Sarah and I started our journey to the Netherlands Tuesday afternoon after suffering through a six hour final exam earlier that day. As far as the exam goes, it wasn't as bad as I expected but I'm still not sure about the outcome.
Sarah' friend Julia studies in Tilburg, which is about an hour and a half south of Amsterdam. The town she was staying in seemed reallly nice. Very bicycle friendly. I have never seen more bikes in my entire life than I saw in the Netherlands this week. It was very difficult to be a pedestrian there because there were so many things to look out for when walking around. Normally you just have to look out for cars, which are easy to spot and it is easy to predict what they will do. Bikes on the other hand are not so easily spotted and they can come at you from multiple directions. And if you get hit by one, or even brushed, you will get injured. Another complaint that goes along with this is the amount of space they set aside for pedestrians. Sometimes you can only walk single file, making it extremely difficult to stay out of the bike lane like you're supposed to.
Tuesday night we met some of Julia's friends at a local student pub, but Sarah and I were pretty tired so we didn't stay long. Wednesday Sarah and I took a train to Delft which is a smaller city to the northwest of Tilburg. Like I said Delft was very small, so we didn't stay more than four hours. It was very cute though. A number of old churches and buildings from the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. There were canals all over the place, which I thought made it even cuter. We found out that there are a lot of cheese stores in the Netherlands, and most of them let you sample the cheese. We only visited one in Delft but there were three or four in Amsterdam that we went into. Don't worry, we did buy some cheese eventually ;) On the way home Sarah and I discovered a few people eating french fries from a fast food place. It looked like they were covered with gravy and mayo but when we asked for it, we got curry sauce and something that resembled mayo. It was really good, but I bet gravy would have been better.
Thursday Julia came with us to Amsterdam. We stayed at a really nice hostel called Durty Nelly's which was actually an Irish pub. The first day we mainly just wandered around. The weather wasn't very nice when were were in the Netherlands any of the days. It rained on and off and was quite cold-5 degrees colder than Oslo! It was definitely weather where you would need gloves. Imagine needing gloves on the 23rd of May. Ridiculous. Amsterdam isn't very big, and wherever you end up is usually pretty close to somewhere you've already been. We did get a bit confused a couple times because a lot of the areas look the same-narrow houses lining a canal. I found out that the houses are so narrow because in Amsterdam they would (maybe still do?) tax houses based on width. The smallest house we saw was only 1.6 m wide! We noticed pretty early on that many of the houses were crooked or slanting. Most of them were slanting forward. They were all pretty old. They had the same iron pieces as we saw on the houses in Stockholm, indicating they were from the 16th and 17th centuries. We asked our tour guide the second day and he explained that it is so hard to get goods such as furniture into the homes through the doors because they are so narrow that they hoist them up through the windows usually. We noticed then that almost all of the houses had hooks at the top and they were built slanting forward so whatever was hanging would not bang into the house.
We spent a bit of time walking through the red light district the first day. I was surprised at how relaxed it felt during the day. At night it got a kind of carnival type atmosphere. I never felt unsafe. Our tour guide explained that the Dutch are known for a sort of controlled tolerance. They regulate and organize things so that the government has control over them, while still being very tolerant. For example, hard drugs were becoming a big problem so the government decided they needed to take drastic action against them, but decided to leave soft drugs like cannabis alone. They decided that they would not arrest anyone for marijuana use and beginning in the 1970's they didn't. Our tour guide mentioned the first arrest was made only a few years ago. Someone was found with a very large amount of marijuana in their house. Another example is the secret catholic churches. After the protestant reformation, practicing Catholicism was banned, but Catholics still met in "secret" churches. The government was aware of many of these meetings but simply turned the other way. Another thing they are tolerant about with is prostitution. Honestly, I did not know what to expect from the red light district in this respect. It's such an interesting way of doing things though. Prostitutes cannot work for anyone; they must work for themselves. They pay taxes on what they make. What happens is prostitutes rent windows for eight hour shifts. I'm pretty sure anyone can do it. I found this to be very interesting, especially from a sociological perspective. While it is not looked fondly upon by the government or the citizens of the Netherlands, I think what a society chooses to tolerate speaks loudly.
The second day we took a walking tour (which is where I got most of my information from the previous paragraph). It ended up lasting about 3 hours. Our tour guide was from New Jersey originally and had been living there for ten years now. He came to study and just never left. I learned a lot of history that we wouldn't ever have gotten if we wouldn't have taken the tour. After the tour, Julia left and Sarah and I made our way to the Iamsterdam sign. It was way too overrun with tourists so we didn't get to take a picture with it, but we saw it. It was situated right next to a huge museum and a really nice park, so it was nice to hang out there. Another thing we didn't get to do was the Anne Frank museum. We saved it for the second day because Julia had already been and she was going to leave before we did it but by the time the walking tour was done and we ate it was later than expected and there was a long line. I am a little disappointed about this, but we did get to see the outside of the house, so at least I know where it is. Next time.
For lunch we ate at a traditional dutch cafe. I had a traditional dutch meal-stamppot. I guess it's usually just potatoes with leftovers. My mashed potatoes had carrots in them and a big meatball on top. It was a hearty meal and was very tasty. Another dutch thing Sarah and I tried this morning was bread with chocolate sprinkles on them. It has a name-something like hagelslag. You toast the bread, butter it and then douse it with chocolate sprinkles. Quite tasty.
Overall it was a nice trip. I wish the weather had been a little better but that is something you can never bank on.
Sarah and I were so excited when we first arrived at train station. We needed dinner and as soon as we walked into the convenient store we realized it was soooo much cheaper in the Netherlands than it was in Norway! We took full advantage of this and brought back some food in our carryons. What isn't cheap in the Netherlands is trains though...
A few more observations:
If you ask for iced tea, it comes with carbonation and is very tasty.
There seemed to be black and white cats sitting in a lot of windows
Lots of cows-like normal dairy cows
The Netherlands was very green
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