A'dam!

After 4 months of travelling (and a little stint farming) I finally got to sit back and relax... in Amsterdam!

Arriving back in Amsterdam after my 12 month vacation (within a vacation) to Croatia, I stayed at my aunt's canal house for a couple days. For those not familiar with the real estate situation in Amsterdam, this is very rare, old and expensive - I felt a little out of my element. I only stayed here for 2 days waiting for my cousin, Bregje, to leave on vacation so I could move into her place.

In exchange for my staying in her house for a month, I was required to take care of two cute, young cats. It wasn't all that difficult to accept the job. Otje and Pluk are two 4-month old cats that enjoy cuddling and running after scrunched up balls of tinfoil.

My original plan was to find work in Amsterdam while I was staying there, but I ended up hosting a couple friends, which made a temporary work schedule even more ridiculous. Not to mention that I still didn't have my work permit when I arrived in A'dam. I picked up my work permit (also a residency permit) in the end of October; I had applied in April. Enough said.

So working didn't work out, and I was still looking to integrate a bit with the community in Amsterdam. Fortunately, a group of couchsurfers organize events for hosts and guests in Amsterdam. I started attending Speakers' Corner (a meet-up to do an informal language exchange) and the Saturday meet-up (essentially a night at a pub with travellers from all over the world).

My first visiting friend, Yvonne (Canadian teaching English in France, I met her when I was in Quebec one summer), came for 5 days during a break from work. We walked around the canals, visited the Schouwberg Theatre (the assembly point for Amsterdam Jews heading to concentration camps during WW2), checked out the Dutch Resistance Museum, went on a canal boat tour on a 19th century delivery boat, watched the Dutch version of Love Actually (Alles is Liefde), and went on a long bike-trip to Marken along the dikes next to the Markermeer (a man-made lake).

My second visit came from my friend Lisa (Swedish girl I met during my trip to Ecuador). She arrived just in time for a special event in A'dam : Museum Nacht. The Museum Night happens once a year and sells out all of its 26,000 tickets. 45 museums in Amsterdam open their doors for 7 hours one night until 2am and organize special (and weird) activities. We managed to have a picture taken with a snake at the Bibel Museum, take a tour of the zoo and the aquarium in the dark, and a bunch of other quirky little activities. I had read on the couchsurfing site that we must use our bikes to take full advantage of Museum Nacht, so that's what we did. Holland is especially made for biking being so flat and having bike lanes everywhere, but biking in Amsterdam compared to back home is kind of like driving in downtown Vancouver compared to biking in the countryside ... a little nerve-racking. And to add to that, put an extra 26,000 bikes on the streets! It was fun, we managed not to have any accidents and it made future bike riding in Amsterdam more palatable.

In addition to entry to the Museum Nacht, our ticket also gave us free entry to any of the 45 museums during the next year. We chose to visit FOAM (the photography museum), which did a really good job highlighting the troubles immigrants and refugees face coming to Europe. We also visited the Anne Frank house, which is very well done even though there's not actually much left there. At the end of the tour of the house, visitors are asked to vote on a series of situations pitting freedom of expression against social norms. If you've been in Europe recently, you'll understand how issues of religious clothing and protests against specific religions are becoming hot topics.

After the Anne Frank house, we decided to go out for typical Dutch food : rijstafel (i.e. rice table - it's actually typical Indonesian food). I don't think I've ever gone out for dinner where the waiter pulls out my chair, takes my coat, brings a moist towellette at the end of the meal and holds the door for us when we leave. If you've seen the pictures on Facebook, you'll understand why I say I felt a little underdressed.

Another day, we decided to visit Haarlem. Instead of an area of New York known for crime, we found a really nice small city quite close to Amsterdam. All we really did was walk around and explore the cathedral before heading another 10 minutes west to see the sea. Holland has soem really nice sandy beaches, but the cold weather, the wind and the dark, menacing rainclouds dissuaded us from swimming or sun-tanning.

For our last day, we went with a friend of Lisa's (who she had met in Ecuador) to the Hoge Veluwe, Holland's biggest national park. I had already been here a few months before, but hadn't explored it quite as much as I would have liked. The park offers free bikes to explore the forests and heaths and we were lucky to have the sun come out during the last part of our visit.

My last days in Amsterdam have been occupied with meeting up with couchsurfing friends, preparing my upcoming trips to Spain and Germany and relaxing with the cats and a good movie. I leave to visit some family this Saturday before starting my two-week tour of Spain's mediterranean coast. I arrive back in Vancouver December 17th and will go home for the holidays before going back to school in January.

This will probably be my last blogpost from Europe, but I should write one more for the adventures of the last month of my trip.

Cheers!