!!Amsterdam!!

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The City of Hookers, Sex, and really good cookies
As you can tell, this blog is a bit late for reasons that you will soon find out. But for now… Amsterdam. Oh Amsterdam. We arrived into this wondrous city around ten o’clock at night on Thursday. We were welcomed with raindrops and dark clouds as we walked out of the airplane. The air was chilly and wet but we were all very excited so it really didn’t seem to matter. There were about six of us on the flight together, so we were feeding off each other’s excitement (we were all excited for very different reasons). We jumped on a short 20 minute train and after a 5 minute walk we reached our hostel: The Flying Pig. We were all sharing an 8 person dorm style room. Mitch and I were hoping that our friends didn’t snore or fart in their sleep, and if they did, maybe it wouldn’t be as loud as those Germans. It was hard to really see the city at night through fog and rain, but people were bustling bout everywhere, shops and restaurants were hopping. The city truly comes alive at night. It is

a smoker’s paradise as there are Mary Juana shops or “coffee shops” on every street corner because the good ole’ Mary Jane is a legal citizen of Amsterdam. We had many preconceived ideas and thoughts about this city before we got here, so it will be interesting to see how they actually pan out…true or false. We went and got some good ole’ Dutch pancakes around midnight and then hopped into bed because we wanted to get a early start on the day in the morning.

I must say the night went extremely smooth…no snoring, no farting, no anything except silence. It was a blessing. We woke up around eight and crammed our free breakfast of chocolate cereal down and headed out the door to the Van Gogh Museum. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy art, but I am not a psycho art feign. The three-story museum was a bit intimidating with its walls just plastered in all 200 of his most famous works. The museum took a long time to get through, and I did enjoy parts of it but the majority of the time I found myself either bothering Mitch out of boredom or pinching myself to stay awake. Mitch is perfect for boring times because I can just pester him by pulling his ears and he gets all annoyed and its really funny. I guess I am just really immature or really mature, one or the other. I mean, Van Gogh cut off his ear, so you decide. Anyway, after a grueling 2 hour art exhibit we decided to get the hell out of there and go get some lunch. One really important part of Europe and sightseeing is:……FOOD. It’s like air for us. Amsterdam by far had the best food of any country we had been to yet. I went crazy which I regretted a few days later but in the moment it was perfect. The city is pretty small so everything was in reasonable walking distance. There are canals dividing the city into different sectors and the tall apartment like houses line all the streets. There are adorable houseboats and skiffs in the canals moored up along the edges, and the bridges that connect the roads over the canals create really picturesque scenes. Everything was just beautiful. The swans in the canals must have been on some sort of steroids because they were the size of small horse. We went to lunch at this delcious Pancake Bakery place about 5 minutes from the Anne Frank House. The Dutch pancakes are really thin and you can get just about anything baked into them, so they are very satisfying. After lunch we headed to the Anne Frank House. It was incredible. They had preserved her house/attic just how it had been about 60 years ago…not that long ago really. It was surreal to stand where she stood and look out onto the streets that once were swarming with Jews being herded into little trucks to be deported to the concentration camps. The whole experience was very moving, and if you have read her diary it really brought the pages to life. She was quite a remarkable girl. I didn’t realize how young she was. All she wanted to do was be able to walk onto the streets and be free, play with other children, breathe clean air, and be alive. It is such a tragedy. She died one month before liberation, and her father gave a very emotional account of life in the camps and his family. It was my favorite historical part of Amsterdam…really gives you perspective on the little gifts in life. By this time, the day had practically ended and we decided to head back to our hostel, but not before we hit up the Dutch grocery store and bought some of the goodies that our friends from the Netherlands had recommended. We bought loads of cookies, crackers, sweets, drinks, and waffles…we were all in heaven. Not good for the diabetic blogger right here, I should have known better. That night we went to a delicious dinner at this Middle Eastern restaurant called The Bazar…it was really exotic and an overall culturally attractive experience. We were planning on going to a club, but just too darn tired so we went home to just sit around and have pillow talk. Poor Mitch…a room with 7 girls.

