I'm writing this from the train (our fourth today), presumably to Berlin. I say "presumably" because Alex and I have had a very, very confusing day of train travel from Bruges, where we spent last night. We had to take the train from Bruges to Brussels. At Brussels, we had to board our second train, to Cologne. However, that second train was running slowly (high speed my foot!) and we ended up getting into Cologne about four minutes after our train to Berlin had departed. Thankfully, there was another train headed to Berlin (we thought) about 15 minutes later. We got on that train, sat in a compartment with a German guy around our age and set off. When he got off the train in Hamm, we were thrilled—the compartment to ourselves! But, thankfully, he quickly returned and told us that if we were trying to get to Berlin, we would have to transfer trains because Hamm was the end of the line for this one. So now we're on our fourth train, which is very full...we've been kicked out of several seats already by people who have reservations for them. Drama! We should finally get to Berlin in about an hour, 7 pm, after traveling since 9:30 am. It will be welcome for many reasons, particularly because it is my birthday and I would really like to not spend the whole day on the train.
By the way, I know that Alex has decided she's too lazy to write out blogs or emails or anything and that she's sending all of her loved ones to read my blogs, so to Alex's loved ones: hello! She is alive and well, I promise; we haven't killed each other just yet.
Okay, so let me start back in Amsterdam, because we have had a busy few days. After I woke up Alex after my last blog post, we went downstairs and had our free hostel breakfast. I must say that I'm enjoying these breakfasts: toast with butter, jam, or nutella, hardboiled eggs, a myriad of fruits, and at least one option of cereals. (Alex, for instance, filled up on Cocoa Krispies.) From breakfast, we went to the H&M down the street because Alex wanted a more fashionable traveling bag, and then on to a bike rental store. Amsterdam is a perfect city to explore by bike—gratuitous bike lanes, traffic that yields politely to bikers, and beautiful scenery. For our first activity of the day, we rode over to the Van Gogh museum. We were pleasantly surprised when we discovered that the "I Amsterdam" sign was on the same grounds as the museum; we'd been wondering where that was! After we had our obligatory pictures with the sign, we headed into the museum, which was pretty cool. Learned a lot about Van Gogh.
After the museum, we biked over to a nearby outdoor market. We bought the most amazing cheese there from a cheese stand. It tasted like a sort of soft parmesan. No idea what it was called, but I do know that we bought a brick of it about the size of our heads for only 6 Euros. If all cheese is this cheap in Europe, I am in big trouble. This purchase got us started on what I'm calling "Operation Bread and Cheese," whereby Alex and I survive on bread and cheese for the rest of our time in Europe. We also bought a few varieties of plums and a nice baguette. With our food in hand, we biked to Vondelpark, a huge outdoor space in Amsterdam that's considered their sort of Central Park. Our lunch was great but it started to rain and we were both exhausted, so we returned our bikes, went back to our hostel and took a nice long nap.
Once we awoke from our nap, we decided to head to the central train station to get our Eurail passes validated. We wanted to take the 6:50 am train to Bruges the next morning, and the reservations office didn't open until 6:30, so we thought it safer to get it done that night. At the reservations office, we were hit on by some very creepy middle-eastern men who told us that we were "such nice American girls" and told us that they "have everything we need for a stay in Amsterdam, you can come stay with us." Ew, no thank you, creepy stranger. Our parents have taught us better than that.
We dodged the creepsters and were craving Indian food so we wandered around our neighborhood until we could find an Indian restaurant. We gorged ourselves on curry and headed back to our hostel, which had the best drink prices we'd seen. The hostel bar scene was a complete mess, and we drank plenty. In fact, we broke our very first rule of the trip, which is: "When the shots start coming out, it's time to go home for the night." We downed a few repulsive Jagerbombs with a group of Aussies we'd befriended (Australians are EVERYWHERE!) and at some point decided it was time to wander around the red light district. I stick to my earlier conclusion: the red light district is an utter trainwreck. At some point we returned back to the hostel, where the bar was still open, although we intelligently switched to water. However, neither of us got to bed for very long at all, and when we woke up at 6 am to get ready for our train to Bruges, we were running on about two hours of sleep.
I think Alex was sorrier to say goodbye to Amsterdam than I was. I probably could have spent another night there, because I think there were still plenty of tourist things for us to do, but I'm equally happy moving on. I don't really like being in the main tourist areas and I like to see cities from the insider's perspective, and Amsterdam struck me as a city that is extremely touristy all around. But maybe if we'd spent more time there, we'd have gotten to know it better. Biking through Amsterdam was a real treat, though, and it made the city really grow on me.
I almost forgot! I have to eulogize my iPhone. I have really shit luck with iPhones in Europe. When I was in Spain on Semester at Sea, I busted my first iPhone, which was almost brand new. I pulled it out of my bag after a long night at a discotheque and discovered that the screen was shattered. To this day, I have no idea how that happened (although I choose to "blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol"). So once I got back to the States, I had to buy a whole new phone, which has been fine over the past three years. Narry a problem with it. Until I return to Europe, of course. On my second night of my two-month trip, my phone fell out of my back pocket in the hostel bar and landed on the floor. I thought it was fine at first—I've dropped my phone many times with no recourse. But as soon as I gave it a hard look, I found a big problem: the power button is jammed down. I've tried and tried to pull it out but I don't think it's going to happen. The phone proceeded to turn itself on and off until the power ran out. I was bummed out about losing a mode of communication, of course, and it's a pain in the ass not to have an alarm anymore, but I wasn't truly devastated until I realized this afternoon that I don't have any music. It makes these long train rides that much longer. So, dear iPhone: you were with me through the good times and the bad, and stuck with me through the years even though I beat you constantly. I'm sorry that our relationship reached its tipping point. You were a delightful companion and will be sorely missed.
