Backpacking around the globe and back again (Part 3)
We didn't have time to get breakfast before catching our bus in the morning, so every time we drove past a fruit stand or bakery, our mouths were watering. Lija and I had run for our bus, we weren't late but we didn't want to miss it, this was our first day after all. The bus wasn't there when we got there, but there was a huge crowd of people with packs on so we figured we were in the right spot. This girl in a busabout shirt told us that the bus would be picking us up down a bit further so we waddled down to where she pointed to wait. When the bus pulled up it was rather unimpressive, big and white but nothing like they had raved it would be, they advertise that you can see their buses from miles away. When we were on board, Jules explained that we were on an old bus and that the new bus would meet us in Berlin but wasn't ready yet.
Jules was nice. It was his first time doing a trip on the bus and he had the bluest eyes. With Busabout it isn't a tour company but there are on board tour guides, they tell you a bit of information as you pull into a city but the main purpose of the bus is to be a transportation network, like Eurail. The drop-off/pick-up between Paris and Amsterdam is Brugge, Belgium, we got off for about 45 minutes and fell in love. It's the most adorable little medieval town with cobblestone streets and big churches. It was an incredible place to see, and would have been a great place to spend some time. People talked about going out to WW1 battlefields and the amazing effect it had on them, just seeing how many people had died in such a small confined area and being shocked at how many of those were Australians (most of them were Aussies on the trip) and Canadians. On our way back to the bus we stopped in a little chocolate shop and got the most delicious truffles... they. made. me. drool!
The drive to Amsterdam was rather uneventful. We watched a movie, and had a bunch of rest stops, upon entering Holland we saw a bunch of windmills in the distance and a ton of cows, but it was just a drive. We didn't know anyone on the bus yet so we didn't have anyone to laugh with, we just chatted with each other and I wrote in my journal. Jules had informed us that the area our accommodation was in was a bit "sketchy" (it was located in the heart of the red light district) so we checked into a recommended hostel with everyone else and went on a mission to find an authentic coffeehouse. I don't think we looked for five minutes before we saw 15, but we picked one (just because it was there) and walked down the rickety staircase to the basement lair. You could see the smoke sitting heaving along the ceiling, and the guy behind the bar was openly smoking a joint. The boys bought a big bag and sat down to roll, I had my first authentic Dutch beer (Heineken!) and we sat back to relax. The atmosphere down there was strange, I don't know that I would want to go in alone, yet it didn't feel dangerous. It was dark because it was underground and the happenings were of the darkened room nature. You could buy all sorts of grown drugs from the bar, but they don't sell anything that isn't natural, that stuff isn't legal (although very easy to get from one of the many pushy drug dealers you walk past on the streets).
After we left the coffeehouse we had to find somewhere to sleep on our last night in Amsterdam. The place we were checked into only had room for us the first two nights, then they were kicking us out on our butts and I was not about to sleep on an Amsterdam street corner. We went everywhere, and I mean everywhere in that area to find somewhere to stay and every. single. place. told us that we couldn't book for one night on weekends they only accepted two or more nights. We were cursing our current accommodation because they would have known that we wouldn't be able to get somewhere but didn't recommend that we only book one night with them so that we could get in elsewhere for the other two. We finally found one place willing to give us a bed, we had to pay way more than we had wanted, but it was clean (hopefully) and available (thankfully). It happened to be at a gay hotel, which didn't bother us, but when we made our booking they awkwardly informed us expecting, I believe, that we would back out and run scared down the street. We didn't care, although we were a bit offended that we couldn't pass as a lesbian couple... I mean I know we aren't, but why couldn't we be! Apparently gaydar is better than we expected.
