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Published: August 6th 2007
Sorry, I know this blog has been a long time coming, and unfortunately that means some names are going to be a little bit sketchy but I'll try to make this blog as detailed, informative and as bloody good as all the others!!!! The time between when I got back from Prague and flew to Amsterdam was, as you can imagine after travelling since the end of April, mostly just downtime. It was so long ago that I can't remember many details but between the 8th and 13th of June I spent most of my time watching music concerts that my Aunt recorded off TV for me (on the Sat night I watched the George Michael concert at the new Wembley Stadium which was good), washing all my clothes and helping Barbara in the garden. On the Sunday we went over to one of Barbara's friends and work colleague's birthday party BBQ. The taxi that we had ordered to pick us up never arrived and the operator of the taxi company was very vague and despite how polite we remained actually hung up on us and never answered the phone again. In the end we went by a different company. It
A Maccas Bike!!
Can you imagine the type of tourist who travels to Amsterdam and then travels in a bike with Macca's advertising!!! (BTW, no one else in the world calls it Maccas - its Mikey D's or something like that!!!)was nice and sunny before we arrived and then the sun of course disappeared and it became cold. It was a nice BBQ, and I met Holly and her boyfriend there (who feature in the next blog) who is Jo's (the person whose party it was) daughter. On the 12th me and Barbara went to dinner at another friend's house. We ate with Di and her daughter Sal, and overall it was a nice evening. At one point Sal thought she saw a fox and wouldn't let it go. Oh, and Muffin was there and we think that she got snuck a lot of cheese when we weren't looking because she stank of it in the car on the way back!
So on the 13th of July I got up, finished my packing and caught the bus to the airport for my flight to Amsterdam. I arrived in Amsterdam, jumped on a train and then a tram and shortly later I arrived at my hostel - The Flying Pig Uptown. I'd booked this hostel whilst in Dubrovnik and it had already been filling up at the time. Amsterdam hostels book up really fast, partly because they have a few very
The Help sign
The tour guide told us that this sign is to remind people to help if someone is in trouble. It was erected after a man attempted to stop a fight and was stabbed to death whilst passerbys did nothing. famous ones. The best are the Bulldog and Flying Pigs, but there are also the infamous Christian hostels. There are two, and they don't mention that they are religious on hostelworld.com, so people go along when they haven't booked in advance because they are sometimes the only places left. The hostels are advertised as being a haven from the sin of Amsterdam and have a regular bible-study and a 2am curfew (but curiously I noticed that one was situated right next to the heart of the red-light district! Hmmm!).
So anyway, after dropping my bag in my room I headed out to the nearby Vondelpark, which was very pretty but huge. So after walking around for a while I realised I had absolutely no idea which entrance I had come in from. A short while later I managed to escape the park unscathed. The hostel has a bar (which was always full of people smoking ... whatever they wanted!). I stuck to good old harmless (hah!) beer and sat at one of the bar stools and chatted to a few different people nearby but didn't make any great friends that night. The girl I talked to the most was leaving
A Piss Guard
Because they have no free public toilets in Amsterdam, a lot of people piss in streets. This device means that if they piss on that thing they will actually just end up pissing on their feet!!!! Instead of public toilets they have .... the next day, although I lost all respect for her when she requested that the bartender play Mika (ewwww!!).
The next day I woke up to a familiar sound, the sound of rain. Why should the Netherlands be left out of my curse of rain (the only country I haven't had rain in was Montenegro and I was only there for 2 days!!). I headed down to breakfast in the bar (when thankfully people aren't allowed to smoke, but the second they take away the food everyone lights up!). I went off to explore Amsterdam (the rain had stopped) and was able to appreciate just how beautiful the city actually is. The canals and houses were the most beautiful and there were no buildings that had been built in a modern style and ruined the look of the streets. At 3pm I headed over to the meetingplace for the free tour (recommended to me by Amber from the previous post). The guide I had was really nice but new at the job and not always particularly confident. However the rain soon returned in force and we retreated to a nearby Irish pub (for the authentic Dutch experience!). I expected we
...these things!!