Which brings us to Bruges! The train ride to Bruges was quite pastoral, and I had really wanted to sleep but couldn't help but stare out the windows instead. We had to transfer trains in Antwerp, so the journey all around took about three hours. Alex and I arrived in Bruges exhausted, stinky (especially Alex, who still had not showered since Chicago) and frazzled. There was some confusion on which hostel we were actually staying at, but we managed to get on a bus that took us to it. We stayed at St. Christopher's Inn at Bauhaus, which some fellow travelers in Amsterdam had recommended. The prospect of showering and laying down for a few hours sounded so attractive and we were very disappointed when the girl at reception told us the rooms wouldn't be ready until 3 pm. Furthermore, there weren't lockers in the room and we'd have to pay 5 euros for 24 hours of locker rental in the locker room! We cleaned up in the tiny bathroom in the common area, washing our faces and brushing our teeth, and once we'd both applied some new makeup we felt almost refreshed. It was time to go see Bruges.
Bruges is a very small city so it was easy for us to walk around and see all of the necessary tourist sights. Based on a helpful guide map we'd been given, we decided to walk to a part of the city that was notable for its spectacular bakery and butcher shop. We purchased some rolls and some truffles at the bakery, some mozzarella salad at the butchers, and some strawberries from a fruit store, and headed to the lovely park next door for our second picnic in two days. (Operation Bread and Cheese is my favorite. Ever.) I was so tired and hungry that everything tasted spectacular to me, although Alex was not as overwhelmed as I was.
From our picnic, we headed to the main market area of Bruges, which is the tourist area. I know I complained about tourist areas just a few sentences ago, but Bruges is an entirely different story. It's an incredibly beautiful, picturesque, well-preserved city and the tourism it attracts is very well deserved. Alex and I felt as if we were in a fairy tale the whole time. I think I can speak for us both when I say we're disappointed we couldn't spend another night exploring the city and seeing the sights. We both managed to mail out some postcards in Bruges, so some of you should look forward to those. We decided we were exhausted (okay, I was exhausted and starting to annoy Alex with my whining) so we headed back in the direction of the hostel, but made a pitstop at the windmills in Bruges. It was all very Flemish! I want to say "picturesque" over and over again, but we literally took pictures so please see for yourselves.
We returned to our hostel shortly after three to take what we thought would be a short nap. When we woke up around quarter to 8 pm, we were both a tad embarrassed; the truth of the matter is we ended up going to Belgium to sleep. It's unfortunate that we didn't do more, but I think we're both very glad that we were able to see the city at all—it was such a treat. After we woke from our nap, we had dinner, both showered (Alex finally showered!!!) and went back to bed. The one really great thing about the hostel in Bruges was that we were staying in a room with only 6 other people, and everyone turned in by 11 pm, so we had an early lights out.
Which takes us back to our multiple and confusing train rides, so essentially back to the beginning. A pleasant surprise about the train: even though we missed our original train in Cologne, we will be arriving at approximately the same time. So all's well that ends well. Tonight we'll go celebrate my 23rd birthday. As far as numbers go, I don't think 23 is a very spectacular birthday (in fact, I've been forgetting about it all day), but it will be notable because we'll be in Berlin. After we check into our hostel, we'll go out for a hopefully nice dinner (although I'm not sure what I can eat of German food with my vegetarian diet) and then get ready to head to the clubs. The night clubs in Berlin don't get started until around 1 am, so it's going to be a very late night for us. I expect we'll be exhausted tomorrow since we need to get up early enough to go sightseeing, but I'm adjusting to this on-the-road lifestyle. I also have a feeling that I'm not going to be able to update again until we're done with Oktoberfest; we head to Munich for that on Monday and leave on Wednesday. However, I will try!
Love and long train rides, Eliza
PS: We just saw some lesbians kissing on our train that reminded us both of a game we've been playing and wanted to tell you about. In shorthand, we're calling it "E or G"—we're trying not to be too offensive to the people around us. E stands for "European" and G stands for "Gay." The purpose of the game is to guess if a person is gay or just really European. There's an extremely fine line. We've just had a long discussion about whether or not this game is too politically incorrect to share with my blog, but we don't mean it in a hateful way, so whatever.
PPS: Another thing we wanted to share, that I forgot about. The street names! Alex and I have had to create our own street names in place of the street names in both Amsterdam and in Bruges. The Dutch street names have been utterly unpronounceable for us, so we come up with words that sound sort of like how they appear on paper and use those instead. Some notables have been: "Koopatrooper Street," "Ho Street," "Bangalang Street," etc. Wish we could think up a few more that we had come up with, because they certainly amused us to no end.
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