Amsterdam

November 11, 2012: (Happy birthday, Dad!)

We woke up bright and early in order for Kristin to catch her flight back to Minsk and left her friend's house by 7am. We took the train from Den Haag to Schipol where I said goodbye to her and continued on to Amsterdam Centraal.

The first step in any new city is to find a map. I looked everywhere in the train station, but there wasn't even a tourist office. I finally found an advertising packet with a map in the back in one of those free stands in front of the car rental booths. I had a make-shift train station breakfast of a fruit cup, a twisty-cheesy bread thing and a chocolate letter T (which I guess is traditionally Dutch for Sinterklaas).

Step two was to find my hostel so that I could put my backpack into a locker. It was called Shelter City and when I booked it I thought that it was a little strange that there were no co-ed dorms (usually these are cheaper than the single-sex dorms). When I arrived, things started to make more sense. Shelter City is a Christian hostel. How does a Christian hostel differ from a regular hostel you might be asking yourself? First of all, on Sundays, a group of the people staying at the hostel head to church together. Secondly, the wall of the lobby is covered in different churches in the area. And finally, when you get past the lobby all of the walls are adorned with Jesus-related decorations topped off with just a giant word JESUS painted on the wall in the cafeteria. I found it ironic that I had to walk through the Red Light District to get to the hostel...

 

I had planned to meet up with a friend later in the afternoon so I had the morning to myself to wander around aimlessly looking at all the things. We agreed to meet at the Dam Monument, so I thought I would find that first so I could make sure to be back at the right time. Assuming the Dam Monument would be near water, I decided to walk along the Amstel river. All of the canals in Amsterdam are gorgeous.

At one point, I got caught up in a crowd of people speaking French (which was disconcerting) all headed in the same direction. They were all headed toward a building called the Hermitage and I thought it must be for a conference or something. I decided to follow them in through the main gate to see if I could figure out what it was about. I made it all the way to the line up to buy tickets without any obvious clues as to what it could be for, so I left. After more than an hour wandering up and down the Amstel in search of a really distinct monument, I decided to verify the map once again.

Obviously I am too logical for my own good. The Dam Monument isn't anywhere near the Amstel, nor is it really anywhere near to the canals. It's across the square from the Royal Palace on the other side of the city. Luckily, the city is not enormous and I managed to make it there on foot in under 20 minutes. This area of the city is the really touristy bit. I went through a few souvenir shops (mainly to see what their offering on magnets was) and returned to the Monument to meet my friend.

Michiel is another iRYLA participant who I met in 2010 in Montréal and I remember that I instantly liked him. He might have had a different impression of my 19-year-old self. I have a habit of asking really dumb questions in order to keep a conversation going... often I realize later much better questions I could have asked or just how dumb my questions really were. For example, I asked Michiel where he was from and he told me "The Netherlands". I was obviously aware of the existence of The Netherlands.. my uncle's wife came from "Holland" as we have a tendency to call the whole country where I'm from. However, I didn't immediately make that connection and so I asked where it is located. He told me that it was above France. Having very little education about the geography of Europe I remained perplexed, so I asked what language they speak there. "Dutch" should have made things obvious to me, but instead I just found this really interesting and a strange coincidence. A day later, I made the connection and felt like the biggest idiot. Thankfully, he appeared to have forgotten this incident (or maybe just tactfully didn't use it as a basis for forming an opinion about me).

We had lunch on a side street restaurant a ways from the touristy places. I had an enormous (and amazing) goat cheese salad which took me ages to eat, so we ended up discussing just about everything. He is a PhD student doing his thesis on the cooperation of organizations that are trying to solve social issues from different perspectives... I think. For example, if there is a homeless drug addict, an agency helping homeless individuals might say that the key is finding him a residence, whereas an agency dealing with individuals facing addiction might say that he needs to have help to fight his addiction, and another agency might say he needs help finding a job. In fact, all of these are relevant to his solution, but individually none of them will effectively solve his problems. So, Michiel looks at how to encourage these organizations to cooperate and what that would look like from a pratical standpoint.

We also talked about my interest in education and mainly what challenges face the education system. We made comparisons between the Dutch school system and the system in Ontario. This is not the right blog for me to rant about what I think needs to be changed/improved upon, but Michiel offered a receptive ear and relevant discussion which I think may be a trademark of iRYLA participants (if I do say so myself). We came to Rotary in a very similar way: both of our mothers are Rotarians and we both decided to participate in our local RYLA. He was selected from his class of RYLA, whereas all of the Ontario participants had an opportunity to attend since the conference was in Montréal. Neither of us has had an opportunity to continue active Rotary involvement because there was no Rotaract club at our Universities or in our cities and neither of us had any extra time to commit to founding new clubs.

