Amsterdam

Last weekend we took Friday off and Monday being a public holiday allowed us to have a four day holiday in the capital of the Netherlands. This time we spent less time hanging around the red light district but rather sat in the Jordaan cafes next to the canals and admired the tiny slanting houses and cute boats cruising past.

I think next to Aussies the Dutch must be the most relaxed bunch of people I've come accross in Europe (I also think Thai people are relaxed too but that's a bit different) - Olya can verify/argue that point, but at least on the long weekend everyone seemed to be pretty content and happy to just do not very much.

We brought our tent and camped. Yes, we camped in Amsterdam :) Our campsite Zeeburg was only 7 mins ride on the tram from central station and for 15 EURS a night it was pretty damn cheap as far as accommodation in this part of the world goes. We also hired two bikes for a day and felt the dutch spirit. Here you can see one of the inhabitants of the campsite who also played the role of a rooster in the morning :)

I shall not bore you with any more details and will go straight to some of the photos.



While riding our bikes we came accross a family of ducks and the little ones were very cute, so we had to donate one of our lunch bread rolls :)



We also took a 'Candelight Cruise' on the canals and it was great. We were provided with three bottles of wine, cheese and crackers (which filled up magically). The tour guide was very good - he was very funny and knew heaps... but there was one small problem - he could _only_ speak seven languages and russian wasn't one of them :)



Holland being a pretty advanced country decided to install open-on-the-street type of toilets, which sadly only cater for the male audience. Thus if you come accross one of these establishments you can witness wonders happen in broad daylight. Oh, and in case you didn't know (and we didn't either prior to the trip) all those houseboats that people live in on the canals - they don't have any plumbing... so don't go swimming in those canals :)





As it became customary throughout our travels we met a friendly cat and fed him one days worth of old ham leftovers... he seemed very pleased.





And of course Amsterdam isn't Amsterdam without the green substance. This time we were offered 'Extasy and cocaine' probably only 5 times instead of the 30 times in 2004. We did however attempt at rolling and smoking a joint in a 'Bob Marley - Free Lion' Coffee Shop but that ended uneventfully and the rest of the stuff had to be dumped down the train toilet on the way back to Berlin as we thought that getting caught with drugs is probably not condusive for them to allow me to keep my residence permit :)




Home sweet home... 'Berlin, Berlin - wir fahren nach Berlin!' (Berlin, Berlin, we're going to Berlin). Where is our home and what it is remains a mystery...