Back to Amsterdam for my second time, the land of canals, coffeehouses, and the Red Light District. Through the internet we rented an apartment from a pleasant man named Nelson who owned an antique shop. He gave us a key to our cute apartment, a map pointing out important spots, and a Mars bar. Wow, I loved Amsterdam already.
February is a tad bit cold to be spending the day outside, but overall it is a stellar time to visit Europe because there aren’t tourists swarming every last corner. We visited a few coffeeshops: Barney’s, Baba, and the Grasshopper and we walked through the Red Light District which was at times both uncomfortable and hilarious. Amsterdam’s new slogan is “i amsterdam”, which is a push to reduce the size of the Red Light District and to give the city a better reputation. It was funny to see how they were rolling out this strategy because every few “windows” in the red light district were transformed into clothes windows. So as we were walking down the street it was like whore…whore…khaki pants…whore…whore…suit jacket. Not gonna lie, I’m not sure how effective that strategy is going to be.
The next day we went to the Van Gogh museum and did an audioguide tour, and also walked around Dam Square and found a grocery store. We try to find grocery stores in every city so we don’t spend so much money going to eat all the time, so we got stuff for sandwiches and some tiramisu. The next day on our way to a coffeeshop we saw this bum-looking guy get arrested in the middle of the street. He was dirty, had messy grayish hair and a bushy unkempt beard. He seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole deal like maybe it had happened (a few dozen times) before? Anyway, a few steps ahead was a middle-aged woman with a large camera snapping photos with a very distraught look on her face and was crying out passionately in Dutch about the situation, which we couldn’t understand. Frank and I walked by and looked confusedly at each other and threw out ideas on who she might be…maybe she was a reporter? A homeless advocate? A friend?
We decided to stay in Amsterdam an extra night because we got such a good deal on the apartment and didn’t want to leave just yet. Frank went out and bought me a scarf and went to a bread and cheese shop and bought some pesto cheese that was really tasty. We had a TV in our room with a lot of English channels so we ended up watching random shows like The Fresh Prince, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Larry King, and the Weakest Link and quizzed each other on German and Italian vocab. That night on an evening stroll through the city, we walked around a corner and Frank saw a giant bird standing behind a tree. He goes, “Whoa look at that bird!” and I go, “What bird, that duck?” pointing to the duck in the canal, and he goes, “The bird standing right in front of us!” and at that moment my eyes fixated on the giant white crane not five feet away from us looking wet and sleepy. Just another reminder that sometimes we don’t “see” what our eyes are actually seeing. Then we let the bird be. When we checked out the next morning Nelson sent us off with more chocolate bars. What a guy. On our way to the train station I picked up some juice which I thought was grape and for the third time I got stuck with putrid johannisbeere which is something like red currant.
We were going to buy tickets to Aachen, Germany at the ticket machine but they seemed really expensive so we decided to go to the ticket counter and see if we could get an under-26 discount. They used the “pick a number and we’ll call you system” and it was horrible. We picked C149 and they were only on C100 when we walked in. We had about an hour to catch the train and we cut it close. And it turned out the tickets were more expensive at the ticket counter because of the “booking fee”. Figures. Well, with no time to waste we bought the ticket and boarded the double decker train. Me, Frank, and my johannisbeere juice were off to Aachen.