We walked around the city a lot and got weasled into trying a magic nail buffer system by the best saleswoman ever. She was unbelievably good. I was able to resist only by virtue of the fact that I had no room in my backpack and the kit cost 30 euro. Which is outrageous. And I am practically broke. Not to mention, 30 euro is the cost of a flight to Barcelona (when you don't miss your flight). Kristin had said to me in Den Haag that in The Netherlands there are more bikes than people, and I think this is true. Everywhere you went there were people on bikes and piles of bikes outside of office buildings. Bikes have the right of way apparently and I had a few close calls, but luckily, I survived.

I felt that the Red Light District is a necessary pilgrimmage in Amsterdam, so we went to the main street there. I've heard all the stories, but it's just still so strange to see women standing in lingerie in shop windows like mannequins. Despite obvious issues such as human trafficking and the difficulty of determining who is working of their own will and who was coerced into prostitution, I think the laws in The Netherlands are incredibly progressive. The safety of these sex workers is so much easier to maintain if prostitution is legal and "out in the open" (literally, in this case). The Netherlands also have legalised possession for personal use for marijuana. Recently, the European Union encouraged the criminalization of marijuana for tourists and non-residents, and according to Michiel they are also attempting to clean up the Red Light District as well so that brothels aren't as accessible. The legalization of both marijuana and prostitution are laws about giving human beings the right to choose for their own bodies (the same basis for laws regarding abortion and birth control). It would be a step backward to try to remove these freedoms of choice. Also, what would happen to Amsterdam's tourism industry??? After all of this philosophical reasoning, we opted for a change of pace.

Our next stop would be the Van Gogh Museum. We stopped quickly at a store for pepernoten, small ginger biscuits the size of gum drops. This is typical Sinterklaas candy. (Sinterklaas apparently sails from Spain to The Netherlands each year to give children candy and presents.) It was tasty!

We walked to the Van Gogh Museum through the Museumplein only to find out that the museum was being rennovated and was, in fact, located all the way back at the Hermitage Museum next to the Amstel. It was already too late in the afternoon for us to make it there before closing, so we opted instead to have a hot chocolate at a nearby cafe. We also took some artsy photos:(note: as I have previously mentioned, I am not at all good at photography. If I get a nice photo it is by luck).

 

We were having such an excellent time we decided to have dinner together as well, and all the tourist restaurants appear to be steakhouses, so we had steak. Yum! Unfortunately, I talk too much with my hands and spilled a glass of red wine on Michiel....

...and I was worried he was really mad at me...

...but it appears to come off (this is water in the photo) and he didn't hate me. Spilling alcohol on someone gives you just the worst feeling. There is actually nothing you can do to make it better in the moment. We finished off the night at a wonderful live jazz bar. The lead singer/saxaphonist was incredibly intense:

But the music was so excellent that we stayed very late. I walked Michiel back to the train station and then took a quick adventure through the streets of Amsterdam by myself at 2am. I was only verbally harassed a few times. I was absolutely exhausted (I like the adjective crevé in French) and my face hurt from smiling all day. When I got the hostel, I desperately pushed the intercom button and the attendant was a bit bewildered that I was so late coming into the Christian hostel. He was really helpful though and when I got to my bed, I was out like a light.

 

November 12, 2012:

 

I woke up in time for the free breakfast and I was so excited to learn it was French toast! However, I had just about the worst culture shock I've had since I got to Europe when I realized upon receiving this plate of French toast that I would have to eat it without maple syrup. World shattered. It was actually distressing how much this affected my mood all morning. I had intended to go to the Van Gogh Museum before catching my train back to the airport, but opted not to risk it and instead spent the morning scouring the tourist shops for a magnet. Most of the magnets featured half-naked women and marijuana leafs... not exactly my style... but I found some that suited my taste and made it to the airport with plenty of time, passing part of my time on the train chatting with a really pleasant British woman whose son works as the Manager of the Nike advertising for the Western Europe division. No big deal.

 

The airport was decked out for Sinterklaas and Christmas already. I bought lunch at a grocery store in the airport thinking I was being clever. I got a chicken salad and then realized that I had no utensils. I picked up a knife and spoon from one of the fast-food restaurants in the food court, but they didn't have any forks. It was the slowest I have ever eaten a salad.

I caught my flight with plenty of time and when I arrived home, I was happy about the time I had spent travelling in The Netherlands, and at the same time, I was incredibly grateful to know that I would be sticking to Lyon until the end of exams. Travelling is wonderful, but it's hard work always being in motion and sometimes it's nice to just stay put for a while.

