Something Something Birthday - a Girl Refuses to Turn Thirty

The party was...interesting.  If I was a university student again, and living in Utrecht, I would definitely go to all sorts of these underground things.

The Dutch party too hard.  We left after the first set...at 01:30.  The other two bands hadn't even arrived yet by then.  They were one of those bands that sounds great live, but I probably wouldn't listen to them otherwise.  I can't even describe them - funk meets death metal meets psychedelic rock? ...maybe.  There were four band members, and they were all dressed up in scary make up and ridiculous outfits - the lead guitarist was in a see-through billowy light blue robe and short shorts, for example.

Our second day in Utrecht was met with a late start - we were both sore and tired from the night before.  We've been averaging about 10km a day walking around, and we're getting a bit tired.  We went into the town centre and checked out the local cathedral.  Communion was in session, so we looked into getting into the bell tower.  We could only do it with a guided tour, which to be honest, was expensive and kinda lame.  We climbed all 465 steps to the top of the 113m tower, but I felt like it was really rushed, and I didn't overly enjoy it.  No fault to our tour guide though - I just don't enjoy guided tours.

The last very top section of the bell tower was a really steep, narrow, spiral staircase, and it made me claustrophobic.  If I wasn't first in the line of people, I probably would have curled in a ball on the stairs.  It was very dizzying.  Going down was okay.  The view from the top was pretty neat, though with all the protective fencing up, I needed to stand on the benches at the top to see anything.

We spent an hour one evening trying to find this damn tower.  We never did.  We could see it, but no matter where we walked, we couldn't figure out how to get into the courtyard.  I googled it - it's apparently an abandoned museum.  I couldn't find anything else out about it. 

Stupid staircase.

When we climbed back down, communion was done, and the public was allowed back into the cathedral.  We wandered around a little, but St. Martin's Cathedral (Dom Cathedral) wasn't as spectacular as the huge church we looked at in Haarlem.  We did catch part of a choir group performing inside the cathedral though, and when we were in earlier, we listened to the organ play, which was beautiful.  After that, we wandered around for a while and then headed back to the hostel for a few hours to chill.

Later that evening, we went back out again for a bit to wander around and grab a bite to eat.  I bought a big bag of tomatoes, and haven't been in a place with a kitchen since, so I have no idea what to do with them.

This church had red glowing inside, there was a creepy chime noise every few seconds, and this tree kept lighting up with the image of a stag.  Also....the lightposts were flickering.  It was hella creepy.  

We left early yesterday morning to head to Amsterdam.  Our hostel (which is terrible and huge and I feel like I'm a student in a dorm or something) is in a park.  It was brisk out yesterday, but the sun was still warm on the skin (they call this winter?) and we immediately set out to explore the park.  I saw some parakeets, or tiny parrots, or something, and some coots, and one duck who seemed jealous I wasn't taking photos of her.  Lots of people were walking their dogs, and it made me miss Jasper.

We walked down to Centraal station and took a canal tour, which was actually pretty cool.  I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.  We spent an hour cruising the canals, and listening to a history recording as we passed by buildings.  I saw a swan, and some sad, half sunk boats, and the best graffiti!

We ate some fries from a cone with a tiny wooden fork, with what couldn't be any less than a half cup of mayo on top - they are sold at little stands all over the place.  I thought maybe the sauce was hollandaise sauce or something, but it just tasted like mayo.  And it was awful.  I felt so sick after I ate it.  So....there's that dutch food tried and done.  We've mostly been living off of french fries, giant waffles, bread, cheese, fruit, coffee, and beer.  It's hard to eat healthy without a kitchen.  Most of the hostels we are staying in don't have them.

Speaking of beer, last evening, we went on a journey to find a brewery in an abandoned windmill, for birthday beers.  It was called Brouwerij t' IJ (I think it is a play on words - the IJ (ei) is the local river, so the brewery is called the brewer-ee-tee).  It has a little pub attached to it, and we are so glad the beers were good, because it took us a whole damn hour to walk there.  We misjudged how far it was.  But the interior was really cool.  We ordered beers (which, like their coffees, are small in this country).  We both tried the amber ale and the in-house pilsner, which this country is famous for.  I tried some cheese and dry-cured sausage that was actually tasty, although I had to eat it in tiny pieces because the texture weirded me out, but I didn't want to miss out on something just because I don't like to eat it.  I'm not likely to make a habit out of it.

After a few beers, we walked to the Red Light District.  On the way, we passed the zoo, and I saw flamingos!  I've never seen them before.  I thought they sounded like ducks, but there may have just been a duck hiding in there somewhere.

I think the Queen of Holland is in her palace right now.  There was a crowd, and a TON of security.  

The red light district was exactly what I thought it would be, and nothing like I thought it would be.  There was a theatre where you could watch live sex on stage (which we did not do), and there were prostitutes in the windows, but most of them had dead eyes.  Any time I stopped to watch one of them, they frowned at me, but at one station, a group of men came behind me, and the woman started to flirt with them.  I was grumpy about it - I feel like there is some kind of heteronormative standard.

