I Am Sterdam

So, we landed in Amsterdam.  I had booked a hotel the day before while we were in London.  Reading the description, I thought we would be about 2 miles from the city center. 

First things first, Schiphol Airport is enormous.  I mean enormous, there’s a full sized shopping mall in it along with a major, major airport and a huge train station.  It’s quite impressive.  Which we will come to find out.

So we board the shuttle to the hotel and we’re cruising around and end up at the hotel in about 5 minutes.  We’re in an industrial park right near the airport.  I looked back at the description and we’re 2 miles from the airport, not the city.  Ok, no big deal, 10 minute train ride into the city and we’re good.  We’re tired anyway and we need to do laundry.  Talking to the girl at the front desk, we’re gonna have to go downtown to do laundry, so we figure that we’ll just take it easy tonight, get up in the morning venture downtown and then come back and drop it off.  

Suitcase full of dirty laundry in hand, we hop on the shuttle back to the airport to  get the train to the city.  “Have a nice flight,” says the attendant as he off loads our luggage.  We walk in and buy a round trip train ticket to down town only to find out that the trains aren’t running this weekend, they’re routing everyone onto buses.  Ok, no biggie, except for that we waited in line for an hour to try and get on a bus and we were going to have to do this several more times.  So, in line, we booked a hotel down in town, went back and packed up our stuff.  Canceled the hotel near the airport and headed on our adventure downtown. Shuttle to the airport, “have a nice flight” for the second time in one morning ->  Bus -> Train -> walk around a strange city looking for a Laundromat so that we can drop our stuff off and find our hotel.  Well, the Laundromat the girl from the first hotel pointed us to was boarded up… AWESOME!! We’re out of clothes and wandering around Amsterdam trying to find the next place we’re staying.

After a couple wrong turns, we find our place.  Lesson learned, if you are ever traveling to Amsterdam, don’t worry about finding a hotel.  Every other building is a hotel or hostel, I mean literally every other building: hotel, restaurant, hotel, bike rental place, hotel, coffee shop, hotel, etc.  We open the door and find a staircase that might as well be a ladder.  But we checked in, dropped off our bags.  Oh, and we asked where we could find a Laundromat, and the guy just looked at us.  “I’ll do it for you, just drop off what you want.”  What a God sent!

We dropped off our stuff, and took off and decided to take a canal cruise.  One of the first things I noticed was that the buildings looked like they were falling over, sideways, forward, all over the place.  I wasn’t sure why that was, whether they were high when the built them or what, but I mentioned it to Sarah.  But the guide proceeded to explain that the buildings are crooked because Amsterdam is set on sand about 20 ft down and the buildings settle and fall every which way.

On top of that, since Amsterdam was always a port and as such has a lot of merchants.  Well, the buildings/houses were built with a mount for tackle at the top so that they can hoist heavy loads up into the buildings.  So the buildings were in essence cranes, and to this day, it’s required for buildings to have this mount at the top.  So it’s kind of funny to notice these super modern apartment complexes with 18^th century  technology hanging off the front. 

Another thing you will notice about Amsterdam immediately is the bicycles.  They are everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE!  To the point they have bicycle traffic lights and roads and the rest of it.  Also, motorcycles and scooters can drive in the bike lanes.  That’s definitely something they need to start in LA. 

Then we met up with one of Sarah’s friends for a drink at a local brewery.  On the way, yes we walked through the red light district, and yes we saw some red lights. And it's funny to realize that you're the only one giggling, it's just normal to everyone else.

On to the brewery, it’s a windmill turned into a brewery and it was a lot of fun.  I had never met her, but Sarah knew her, and again it’s nice to see a familiar face.  We went to dinner with Hanna and she took us to another local spot.  We were easily  the only Americans in the place.  And we were talking to the guys next to us, who took great interest in our trip and suggested multiple places.  One of which that keeps coming up with everyone we talk to, Budapest. 

I tried fries with mayo on them. I won’t eat fries with mayo on them again. 

Since Hanna had lived in the US we got to talking about the differences between the US and Holland.  She loved her time in the US, but had many things that she loved about Holland.  Again, healthcare and some other things came up.  But, one thing we talked about that I found interesting was the EU causing all of Europe to homogenize and become one culture with one language.  It won’t happen soon, but it could happen in the future and apparently they are thinking about the repercussions of this.  Interesting side effect of forming the EU, I suppose.

Another interesting thing we talked about, is what everyone brings up when you mention visiting Amsterdam, drugs and prostitution.  Her take on it was really funny.  "You don't talk about going to LA to get a beer.  It's just like getting a beer here, if you want it you go get it. It's no big deal."  The other thing she mentioned that I found interesting was a comment about their acceptance of seemingly every conceivable lifestyle choice. She mentioned that they aren't particularly tolerant of anything, they just don't care what you do as long as you aren't hurting anyone else.  There's a small but significant difference between the two. 

 

The next day we rented bikes and toured the city by bicycle.  I’ll ride my bike to work now and again, and that’s 17 miles and takes an hour each way.  We rode for 4-5 hours all around the city.  It was fun, but it was tiring.  We found all sorts of things to see in the city.  We rode through, yes through, the Rijksmuseum.  And by the Heineken factory, no reason to do another brewery tour, besides Guinness is way better than Heineken, just don't tell the Dutchies. 

Then we turned in our bikes and headed out to find the American football games on for the first Sunday of the NFL.  We found one place with one game.  So we watched and then headed home since we had to be up at 5AM to catch the train to Berlin. 

Impressions of Amsterdam?  Well, it’s a great place.  It’s a lot of fun, but not for a lot of the reasons that many people would think. I can see how living there would be a great, unless you are really looking to party then it's a great place to let loose as well.  A picture on our way out of town at 6 AM:

Anyway, on to Berlin… one that I am particularly excited about.  The train is already interesting since a group of German teenagers joined us and continue yelling at each other in German, our nice sleepy cabin just turned into a haven of German hormones...