Thats right .. thats a urinal in the middle of the street!! How disgusting is that!! would just wait a few minutes for the rain to ease (as did the guide) but suddenly half the tour group had bought pints and were settling in, so we didn't get out until 40 minutes later - which meant that the tour had to be a lot faster than usual. Overall it was a good tour (although he got a mixed response from the group when he compared the priests of the past to pimps!!). I'm never sure how much to tip, and thought I didn't tip enough (but couldn't really afford any more) but I actually think I tipped the most. Some people only gave him 3 or 4 Euros which I think is really cheap for 3 and a half hours of somebodies time (especially when 2 euros of that goes to the tour operator). Some of us and the tour guide headed over to a cocktail bar where I had a mojito and some dinner and then organised to meet up later that night to go to a club. I never really learnt names but there was 2 Canadian girls travelling together, 2 American girls travelling together and 3 American guys travelling together. So after I
headed back and got changed I met them and we headed over to a club called Paradiso. It was a decent club and the people were fun but for some reason I didn't make great friends with them (the girls were nice, but the guys annoyed me). I was all ready to leave at about 1:30am but then they started playing music I love (unfortunately in dance versions but still fun) including Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse (like the rain she seems to be in every country I go to), Kaiser Chiefs, The Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, The Fratellis and other good bands which everyone in the club seemed to love except the people I was with who'd never heard any of the songs before (all the bands I mentioned are British). So I finally got to bed about 3:30am.
I woke at about 10am the next morning, and after breakfast I headed over to the Anne Frank Huis. I was planning on going the previous night because it is quieter in the evening but we had gone to the cocktail bar. I had been planning on meeting up with Janis (from the Spain post) that evening and knew she had
some ideas of things to show me over the next couple of days, so I wanted to make sure I got to see the house when I had a chance. After queing for a while I got in and went through the house. Everyone raves about the museum but I was really disappointed and thought they could've done much, much more. For me the story of Anne Frank isn't about the profound things that she says about war, etc.. but is actually about showing that the victims in the war were average, normal people not stats and the fact that Anne was sometimes petty and childish added to that charcterisation of her as being an average teenager. But the museum glorified her and had very little to say about her personality and instead put up quotes that she made about the war and made her out to be a very wise person. So whilst I think she had that aspect, I was annoyed that they down-played the normal side of her story. Also none of the rooms were furnished so the rooms actually felt quite spacious and it was hard to imagine what it would've felt like to live in
those rooms with so many other people. It was definately worthwhile going but I felt like they could've made something really special instead of what they have. I went and had some fish and chips for lunch (how exotic!!) and then headed over to the other famous landmark in Amsterdam - the Heinekin brewery! In retrospect I'm very impressed at how they made The Heinekin Experience not seem like a complete con when in fact most of it was very loosely tied to the beer. It started off with a museum section which was cool and was filled with ads and other background behind the beer and then past some of the old brewery. But then you went on a ride which was the life of a Heinekin bottle, and for a "horseback ride" delivering heinekin, and then sunbeds which played ads, and then a music section with heinekin drums. But at least you got three free beers and a souvenir so that meant that the thing kinda of payed for itself - and it was all lots of fun. I would've liked to go with someone (although I did spend some of it with an Aussie I met inside)
Amsterdam is full of bikes
Apparently more bikes than there are people in Amsterdam get stolen every year! but I found it hard to meet people in Amsterdam to do things with because I discovered that the reasons most people go to Amsterdam are very different from why I was there. In fact I don't think I really filled the typical tourist part very well. I didn't go to a coffee shop, the only times I was in the red-light district I was surrounded by a least 10 other tourists as we gawped at everything/one we walked past, I didn't try absenth (i know that isn't spelt right!!), and most of the people I met at the hostel were happy just to sit at the hostel and smoke dope and actually rarely left it. Wow, that last sentence makes me sound like such a party pooper (sorry Ali - i know you'll be disappointed in me!). So there were a few things, like the sex and hash museums, that might've been fun to visit with someone but which I didn't end up visiting by myself.