We both felt uncomfortable about the place, and headed home.  I only saw one woman who looked like she was alright with herself - I smiled at her, and she smiled a real smile back.  The rest looked bored (possibly because it was a Monday night?), and I didn't like their eyes.  Everyone had dead eyes.

This morning, we were rudely awoken at 06:15 by some drunk Germans and Dutchmen who came stomping into the room, and yelling, and running around.  They were assholes.  I hope they have the worst hangover when they wake up this afternoon.

I guess today is going to be an early day now.

An Englishman and a Canadian invade the Netherlands

Suddenly I find myself in the Netherlands.

Much, I imagine, to the surprise of most of my friends and definitely coworkers (including my boss – when he found out I still somehow have banked time for the year, and I still somehow got it approved) …and it is fantastic.

I’ve been here two days, and I could live here.  The cobblestone streets are quaint, the ‘winter’ (if you can call it that) is still in the last throes of autumn, there are bicycles literally everywhere, there are still LEAVES on the trees (!) and it is impossibly mild.  The people are a bit rude, and the prices are costly, but it is really, really lovely here.

I landed in Amsterdam yesterday, after flying standby from Yellowknife, which was a bit of an ordeal.  My booked flight was cancelled due to the plane having not showed up the day before, so I had to catch the next one, which was to Edmonton, not Calgary, and then I had to find a flight to Calgary, which was actually pretty easy, thankfully.  I still got to Calgary much earlier than my flight to Amsterdam, so I waited a bit for the ticket counter to open, and then when it did, I made friendly with the old gentleman manning the ticket counter, and in return, he gave me a confirmed seat on the plane.  KLM is great, by the way.  The food was actually pretty good, the movie selection was superb (I say as someone who only enjoys European films) and the alcohol was free.  I got a little mini bottle of wine, and it was pretty good.  Not like our airlines at all. 

The film I watched on the plane was really good, actually.  I watched a film called The Danish Girl, which was a true account of the first transgender person in Denmark to undergo surgery in the 1920’s.  It did a good job at showing the struggles that the couple went through as the husband realized their true identity, and the public response to it at the time.  I’d like to see if I can’t get a copy of it to show in Yellowknife sometime for NWT Pride.  At some point…says the person who just resigned.  Sorta.

I got into Amsterdam at 08:00, after a sleepless plane ride – who knew an infant could cry for eight hours straight?  Needless to say, I was glad to get off the plane.  Getting through customs was possibly the easiest I’ve experienced in recent years, but it took me a little while to find Jamie.  We did, eventually, find each other – although as I told Alan by text message, it was a little like trying to find a really tall, English needle in a sprawling supermall of a haystack.  The arrivals hall enters directly into a giant mall, a train station complex, and a bus station. 

We left immediately for Haarlem, as soon as we figured out how to use the trains here, which is admittedly confusing.  Now that we’ve got the hang of it, the train system in the Netherlands actually seems to be incredibly efficient.  Just a steep learning curve. 

It was a short ride to Haarlem, a city just outside of Amsterdam, near the shore.  With a map I printed out before I left Canada, we walked from the train station to our hostel.  Jamie has a mildly injured foot, which has been exasperated by all of our walking, so it was a slow walk, but it would have been a slow walk anyhow.  Getting around is confusing at first. 

The hostel was basic, nothing to write home about, but the town is really beautiful.  I could easily live in Haarlem.  We checked in and immediately hopped on a bus to the city centre to walk around.  We found this beautiful old church, with the biggest organ I’ve ever seen – something like 5000 pipes on it.  Apparently Mozart played it when he was 10 years old.  The floors were made of tombstones, and I think we found some original stained glass.  It was lovely. 

I fell asleep at some silly hour, but in my defense, I had been awake for over 24 hours.

This morning, after a simple breakfast and 12 hours sleep (I apparently slept through a drunk guy banging on our windows at three in the morning?), we took a morning stroll through a park and headed to the centre of town for some more wandering around.

On the way, Jamie’s suitcase fell completely apart.  We both found this hilarious and tragic.  We stashed our bags at the train station, and went in search of a new bag for Jamie.  We ended up finding a market in the centre square (Grokt Markt), and I ate every free sample in sight.  There were a lot of free samples.  We wandered around for a few hours, found Jamie a new bag, and had coffee in some very strange, slightly unexplainable (to us non-Dutch reading humans, anyhow) art gallery-café-very expensive designer store.  It was really neat inside though. 

Surprisingly, an actual sex shop.  I was half-expecting it to be a music shop, or something.

Cheese for DAYS

After that, we bid farewell to the suitcase, and hopped on the train to Utrecht.  Just a little while ago, we walked to our hostel, where we are now, and in a little while, we are going to go out for dinner and later tonight, to an underground music party we got invited to.  It is a Saturday night, and when we checked in, we asked if anything was going on tonight – and found ourselves on the guest list to a music party which is being held in the basement of an old squatter’s house, and is going from 10pm – 4am. 

We both sincerely hope we aren’t still awake at 4am.