Euroadtrip

Again, pictures will have to wait. Mostly because they're still sitting on my camera. However, pictures from the previous few days were updated with the last new blog post, so you can peruse those.

After a crazy Friday of Mini-Europe and Flo Rida concert, the four of us were on our way to Amsterdam, leaving on a 9am bus. Apparently EuroLines is a bus service! Very misleading name, I must say. Especially since it left from Gare du Nord--a train station.

We walked to Place Flagey and took the 71 bus towards Porte de Namur. Or so we thought. Namur is where we usually get on the Metro to find our way to any of the three main train stations. Yet the 71 bus decided not to go to Porte de Namur this morning. We still have no clue why. It even said it was headed toward DeBrouckère and everything! We hopped off at what I had read to be Trône, knowing there was a Metro stop there. Getting off the bus, there was no such stop. At least not within view. With minutes ticking down and we already needing to be at the train station by this point, we hailed a taxi and sped towards Gare du Nord.

We checked in, got our boarding passes, walked out and right onto the bus with about 10 minutes before it was scheduled to leave. For reasons unbeknownst to us, the bus didn't actually leave until 9:15/9:30 and we simply sat there waiting all that time.

Ultimately we got on the road and headed through Antwerp, Breda, Rotterdam, Den Haag, and several other cities before ultimately reaching Amsterdam about an hour later than expected. It didn't matter much, though. We followed the directions to our hotel, the Hans Brinker hotel. Walking in the front door, we saw advertisements that it was rated the Worst of everything. The Worst Staff, the Worst Service, the Worst Rooms...overall, the Worst Hotel. Cheers!

One girl was working the desk and there were about 6 people waiting; we pushed that number up to 10. I felt so bad for her. It took a while to check in, but we finally got our keys, paid our deposits, paid for our rooms, and traipsed up to our neighboring rooms. Lizzi and I shared room 419 while Nicole and Brandon shared, coincidentally enough, room 420. In Amsterdam. How fitting can you get?


It took Lizzi and I forever to get into our room. We didn't know you had to pull the door toward you while you were unlocking it! That goes against all logic, I'm sorry. We went down to the front desk, where the girl asked the maintenance man (who was muttering in Dutch about how all the keys work and we're probably just stupid) to come up and help us. We get to the door, where he unlocks it for us and walks away. Yeah, we felt pretty dumb.

Just down the street from our hotel was a small restaurant where we stopped for dinner. I got a dinner-plate-sized banana pancake. This needs to be made at home. All the time. Deciding what to do next, we couldn't come up with anything and simply set off to explore.


Public transport in Amsterdam isn't that great, really. The tram system exists, but it doesn't serve much purpose when you have no idea where you are at any given moment. The map we'd been given by EuroLines was horrible (no monuments or parks or sightseeing locations on it anywhere; plus the streets were mismarked). Therefore, we spent that first day just walking around. We came across a market--a very touristy market, but a market nonetheless--where we wandered in and out of stalls and shops for about an hour. We discovered the touristy shopping district. We found the main square The Dam, and the Monument. After some time we found The Red Light district, which is just as sad and intriguing as the last time I saw it.

I wasn't that impressed by Amsterdam when I was here for 13 hours two years ago, so I figured I'd give it another chance. This time around, it wasn't much better. The buildings are funny, most of them nearly ready to topple over or sink into the swamp upon which they were built. The people are suffocating (guess we never left the tourist area). The canals are filthy. The streets, though filled with street cleaners and people sweeping their storefront sidewalks, are still grimy. I still have yet to be impressed with Amsterdam.


That night we took a canal tour of the city which pointed out several churches, acknowledged the 1000+ bridges, and took us out into the bay to show us the city skyline and the crazy architecture of some of the newer buildings.

I think that was my favorite part, that boat tour. But Amsterdam remains a city that I've visited, I can say I've visited, and have little desire to return to. The Netherlands, however, I'd revisit any day. The country itself is beautiful, as I saw in the bus ride there. Perhaps Rotterdam next time.


We went back to the hotel for the night (it still took me a full 2 minutes to get into that room) and more or less crashed. The next morning I woke up at 7:30 and went down to the less-than-desireable breakfast from which I returned almost immediately. I started reading Breakfast at Tiffany's while I waited for everyone else to wake up. At 9:30, we met downstairs in the lobby area and took off to exchange Lizzi's traveler's checks and to get actual food.

We stopped in a little café and ate directly on the canal, which was really nice. The food had a few stars left to fill, but it was food and we were hungry. The streets at 10am on a Sunday are completely empty. The locals aren't out for the day yet and the tourists are all still asleep from the previous night's activities. I loved it. Seedy and disquieting as parts of the city are, when they're empty, they're almost normal. Except the girls of the red light district that were already up and ready. That's not normal anywhere.

Nicole, Lizzi and Brandon sat down and I took off for a walk past a church that reeked of urine and that had no obvious entrance, over a pigeon-disgraced bridge, along a row of tilty houses, and directly behind a car that drove in reverse for at least two blocks. I don't know what I found on that walk, but the row houses are still nice close up, surprisingly. The British tourists I crossed paths with seemed about as lost as I was. The 12-year-olds carrying around their beer cans and feeling mighty proud cowered and hid them as I walked by. The woman in a lounge chair on her front porch decided to invite random people to sit across from her for a morning chat. It's a bizarre place.

We finally had to make our way back to the train station to catch our bus home, so we retraced our steps to an English bookstore, where I picked up a biography on Judi Dench. From there it was in and out of souvenir shops where nothing struck my fancy except an ashtray that I thought Alyssa would have really enjoyed. Not for 10 euro, though. [sorry, Lys]

The metro back from the train station to the bus stop was less crowded than the going there. The bus stop check in was uneventful except that the Burger King inside the metro station was the slowest I've ever experienced in my life. They literally made Nicole's chicken sandwich while she stood and waited. I can't say that it was better quality that way, either. It looked about as grease-laden and decrepit as any other fast food sandwich.

The time spent there didn't matter, however. We still sat for about 15 minutes waiting for our bus to start boarding. Sitting on the bus we happened to see a man standing outside seeing off his girlfriend (who would be riding with us), and he was proudly wearing a Mizzou shirt. Too bad he didn't get on the bus, else I would have tried to talk with him and figure out what year he was/graduated, etc.


I finished Breakfast at Tiffany's on the ride home and slept uncomfortably the rest of it. Arriving back in Brussels was a welcome experience. I have no qualms about road trips. I love them, in fact. It was simply nice to be away from a place where you have no idea where you are. Ever. Even with a map.

Back at the apartment I sat down and continued working on my article. The restaurants I had contacted never got back to me, so I got ready for a night of talking with managers in Place Jourdan on Monday.

Sunday was Special Dinner (the monthly traditional dinner among my high school friends), so at 2am I called Margaret and got to hear the wonderful voices of people I haven't talked with in months. I spent 30 minutes or so being passed around before they finally got down to their dinner and I to my article again. For backstory, I'm writing my final article on the price of water in Belgium. Around 4am I made myself go to bed. Monday was going to be a much longer day than I'd anticipated at 4am, so it's a good thing I went to bed when I did.