That night I was supposed to meet up with Janis and Kyell but unfortunately Janis messaged just before we were supposed to meet and said that Kyell's mother's cat that they had been
looking after had gotten really sick and they were at the vet and the cat was going to die and they had to call the mother. So we agreed to meet the next day, but then I never heard from her again which was sad, and I hope their both okay, I think I'll e-mail them after I finish this. So that night I spent at the hostel, and it was actually a really good night but again didn't meet anyone to do anything with the next day but I had a really good time and made it to bed at about 4am.
I got up at 10am the next day (the 16th of June - and the day before my birthday) and went exploring Amsterdam again. I discovered a 3D statue version of a Rembrant painting (Nightwatch) in a park but otherwise didn't so much. I spent a while trying to get in touch with Janis to no avail and then I think I had a nap that afternoon. Somehow the day disappeared (although I did spend a while looking at shops) and I spent a little bit of time in the bar that night but everyone had gone
out, so I decided on a much needed quiet night which was actually fun as I just listened to music. But I was nervous about my birthday because I felt like there was a bit of pressure on me to have a good time for my 21st and didn't want to do something boring.
So my birthday came around and I planned on going to the Van Gogh museum but then I saw the queue and went "Ha, screw that!!!". Sorry I didn't pick up your call Trent but I was plasting the Fratellis on my MP3 and didn't hear it (actually i think that my mobile is stuck on silent which is really annoying). So the day kinda disappeared and I got nervous I wasn't going to do anything so I decided to do a couple of the organised activities. I went on a red-light tour at 6:45 which involved my tour guide taking us around the red-light district. It was a lot of fun and I got to see things that I never would've had the guts to go and see. The tour guide was really funny and I had a great time. When I met the tour
the guy guessed I was from Melbourne and we agreed that Melbourne was the city that most travelled around the world (seriously the amount of Melbournians I've met is amazing - and some that live in Box Hill or Mitcham and that I end up meeting across the globe!!) but then he said Perth travelled almost as much which I disagreed with as I had met very few people from Perth in my travels. We of course were then joined by more Aussies - from Perth!! At the end, everyone was going to have a few drinks at a nearby place but then a lot of them were off to see a live-sex show which is a bit too much for me I think, so I headed off to go on a pub-crawl. It was a good choice because I ended up having one of the best nights since I've been away. The person I got along best with was from South Africa (Natasha) but the rest of the people I hung out with were Aussies from Melbourne, and yep, Perth! Cause its been so long I've forgotten a lot of name but the other people I mostly hung out
with were Marguerite, Jason and Vanessa. So we went to lots of different places and had lots of fun (with lots of dancing)- but the photos I'll put up later will be a lot easier than attempting to describe anything in the text. In the end people started disappearing, and I headed back to my hostel with a Scottish guy who was staying there too. But on the way he ran into some people he knew who had missed their flight home and didn't want to pay to sleep anywhere. We talked to them for a while, until I got too tired and had to go to sleep so headed back - getting to sleep at about 4:30 (after chatting to Ali on facebook for a while).
I got up at 10:20 (for a 10:30 checkout) and then explored Amsterdam before heading to the airport and getting on my flight back to the UK. I should just quickly mention that it rained every day I was in Amsterdam (I'm definately cursed!!).
Back at Barbara's I only had a couple of days before I was off again and so quickly did lots of washing, watched some of her music concerts she'd
recorded and we went out for a meal with some of her students, and by then it was time to leave again!!
Thanks to everyone who sent cards, e-cards, e-mails, comments on facebook. I haven't had a chance to write and thank everyone yet but I will get around to it!
And finally I should have said this at the start, but happy birthday to Ish and Connie!!
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Ali
non-member comment
Hey dude, Absynthe (however you spell it) is part of the experience...haven't you seen Eurotrip? lol Ali P.S. Sorry I kept you up so late, i thought it was only 11pm-12am your time!