The actual search for somewhere to stay took literal hours, about 3.5 maybe 4 hours. By the time we were done it was almost dark and we were hungry. With limited options of things that could get us food fast we chose Burger King, a huge mistake. It was our first fast food on the trip thus far and it tasted terrible. We ate about half each and even that was too much. The cool thing about the Burger King in Amsterdam however was that the garbage cans had a spot where you pour out your drink before throwing the cup away, it was really cool, and a pretty good idea if you think about it. Another cool thing in Amsterdam were their garbage/cigarette butt can cleaners. The big truck would drive down the street and one guy would be walking beside it leading this huge Snuffleupagus hose which he would proceed to put into each can and suck out the trash/cigarette butts! It was really cool and kept the garbage stink to a minimum... the canals still smell... but the cans were good :)
After dinner we walked around a little bit, but being two girls in a strange city at night was slightly frightening. The thing about Amsterdam, as most people know and as I have already somewhat mentioned, is that smoking grown substances is completely normal regardless of where you are, as is prostitution. When tourists come to Amsterdam they get high, drunk and cat call women, it's quite demeaning, you don't even have to be in the red light district for it to happen. It is a scary place to walk around at night, besides the cat calling there are also the locals standing on street corners selling illegal drugs and they have no problem coming up to you telling you what they are doing. It'd intimidating. So because we were chicken... and it was quite late, around 11:00, we headed back to the hostel bar and met up with some people there for a couple of drinks.
The next morning, after "sleeping" through a night of people screaming in the halls and outside the bedroom window, we made plans to go on the infamous Mike's Bike Tour. But that didn't start until later in the day and it was only just morning so we walked over to the "museum area" where you can find the Rijksmuseum (pronounced Rykes-museum) and the Van Gogh Museum, while the Rijks is architecturally an amazing building and is world renowned for it's exhibits, it's currently under construction and a lot of it is closed right now, so leaning more towards my interests we went to the Van Gogh museum.
It was this modern building with a rather open concept and a staircase right up the middle. Only two and a half floors were of Van Gogh, the rest were of people who influenced him, which was alright, but I had wanted to specifically see him! I saw some of my favourite Van Gogh paintings which was great, but some of the ones I was interested in were not there. We only had about two hours in the museum, which ended up being more than enough time since we really only intently stared at two and a half floors, and spent about 20 minutes in the gift store picking postcards. I got this set of four which I plan on framing and putting in a series in my bedroom next year. They aren't one of the official series but I liked the way they looked together, kind of haphazard yet flowing. I also got a postcard of his sunflower painting, which happens to be one of my favourite so that made me happy, I'll probably put that up somewhere too.
After the museum we had some time to wait around. As I was sitting on a bench waiting for Lija to get her ice cream this homeless man came up to me asking if I had any cigarettes, I didn't, but felt sad that even though he had no money for food he was still addicted to nicotine. The square between the two museums is amazing with trees and a big long man made fountain/pond. It's very clean looking and quite still, with a big edge to sit on. I was watching everyone around me, for a while there were these kids playing on the other side of the water, jumping up and down on a music maker and laughing. It doesn't matter where you go in the world, kids are the same.
Our bike tour took us through the city part of Amsterdam and into the country. We started by biking to Dam square which is physically and geographically the centre of Amsterdam. In the middle of the square is a big monument erected to honour Dutch soldiers who died in WW2, also in Dam Square you can find the Koninklijk Palace (Royal Palace) and Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). From there we made our way into the start of the red light district where the Old Church stands and has stood for many years. We continued along the canals stopping on bridges and street corners to learn about the city. The reason the canals are so dirty isn't pollution like you might think, no, it's from faeces, yes shit. All of the canals are filled with houseboats and before modern technology these unplumbed houseboats would flush their toilets right into the canal. Today, they still flush their toilets into the canal, but first everything is held in a tank which uses chemicals to clean it before emptying into the water. Regardless, I wouldn't be swimming in any of those canals.
We also learnt that the reason houses lean forward is because they are so narrow that in order to move furniture into them they were built with a big long rod a pulley sticking out of the roof, you attach your furniture to that and pull it up the front of the house into a window which is designed to pop out. The houses are titled forward so that if a couch or sofa or grand piano were to sway while lifting there would be less of a chance that it would hit the exterior of the building. Now the houses that are titled sideways are bad. That is because Amsterdam was built on stilts and some of the wood is rotting, so the houses are slowly leaning whichever way is worse. Eventually when a house gets too bad the government decides to evacuate and tears it down building a new one on metal stilts.
