Up in the Nether Regions of Europe

Well, it's night #3 here in Amsterdam. We're at a new hostel this time: The Flying Pig Uptown. It's a confusing mess of staircases and rooms plastered with pigs wearing aviator goggles and propeller hats. There's a bar downstairs, and people are smoking up in the kitchen. Violet and I are starting to think that our hostel days are about over. You reach a certain point where you realize, "You know, I really don't want to have to deal with drunk-ass party kids anymore. I just want a room to myself where I can get some privacy." Must be a sign that we're getting old.

Anyway, back to the story at hand. After the wedding dinner and Elvis and the band on Saturday, Violet and I headed to our no-frills hotel down the street at about 1:30 am. We crashed hard. I awoke a few hours later feeling sick and realized that the Germans had unleashed WWII in my stomach with all their gastronomical delights. On Sunday morning, I felt a little better, but Violet didn't fare nearly as well that night. We met up with the bride and groom at the hotel for breakfast, then crammed all our stuff into their VW and headed off to the Frankfurt Airport. They took off for their honeymoon to the Dominican Republic, while Violet and I hopped a train to the city to bum around for a few hours before our flight to Amsterdam.

Frankfurt...was Frankfurt. It had some tall buildings and industrial parks, but not too much culturally to speak of. They had a nice "old town" section with buildings that reminded me of my time in Munich last year (minus the beer gardens). Lots of gypsies were out performing music reminiscent of the soundtrack from "Borat". Violet and I ended up taking a cruise along the Main River and checking out "Mainhattan" as the locals there like to call it. The prerecorded narration was so dry and boring that it about put me into a coma. Once our cruise was finished, we hopped the train back to the airport and flew the hour or so over here to Amsterdam.

At first glance when you're at the Amsterdam airport, it appears you'll have an easy time getting around the city since everything is in English. But once you get onto the train, everything changes and switches to Dutch, and you start having "Lost in Translation" moments. Dutch is nothing at all like any language you know. Even German is a cinch compared to Dutch. Violet had to ask for directions to the hostel several times since nothing was recognizably marked at the train station. I honestly don't know how we made it to our hostel. Call it blind, dumb luck.

The first hostel we stayed at was called the StayOkay, which has to be the dumbest name for a hostel I've ever heard of. The building used to be a dorm housing university or secondary school students. The breakfasts were nothing to brag about: bread, sour yogurt, granola and juice that tasted anything but fresh. And the rooms had rickety metal bunk beds in cramped quarters. After living a week in our own private room at Shane and Andrea's apartment, it felt awkward being thrown into a room with four other twenty-somethings. And the Flying Pig doesn't feel much different. However, the atmosphere here is much more inviting that the sterile institution-like feel at the StayOkay.

Amsterdam, however, is an incredible city. It's like nothing you've ever seen before with the canals, tightly-crammed buildings and bicyclists everywhere. Every day I fear for my life, thinking a tram, car or bike will run me over. We took a boat cruise along the canals on Monday, which was a lot of fun. Then for the rest of Monday and all day today, we've been roaming around, checking out the sights. We did the Anne Frank house yesterday, and tried to do the Heininken Experience today, but it was closed until Oct. 20th due to renovations. Very disappointing to miss one of the Holy Grails of beer tours.

Looks like some Australians in our room want to go out to a pub, so looks like Violet and I will be joining them and maybe seeing what the Red Light District is all about. I'll let you know what I find out.