There's Something New

Ok Ok Ok

If you look slightly to the right and up a bit, you will find something that you all have been dogging me about.

Enjoy.

Ah Amsterdam... Part 3

The next day the American Crew saw the Anne Frank museum and it was incredibly simple, but completely moving. It's one thing to read about an event form history in a book but a completely different thing to be in right in the middle of it. Good on Amsterdam for keeping the house as it was and making sure her message was not silenced. I had seen the museum the day before yet somehow managed to forget to blog about it... I'm a dumbass.

In the mean time while the rest of them were checking Anne's house out. I wandered about and found a really vivid photo exhibit of wildlife. I don't know why it struck me as much as it did, but it must have been good for me to stand in the rain to look through it all. After that I went to the old town square and made friends with a horse. I don't know what its name was, but I assumed him to be my friend after I let him eat the apple I had previously been eating. Now I could be wrong, but how cool is it to have a horse as a friend, so leave me be.

After a couple of hours and the Texans managing to get lost around the corner from the brewery. : ), we all managed to meet up for the tour of the old Heineken Brewery. The cost of the tour is 11 Euros or $15.85 Cdn and $15.15 US for my southern readership. Included in the cost are tokens for 3 glasses of beer and 1 gift upon the conclusion of the tour. Upon entering the front door, we were greeted by a girl that was positively something wow. She had awesome wavey almost curly hair, really bright blue/green eyes and again had very natural and un-assuming good looks to her. So naturally I paid her a compliment and was quickly joined by one of the Texans, Kate who totally adored her hair. I think between the two of us, we made her freakin' year! I just figured we were off to a good start...

After going through some exhibits from the origins of the brewery to some of the advertising campaigns run throughout the decades, we came upon the first bar. It was rather normal and we had our one beer that our green token alloted us. After some interactive exhibits and a stop in the gift shop, we came to the last stop. Quite fittingly it was another bar, this one themed like a busy pub or club. The way it was SUPPOSED to work was that we had 2 orange tokens left for 2 more glasses of beer. Most of the other visitors had their 2 beers and left. We were not fully prepared to leave the cozy confines of our emerald chamber and were determined to mine more out of our 2 orange tokens. Cue the parade of good looking Texan women to the bar...

One round became two and eventually three. We came up with a simple system; When the guys had their rotation behind the bar, we sent in the women to do whatever they could (within the realm of decency) to get as much beer as they could with as little cost to the orange bank as possible. At its best, they would each come back with 4 beers in hand and still have their orange tokens. This day was progressing just swimmingly but it got just a touch better. The girl that was working the entrance when we arrived, paid us a visit when she finished her shift behind the bar. As she walked by, she very discreetly deposited a handful of orange tokens in one of the girls' hand. What was supposed to have been a 3 beer tour turned into a 9 beer blow out. Needless to say when the lot of us popped back out into the mid afternoon sun, some of us didn't exactly know what was going on. Not bad for 15 bucks and change.


After a well deserved siesta we caught dinner and wrapped the night up with a few more drinks in town. What you thought we'd stop there? C'mon. Though with the bars closing at midnight, I think we were spared a horrible next morning. We wrapped the night up and I think I arrived back in the room sometime after 2 AM. I had previously mentioned that I had 5 female roommates in my hostel room. I don't think any of them were happy to see me when I got back into the room. The girl on the top bunk closest to the door shot me a look that I can only compare to a vampire recoiling from the searing crack of the morning sun. I was mildly amused and scared at the same time. Or maybe I was just still swimming in it. I did feel bad though when I found out later the next morning that she had to be out the door by 6 in order to catch a plane to her next destination. That feeling didn't last too long. :)

Later that day, I said my goodbyes to the Texans. They were such a kick ass group and if any of you guys are reading this, I will be down to visit as promised. I met up with my friend Bryan who I had first met in China 6 years ago. As with my friend Christian in Stockholm, he was pretty much exactly the same as I had remembered him. The next couple of days were spent catching up and falling right back into the old ways. It's funny how time and distance can physically separate but purity in simplicity is the key to sustaining any friendship and the bond was just as strong now as it was back then. Bryan and I spent pretty much every day together in China and it was so nice to be able to see him again. Of course the conversation wasn't the only thing that was brought back en vogue from Beijing... We also reverted back to some of social habits that almost got me arrested in Tien An Men Square, but that's another story for another time. I'll just leave you with a photographic and typical goodbye from Amsterdam.