We got a late start on the morning due to the rain and just overall wear and tear of traveling, but we were headed to see some of the true sites of Amsterdam. We all decided that we could not leave Amsterdam without seeing the renowned Sex Museum that the Guide book said was a must…so we gave in and went. I am not going to enclose what we saw, but I’ll just leave it at there is a lot of history behind sex some of it pretty and some of it very very very far from it. Mitch and I got out of there as fast we could and then decided to hit up the little shopping areas in Amsterdam for fun because as everyone knows WE DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY! We spent the majority of the day either stuffing our faces with fatty foods or sifting through really ridiculously good looking clothes and pretending we could afford them. That night, we had booked a pizza cruise for all of us on the canals. It was awesome and we got pizza, unlimited wine and beer, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. It was a glorious meal, and we all had a blast traveling through the canals at night with the lights reflecting off the water…it was Amsterdam at its finest. After the pizza cruise we decided it was time we did it: The Red Light District, where prostitution is legal and women are displayed in windows. I wish I could say that it didn’t absolutely kill the mood of the night, but it did…it was depressing. The streets were just packed with disgusting men objectifying these beautiful (and not so beautiful) women in windows that were displayed all along the streets. The Red Light District was basically on two sides of the streets divided by a beautiful canal…ironically, there were 5 or 6 gorgeous white swans playing in the middle of this filth. It was sad to see these girls standing behind a sheet of glass in scandalous attire trying to sell their bodies to anyone passing by… I know this goes on in America, but it was such an open display of... I want to say just evil and degradation that I didn’t know how to really react. Mitch was really depressed by it all because so many of these girls looked so normal and pretty and to see them just stand there and sell themselves was just plain upsetting. We did not spend much time in the Red Light District…10 minutes was enough to see the utter depravity of this day and age, so we decided we would lighten the mood and head to a club for a bit of dancing. We went to The Escape Club around midnight and it was a good time dancing to techno beats amidst the crazy flashing disco lights…we headed home around 2 or 3 and it was blistering cold outside. I had blisters on my heels and it was pouring rain and windy so it seemed like an eternity but we finally made it.

So far it had rained everyday with little spurts of sunshine, but this morning there was no sunshine to be seen…raining cats and dogs. It was a lazy day as we all kind of did our own thing. Mitch and I were really tired and we were going to visit an old friend of mine in a little town about 20 minutes outside of Amsterdam so we hopped on the train to her house. It was a miracle we made it there as we lost the directions, fell asleep on the train, and didn’t have her number…It was great to see her and she had three adorable little kids that looked liked little Dutch angels with their white hair and blue eyes. It was a wonderful evening playing with the kids and eating a delicious healthy home cooked meal. We headed back to the hostel around 9 because we wanted to get ready to leave the next day…if only I had known what I was in for.

Oh my gosh. It hit me like a clap of thunder on a sunny day. I thought my life was over. I woke up in a cold sweat and I felt like my body was paralyzed. My heart rate was flying, my head was spinning, and my stomach was screaming. There was no turning back, a full fledged war was about to break out between me and the toilet. I literally jumped from the top of the bunk to the floor and ran to the bathroom and slammed door. The next was not pretty as I violently threw up anything and everything that had been in my system for the last three days: lasagna, spinach, cookies, waffles, pancakes, fries, ice cream, chocolate, pizza, beer, wine, more cookies, and bread (just in case you were curious). I mean it was a kaleidoscope of colors. Truly ridiculous as I gripped that toilet seat, I swear I saw my life flash before me. Finally after a good five minutes of pouring my life into the toilet bowl, I got a break, a moment to recover. We all know that feeling, momentary relief. I had not felt pain like this since Africa and it brought back so many unwanted memories of concrete, ice floors and big white buckets. I won’t even go there. So, here I am. My last night in Amsterdam laying on the dirty, disgusting hostel floor holding onto the toilet for dear life while my stomach churned like no tomorrow. Was it food poisoning? Was it bird flu? Was it anthrax? Who knows. All I know is that I thought I was going to die. Let’s not forget that while this whole scene is enfolding there is Mitch in the background trapped in this closet size bathroom with his pathetic girlfriend yacking her brains up into a nasty little toilet. I mean the smell alone was overpowering…not exactly the romantic night in Amsterdam most couples plan on. I felt bad for my friends as they were all laying “sleeping” behind the paper thin door that separated my sickness from their beds. Luckily for them, they had to leave at like 6 am so they could escape before the sickness got worse. That’s right…got worse. I continued to throw up for till about 3 in the afternoon and our flight was at 6:30 pm. I was caught between trying to stay the night in Amsterdam and buy another hotel, flight, and bus back to Oxford because I didn’t think it was physically possible for me to make it home that day. However, by the grace of God, Mitch packed my bag and got my things ready and I somehow found the energy to stumble to the train station and head to the airport. The next 5 hours were hell as we changed trains, planes, and buses on our way back to Oxford. I don’t really even want to go into it, but just know that I am very thankful to be sitting on my bed right now with a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Gosh how we take the little things in life for granted. Anyway, so here we are back in Oxford and gearing up for a quick two days of school. We are not leaving this weekend so we may head to London for some fun and spend the remainder of the days exploring our little hometown of Oxford.

Cold: check! Sinus Infection: check! Toothache: check! Flu/Food Poisoning: check!...I figure there is not much left that can be thrown at me while I am abroad, and if there is then well…I’m screwed. So let’s hope this is the end of that because if its not I don’t know how much longer my caretaker is going to stick around…I know he didn’t sign up for an invalid girlfriend. He best cross those fingers…and toes.

Next Stop: Greece. T-Minus: 2 weeks.

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