGogh used in order to paint them clearly. The text aside this painting said this may have been just to poke fun at Van Gogh because this would be insulting to say that he needed to look at live flowers while he was painting as opposed to just conjuring them in his mind. I found that kind of interesting because it had a story behind it. Another one I liked was one called “Almond Blossom,” which was supposed to symbolize spring. It looked like he was sitting in this tree
as the white buds emerged in spring… he actually painted it for his baby nephew when he was born. The story of Van Gogh is a tragedy. He was always a depressed guy and struggled with inner despair, constant boredom and sorrow. He often felt like a failure. However, one of his outlets was freedom he found in nature, and painting it helped calm his soul. He also saw the value of surrounding himself with people that shared his passions and skill for painting. He understood that this would help him succeed and improve in the long run, having others push him to the success limit and setting the bar high. His life ended at a young age (in his 30’s), he took it himself. After IAMSTERDAM, I head to the free walking tour at Dam’s square. It starts to rain but the tour continues anyway. Our tour guides name is Amy. She is from Australia but has lived in Amsterdam for the past 4 years. She is an extremely chill, outgoing, easy conversationalist and from sight to sight her and I converse. She makes sure we all mingle in between places and get to know each other too which
I liked. I meet some students studying in Rome and some others from Canada. The tour takes us all over the highlights of the city, it covers the history and the local hot spots. I am not going to describe it in detail here because I am going to label the sights and explain them on the pictures I took, so if you want to know about them… check ‘em out below. As the tour is ending, it begins to pour down rain. We all rush off and I say goodbye to Amy and the others. I then go souvenir crazy… way more than I expected too, but I think absolutely worth it. Later, I met up with Bryan and we ate a café on the corner of Leidesplein and topped off the night watching a large group of Iranians celebrate Nouroz in the center of the town. It was so cool. There were some guys blaring and jamming to some Iranian hip hop and several people jumping over a large bonfire. Men, women, and children linked arms and did these circle dance rituals around the fire. I was having some serious flashbacks of my own Norouz celebrations with our
Iranian local friends in Alpharetta. I vividly remember jumping over a bonfire at the celebration by the Chattahoochee River nearly 13 years ago. Time flies. After shooting some video of the celebration, Bryan and I head back to the hostel to grab our stuff and go to the airport. Words cannot describe how exhausted I am at this point. We get directions from the hostel where to get the metro that takes us to the airport, but we read it wrong and ended up heading the wrong direction. In the words of Peter, our Sound of Music tour guide, “we were going the wrong waaaaaayyyyy.” So, we took a cab to the opposite side of town. We wait at the bus stop for about ten minutes, and to top the night off, a car drives by and hits this puddle in the exact right spot that sends a title wave right at me and Bryan. I am soaked. And for about one second I am mad, and then Bryan starts laughing, and then I just lose control. I mean I laughed hard. It was textbook… like the exact snippet of a movie you’ve seen where the protagonist is exhausted and
Wok To Walk!
Delicious Chinese food we had before Boom Chicago having the worst day and the cheesy mainstream music is playing in the background and he gets soaked from a car that drives by. So we get to the airport ready to sleep all night there. As we are sitting in the chairs, I have another run in with a likely serial killer. This guy is from Spain and has a mop with him. He is trying to carry the mop on the plane. Yes. A mop. Two Dutch security guards are making fun of him (he’s sitting behind me) for trying to carry on the mop. When they leave him alone he comes and sits next to Bryan, across from me and starts talking… about really weird things. At one point he asks me, “what kind of crazy chemicals have to take over one’s brain in order to lead you to kill someone.” Thankfully, two more security guards on segways come over and he starts talking to them, Bryan and I walk to a more crowded area of the airport then. That concluded our weekend. It was fun. It was exhausting. But definitely worth it.
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Emily
non-member comment
Too Long
Didn't read.