Ah Amsterdam... Part 2

So after having met a porn goddess, an earth dwelling angel and then being punch lined to death by a store-front hooker, I found myself wandering back to the hostel from the train station as all sensible forms of public transportation ceased to operate after 12:30 AM... For a city that has such a good public transport system, I found it odd that it all seemed to shut down, leave a few buses which I had no plans on boarding lest I end up in some remote part of town to be captured and enslaved in an underground clog finishing factory. Lost among all of that excitement, I even forgot to tell you that I had visited a sex museum. Seriously...

Upon my return to the hostel, I ended up meeting a couple of guys who were from the States and had been back packing throughout Eastern Europe before arriving in Amsterdam. They suggested I join them to check out the area around the hostel and partake in some of the allowances afforded by the liberal culture... I figured it would be a good way to meet and get to know some new people so I figured why not. As a testament to the quality of the Canadian product, I would have to say from what I remember from those hazier days that our homegrown is a spot better than the local fare sampled to me on that night. At any rate they were a couple of cool cats and we made plans to hit up a few sites later the next day.

As it turns out I ended up spending the first part of the day exploring the museums on my own as the other two had already seen what I was planning to the day before. Eventually I ended up at the Van Gogh Museum. I had hatched a plan well before hand to see the exhibit in an enhanced sensory mode. I figured when in Rome... So in due time a fungal fantasy became an artistic reality where colours melded and images entranced and almost 4 hours passed by. The Van Gogh collection itself was spell binding, but there was also an additional exhibit by an artist surnamed Maxwell. His style, dark carnivalesque images with dark coloured bases, accented with sharp, bright colours and that only added to the entrancement.

After a nap back at the hostel, my body having seemed to have been returned to me in my sleep, I set about trying to find Pete and Jay. Forward thinking would have seen us exchange room numbers the night before so we could find each other at the agreed upon meeting time. As it was though, that wasn't the case. To make things even better, the hostel had 5 floors with about 5 rooms on each floor. I didn't exactly feel like knocking on each door to find them. I picked the forth floor and ran into a big group of people, who from some of their t-shirts, were from Texas A&M University. We exchanged the typical hostel questions of where we were from and where we had been and how long we were staying. Then I explained that I was looking for 2 other Americans, but had no idea which room they were in.

Normally this would have been rather awkward, but one girl, Megan volunteered herself to find them for me and went about knocking on the door she guessed Pete and Jay were staying behind. As it turns out there were two American guys in that room, but not the two I was looking for. In the end, I gave up looking for them and was quickly adopted as an honourary Texan and pseudo Long Horn for the night. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as this lot was a laugh a second pretty much. We ended up across the road at an Italian restaurant and I don't know how the waiter didn't lose his mind serving us. We were easily the loudest group in the joint and even broke a few decorations during the course of our dining. The destruction wasn't limited to inanimate objects as a couple of the girls actually managed to injure themselves while eating and telling stories. I swear, it was one of those things you just had to be there to witness.

We eventually met up with Pete and Jay and had a few beers in the main square of the bar district. I was shocked to find out though that the bars in Amsterdam all closed up around midnight. I figured that was a touch odd for a city with the reputation it did. It was suggested that most people are so stoned / spent that there really isn't any point for the bars to stay open past midnight. As it turned out, there were clubs still open into the wee hours, but seeing as how none of us were club people, that did us no good. We ended up calling it an early night having consumed a reasonable enough amount of alcohol during the course of dinner and in the square to see us off to dreamland in a happy state.

Ok, this is getting a bit long so I guess there will a part 3 coming up shortly.

HOME

So it would seem that I've arrived home and have already gone through 4 days back at work. The trip was a blur and I will update the rest of Amsterdam and get onto London, Dresden, and Geneva in due time.

At this moment, I am working on uploading the photos and figuring out how the hell I am going to show them all to you.