As we made our way into the country looming ahead of us was a big windmill. Yeah that's right, they really do have windmills in Holland and they are 100% functional! The people who live in them are paid by the government to keep them authentic looking and working, which is a nice little deal, except that you have tourists in front of your "house" all the time taking dorky pictures. At the end of the tour (which was really the middle because you still had to go back to the start) we reached a farm that specialized in cheese and clog making.. yes that's right, CLOG! We got to learn how they made both and at the end they had free samples (of the cheese not clogs). I bought some cheese for my Mom (goat) and some for myself (normal) and we were on our merry way, into the wind back to the start. It was painful and it took forever and we wanted to curl up and die! At the end of the tour it was already arranged that we go to this bar and have some drinks, I had one, but to be honest, was just ready for bed! But sleep was not the point of this trip, so after we had returned our bikes we went to get tickets for Boom! Chicago comedy show the next night and some dinner. They told us that the show was cheaper tonight, so we bought tickets for then deciding that we would just have to find something else to do our last night in Amsterdam. We grabbed some delicious Italian food for dinner, (I love Italian food!) and then walked around the red light district since the comedy show was late.
The red light district was absolutely appalling. There were all of these women in windows prostituting themselves, which was fine, if that's how you want to make money then it works, what was disgusting was the way the men outside the windows carried on. Yelling rude comments, not only to the window women, but also to any woman who happened to be on the street. Grabbing the butts of random people passing by and just demoralizing women in such a disgusting way. I wanted to leave about five minutes after we got there, but nobody else wanted to and I sure as hell wasn't making my way out of that place alone. As we walked by this open door a big burly man stepped to the side of us, "See the biggest dicks of your life" he promoted. I couldn't believe a place like this existed and was completely legal!
The comedy show was good after everything, they were a bunch of American's so at least it was in English, but it was improv and some of the audience's suggestions were less than stellar. Overall though I enjoyed the show so it was a good way to spend the night.
On our last day in Amsterdam we had already seen a lot of the city that we would normally walk around in while on bike so it was just a matter of seeing the remaining museums on our figurative list. We had heard from many people before us that the Anne Frank House gets a really long line up, so we went nice and early to avoid the rush. Even though we were there before the doors had opened the line was still wrapped around the corner but only took about 20 minutes once able to go inside. We weren't allowed to take pictures in there so explaining what I saw is going to be very difficult. Check out this website, it has a graphic reconstruction of the house. The rooms were just so small, you could barely turn in them and they didn't even have furniture, I can't imagine what it would be like with furniture and people. I suppose it would be better than a concentration camp, but just knowing that people had to live there as a better alternative was heart wrenching. I couldn't imagine being a young girl growing up like that.
I think we were all effected by what we had seen, after we left we just kind of wandered around for a bit thinking, not saying much. Lija and I decided to get some lunch after a while and the guy who was with us went back to the hostel. The afternoon held for us big plans, at least for me it did. We made our way towards the greatness that is the Heineken Brewery for our tour. Yes, we toured a brewery :) With the tour you get three drinks (if you don't drink alcohol then you can get orange soda but otherwise it's beer) and at the end a free gift, which is this really nice tin holding a Heineken beer glass. It was an awesome tour, very interactive and informative. It was interesting to learn that Heineken, in all it's splendour has only been operated by three people, all in the same family, of course.
After the tour we went back to our hotel, I was feeling great (but three beers in an hour will do that) but we didn't want to carry around our glasses all night. For our last night in Amsterdam Lija wanted some traditional food, we couldn't find any, so we had Italian again (yay!). It wasn't as good as the first place, but still very yummy. We didn't have anything to do for the night so we kind of wandered around hoping to bump into someone we knew, luckily we did and went to a bar with them on the other side of town. While sitting down in the bar, which was also a hostel upabove, this girl runs downstairs screaming to call an ambulance. One of the girls with us is a nurse but she was in the bathroom, so Lija ran and got her while Mick went upstairs to try and help the person who needed an ambulance. It turns out this girl had taken too many shrooms and was unconsious-not breathing (according to her friend.) When Mick came down he told the guy behind the bar that he could cancel the ambulance the girl was in face consious with her eyes open and hadn't stopped breathing at any point, she had just fallen off a chair. Crisis adverted... lesson learnt... DON'T DO SHROOMS!
Mick walked us back to our accomodation because we were near the red light district and he didn't want anything happening to us, he is a great guy and we found out that we would be traveling with him until Florence which was almost the end of our trip, so that made us happy. I slept like a rock that night, the hotel had a fabulous duvet comforter which I just melted into. So much nicer than hostel bunk.
Pictures so far
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