The Netherlands: Den Haag

In September or October, another iRYLA member contacted me to let me know she was in Minsk, Belarus and to ask if I wanted to meet her in the Netherlands in November for a weekend. The Netherlands was one of my top travel destinations, so I jumped at the chance to have a travel companion. Strangely, though, it happened to be the weekend immediately following my trip to Sweden and Norway with Danielle. Not even a week after I got home, I repacked my backpack (the night before leaving) and got set to spend another few days sleeping in strange beds.

November 10, 2012:
At 4:45am, I left the house for the metro. This was the earliest possible time I could leave as the metro only starts running at about 5am. I easily made it to the airport and through security. Feeling incredibly paranoid about not missing my flight, I went to find my gate first thing. I walked for a long time and made it to the gate I was looking for only to see no one there (or in this entire wing of the airport for that matter), but that my flight wasn't posted on the flight board. I checked my ticket at realized I had gone to the gate with the same number as my seat number. I walked all the way back to security only to realize I had now passed by my gate twice -- once on the way to my seat number, and once on my way back. Once I found it, I settled in and did some homework, since I had barely had time to catch up since my return from Scandinavia.

A man had taken my window seat, which didn't particularly bother me, but his friends were opposite from us and he kept talking to them across me in Dutch, presumably. I found this insanely annoying. I guess they noticed me rolling their eyes as they passed candy across the aisle, because they offered me some.... they didn't annoy me so much after that, and I proceded to fall asleep. I think my body has come to associate any form of transportation with sleeping. I find it almost impossible to travel without falling asleep. I haven't driven since August, but let's hope that I'm still able to do that without falling asleep!

I arrived at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, found the train station and bought a ticket to Den Haag, thanks to my friend Kristin's excellent instructions. She met me at the train station and we stopped for breakfast -- boschebol (basically just a Dutch cream filled puff pastry with chocolate on top, aka. delicious) and a muffin. We didn't have the greatest weather, but we opted to do a walking tour of the city in the sprinkling rain.

Four or five years ago, Kristin had lived here for two years as an au pair and had known the city reasonably well. She showed me the government buildings and the area where the Royals have ceremonies and things. We then headed to the home of her former host family. They lived on a road that looked incredibly dutch. All the houses were attached, with large, white-framed windows columns, if you know what I mean. Kristin told me that it is a stereotype that Dutch people like to peer into each other's windows, and so many of them have dividers in front of their windows or thick curtains.

 

The host family has three children (including a newborn!). I met the two older children who were both adorable and very blond. They were fun to play with for the short time I spent with them. Kristin and I opted to go to a museum containing a historical panorama of the beach in Den Haag which was massive and really cool. There were tons of little details and funny things hidden in the painting itself, which was really well-done. Afterward, we had a glance through the rest of the museum and there were some other gorgeous paintings by the same painter, as well as an exhibition of Paul Critchley's work. I didn't know anything about him before going to this museum, but he basically explores the use of perspective in his artwork. For example, he painted all of the rooms in his apartment in Barcelona...

...and there were "rooms" constructed where on one side of the wall, there was a window showing part of a room, but then you could go into the room and see the window from the other perspective, as well as parts of the scene that had been missing when you looked in the window, essentially revealing something that contradicted or enhanced your original understanding of the seen. There was a theme of voyeurism that was a bit metaphysical which was really interesting. There were so many of his paintings and each of them was really interesting. His goal, essentially, is to create a sense of space using perspective in his painting.

 

For lunch, we decided to go to the real beach in Den Haag, despite the weather, and to compare it to the Panorama. We stopped at a fish-hut along the boardwalk and ordered typically Dutch food: kroket (deep-fried, left-over stewed meat), kaassouffle (deep-fried, breaded melted cheese) and fried kipling. It was incredibly delicious, but maybe not so great vegetable-wise. We tried to make up for this at dinner.

 

We wandered around quite a bit at the beach which was still nice even though it was quite grey (at least the rain had stopped) and then met up with Kristin's lovely and generous friend Wendy with whom we'd be spending the night. For dinner, we made andijviestamppot, which is mashed potatoes mixed with some sort of pork and andijvie (which literally translates as endive, but I don't think they are the same thing). It was so good. For dessert, we had stroopwaffle icecream and we curled up on the couch to watch "Alles is liefde" (Love is All; we watched it with subtitles), a film similar to Love Actually, but featuring Sinterklaas and famous Dutch actors. The Dutch holiday traditions are so interesting and may have been a precursor to the North American Santa Claus!!!

And in conclusion, "What fresh hell?!" (Geneva)

In the morning, everything went smoothly. We woke up in time, we said our goodbyes to Einar who had given us parting gifts of Norwegian chocolate (yessss!) and brown cheese. We gave him some Canadian paraphernalia which made him happy and so we were all happy. We walked to the central station in Oslo, got some delicious sugar bun things for breakfast and took the train without a problem to the airport. We even mailed postcards and managed to eat at Pizza Hut (keeping a close eye on the time) without missing our flight.

I was feeling incredibly paranoid though. While we were eating (even though we right next to the departure gate), I thought I heard our names called over the loud speaker. Danielle had to reassure me that we were at the right gate and that our flight didn't board for another half hour. She was right. However, we shouldn't have been so complacent in thinking that since we didn't miss our flight we were safe from the Pizza Hut Curse.

We had purchased our tickets the day before online from the SNCF website and since we couldn't pick them up in France, we had to choose the option of picking them up in Geneva. Once we arrived in Geneva, we made it to the train station without a problem, but learned that tickets can't be retrieved from the Geneva train station on Sundays. What fresh hell!? Basically, we couldn't see any way of claiming our tickets. There wasn't even a general information desk anywhere. The woman at the Western Union office explained to us that we would have to pay for another ticket and that SNCF would probably reimburse us.....

In the end it meant we got an earlier train, which was a relief since all of Geneva appears to be closed on Sundays and none of the shops in the train station were open to even browse around. However, to ice the cake of this amazing trip, Danielle realized she had forgotten her super-pro camera on the flight.

My only recourse in a situation like this is a big hug and a weak sense of humour. Eventually, we ended up listening to Canadian country/folk music during the train ride, and Danielle sort of figured out what we could do about her camera. All was not lost, however, because since we have returned, the camera was found (Thank you, Humanity for not being awful!) and mailed back to her at a price, of course.

In sum, if you're thinking of voyaging to Norway and Sweden, make sure to pack an extra pair of pants, don't eat Pizza Hut before you travel... ever, try the brown cheese, be prepared to spend a lot of money on transportation or bring your walking shoes, and Couchsurf!

If you haven't ever thought about going to Norway and Sweden, and aren't inspired yet, this is for you. (Heads up that there is some choice language...)

Love,

Tessa xx

Oslo: Too Cold to be Naked

November 3, 2010:

In the morning we had a "typical" Norwegian breakfast of brown cheese on toast with jam. Yes... brown cheese.

It's not peanut butter...

To my astonishment it actually tasted good, especially with jam. We even used the Norwegian cheese scraper things (that is the technical term) to cut it.

We start off our day at the Opera House which is listed as one of the top things to see and the architecture of it was pretty cool. You're able to walk up the roof which is legit. Danielle coined Oslo as a "city under construction" and I feel like that's true. A travel website had said that it's emerging as a cultural city, so I guess that means it's not quite there yet, but it's still nice. It seems as though a lot of Oslo is undergoing a facelift, which is fair, since it wasn't the capital of Norway until "recently" in European terms (it burned in a fire in 1624).

After approximately 10 days wearing the same jeans (and considering all of the walking we'd done), I wore holes into them. I opted to wear leggings underneath my holy jeans, because it was too cold to have my bare skin in the wind...

Speaking of bare skin, Oslo has a penchant for an interesting architect named Gustav Vigeland and Frogner Park is full of his sculptures. All of his sculptures are of naked people.

We really didn't get his artistic vision...

We guess that he might have some issues of a certain nature. But anyway, it was a lovely walk in the misting rain through a kind of creepy sculpture park concluding with a phallic symbol to rival church steeples. I can't be the only one that finds it strange that there are naked statues in nordic countries. I mean, Greece and around the Mediterranean I can understand. It's warm there... but in Norway?

After some street yoga for aching backs, we pushed on. Further wanderings brought us to a public yard sale on a basketball court with lots of expensive but interesting things we would never need, past the American Embassy which is a terrifying and intimidating building (Why exactly do they need a fortress in Norway?), and a Lyonnais bouchon (I was tempted to speak French, but didn't for fear of having totally lost my language skillz). We opted in the end to spend some time out of the rain at a Scottish pub, called the Scotsman. One of my "Bingo" tasks is to kiss a Scotsman. I'm so clever:

I didn't just kiss any Scotsman. I kissed the Scotsman par excellence. Unfortunately, they had Norwegian prices. What I found most amusing about our time there, was that I was asked for identification. That hasn't happened to me at a bar since I left Canada. I asked what the age restrictions were just out of curiosity. At a bar, the age is 18 for beer and 21 for liquor. So essentially, I still look like I'm in high school. We spent quite a bit of time there, exchanging stories and showing family pictures stored on our phones. Afterward, we went to H&M just to pass the time. At some point or another, we stumbled across this beauty:

We headed back to Einar's, stopping to pick up groceries so that we Danielle could make him a "thank you" dinner of her magic pasta. It was delicious. We played Labyrinth, a strategic board game, and despite her affirmations that she was terrible at strategy games and didn't understand what she was doing, she beat both Einar and I soundly. At Einar's request (and for our own rapprochement to our Canadian heritage) we did a Canadian photo shoot:

Before bed, we watched Mighty Ducks (classic!) and packed our bags for the morning, so that we would have plenty of time to walk to the train station and to get to the airport in time. ;)





Einar, the Honourary Canadian

November 2, 2012:

After a deeply satisfying, albeit pillowless sleep, I woke up to the pouring rain. Welcome to Oslo. Thankfully, by the time we left the hostel, the rain had stopped.

We stopped at a café and had delicious chocolate banana Muesli bars for breakfast. The café was dedicated to Sri Chinmoy, and I picked up a calling card with the following quote on it:

"Your mind has

A flood of questions.

There is but one teacher

Who can answer them.

Who is the teacher?

Your silence-loving heart."

I don't know anything about him, but I thought that was an interesting way to start my morning.

 

On Eirik's instructions, we started our day at the Royal Palace and took an obligatory photo with the guards. Eirik had told us to rush them to see what would happen, but I think we made the right call in opting out of that. We had a conversation with the guard apologizing for being those awkward tourists and he smiled and seemed like he was at least not annoyed with us. Eirik told us that a guard could have up to 50 000 photos taken of them during their conscription.

Danielle couldn't get over how boring that job would be:

"How would you even deal with that job? You just stand for five hour shifts doing nothing and putting up with annoying people all day."

"I would shoot the tourists."

 

Somewhat ironically, our next stop was the Nobel Peace Museum. I objected to paying for peace (I don't remember what it cost to get into the museum, but it was too much) so we took photos in the souvenir shop at the exit.

This actually made me so mad. They don't tell you what the funds from these purchases go to, so as far as anyone knows they are appropriating peace for a profit. And side note: roughly speaking, the concept of economy is closely linked with war. I'm oversimplifying, but I'd recommend watching this video. The hypocrisy of this whole thing makes me so frustrated. Not to mention the European Union just won the Peace Prize. And these people. I would apologize for being all serious, but Martin Luther King, Jr said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," and I think that real peace matters.

 

We walked further down the pier and found a peace flame with a statue of Sri Chinmoy, so that was cool. The sun came out while we were there so we walked around the harbour and took some photos. (Danielle took some photos). I was confused by the number of statues of naked women. It just seems strange that they would be naked in a climate that gets so cold. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

On the opposite side of the harbour, there was a military academy/fortress. We didn't really know what it was at the time, but we found a low rooftop bathed in sunlight and decided to lie down for a while to soak it in. Us Northerners need all the vitamin D we can get! We heard back from our Oslo host while we there and told us we should meet him at the tram stop later on. The tram cost us 50 NOK, which is more than 5 euros and we only went two stops. We were so angry that we hadn't opted to walk.

 

We met Einar at the tram stop, and he walked us back to his apartment.  He told us that he teaches pre-school. We could tell already that he was super nice. He started to make dinner for us and had us read through his guestbook of previous Couchsurfers that had visited him. They all mentioned great "surprises" and we were curious to see what would happen.

 

Our first surprise was a rendition of the Canadian anthem in English. We were surprised by how nice it was to hear it... we started singing along. He played it again and we sang the French version for him. We felt very patriotic.

Dinner was hot dogs on cheese buns and a bowl of chocolate after which Einar and I had a lively conversation about hockey. It turns out that Derek Engelland from the Pittsburgh Penguins (my team) is playing in Norway during the NHL lockout and that he had been in Oslo the previous night, but had gone back to another city. I was so excited. I was even more excited when he told me he had authentic jerseys and equipment. His jerseys belonged to Tessa Bonhomme, one of the female Canadian Olympians (who has an excellent name) and his gloves and helmet belonged to Erik Gudbranson, a Canadian World Junior player. We watched hockey-related Youtube videos on his Apple TV (all these Scandinavians are so technologically advanced). I promise I've never met a non-Canadian who loves Canadian as much - if not more - than a real Canadian.

 

We showed him this video and he was thrilled:

His style of hosting was very different from Andreas and Daniel, but it was good in a different way. We were really his guests, where we'd sort of been like temporary flatmates with the others. We felt a bit spoiled. We showered and he insisted that we sleep in his bed. It was the most comfortable bed ever.