Author: jason

Yea, I know my number scheme is all fucked up. Anyway, more pics are up. I’m not gonna keep posting a link. Just go to my Flickr page and see what’s new!

After about a 7 hour “nap” this afternoon, I spent the night in the red light district and the Liedseplein which is where all the partying goes on. Plein means “square”. There’s lots of them. My hostel is right across from the Museumplein and the train station is in the Stationplein.

I also walked pretty much all of central Amsterdam and quite a bit of not central Amsterdam. I walked and walked and walked. Hopefully my feet work tomorrow.

There were quite a few more prostitutes in their windows tonight than earlier today. Surprise! So far it’s been pretty much skank, skank, skank. Then I walked past one place and it was pure Plaza supermodel. I assume that was the expensive place.

In general, I feel like everyone here is more beautiful than in Kansas. Everyone is definitely better dressed. I think I was wearing the only t-shirt in Amsterdam today. There are no fat people. None. I’m dead serious and it’s clear why. These people bike their asses off. I will try to get pictures of the bikes tomorrow but I am not exagerating when I say that every single thing you can hook a bike to in this city has 100 bikes hooked to it.
There is also no traffic laws. You can drive anything you want from horse, to scooter (lots of) to motorcycle (few of), up to a large truck in any direction you want and on anything even looks like a street. Including the bike lane and sidewalk.

What else? Everything is expensive as hell. A pint of Guinness was EU 4.90 which is something like $200. Slice of pizza is EU 3.50.
It’s basically like home except their money is worth 60% more than ours.

Food is kinda funny. There is no Dutch food. As far as I can tell these people eat pizza, fries, Chinese, Indonesian and Chinese. The only Dutch food I’ve seen is “Holland Asparagus”

When I was served dinner on the flight I swore I would eat, or at least try, everything put before me during this trip. I’m usually a very picky eater. So that resulted in me eating, so far, green beans, a carrot salad, an egg and cheese biscuit and quite a bit of pineapple. That was on the plane. In Amsterdam so far I’ve had a crusoint (oh, I butchered that word), some apple danish thing and two slices of pizza. Tomorrow I might try that unique Dutch delicasy “General Tso’s Chicken”

Wow, Arianna is a hell of a snorer.

That’s it. I’m off to try to sleep. Tomorrow it’s the Heineken Brewery and the museums. Monday I think I might take the canal cruise and maybe a foot tour. Dunno if I need it tho. I’ve covered a good 75% of the map I was given on foot already.

Goodnight, from Amsterdam.

Found the Red Light District.

The prostitutes stand behind doors with big glass windows, mostly naked. Usually in bra and panties, but not always that much. If you even glance at them they open the door and start making offers 🙂

Pretty sweet!

Here’s some pictures I snapped today. BTW, you won’t see any pictures from the red light district. I haven’t tried but Jono said they are very, very anti camera there. I don’t want someone to throw my shiny new camara in the canal. You’ll have to be happy with pictures of the diseases I bring home.

I also found the weed district. I was kind of expecting a little less hippy aspect. For some reason I thought it was gonna be like Starbucks with weed; although Starbucks has plenty of hippies. I didn’t expect the tie dye, and silly sayings and all that shit.

One thing that’s interesting is that all the cafes and really everything where you sit down has all their chairs facing out from the place. Towards the street. I guess that’s where all the insanity happens. I’ll find out tonight.

I finally got checked into my hostel about 30 minutes ago. My room wasn’t ready yet so they just stuck me in one that was. I have three roommates, who I have not yet met. All their shit is all over the room though. They’re all female, judging from the backpacks and sandles and entire bathroom of makeup. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to come home and see the old guy snoring away in the top bunk.

There are about 200 open hotspots (holy shit, I just saw the biggest cat in the world walk past out the window) available from my hostel. I’m using one named “Surf Here!” which probably means they are stealing all my passwords as I type. Whatever. It’s the only free WiFi I’ve found *anywhere*, and I looked. Lots of places have Internet access but it’s all their own computers. Can’t upload pics and such from those.

Oh, Jono, they stamped my passport when I left Schipol 🙂

The flight really wasn’t bad at all. In fact I think I’d say I’d rather fly 8 hours than drive 8 hours. I was in a two seat section, so it was either window or aisle. I had aisle but some guy wanted me to swap so he could sit with his friend so I ended up with window. I think if I had had the aisle seat the flight would have been trivial. It would have been nice to get up stretch a few more times than I did (twice) but didn’t wanna disturb my neighbor too often.

I don’t really get the train system; it seems to be honor based. You are supposed to buy a ticket and then when you get on the train you put it in a little machine which stamps it. The thing is I’ve never seen someone actually check a ticket so I’m not sure what compels people to get them stamped (thereby using it and paying for it) except for honesty. I have a 48 hour pass and was told I only need to get it stamped once, which I did. I haven’t taken it out of my wallet since and no one has asked to see it. Maybe I am missing something.

That’s all for now. I’m gonna try to sleep a little and let the sun go down so I can hit the streets tonight. I feel like I know my way around the city now so tomorrow I am going to do the tourist thing. Museums and such. Not sure what I’ll do Monday.

So, I’m sitting in a “coffee shop”. People are smoking plenty of the tweed.

It’s been an experience so far. I thought I would cruise into Amsterdam like I owned the place. Instead I’ve been basically lost and homeless. I can’t check into my hostel till 1pm. It’s 11am now and I’ve been wandering around since about 7am.
I’m getting better though. I know the trams pretty well now and I have located food. My hostel is out in the middle of nowhere, as far as stuff to do goes, but I can get there from everything else in about 5 minutes on the tram.

I’m right across from the museum district. I’ve got pics of that area but I have not yet located any free WiFi with which to do my computer duties. Not too important at the moment. What I really want is some fucking sleep. I’ve been awake now for… um. I really have no idea. Since 8am Friday Kansas City time.

More later. My minutes are ticking away.

Oh, exchanging my hard earned, but useless, American dollars for Euros took a little bit of pride and shit on it. I put a giant stack of thousands and thousands of dollars on the table and she gave me a few copper coins. And spit on me.

I woke up this morning with an overwhelming sense of sadness and I didn’t know why. It finally struck me when I got on my bike to go to the DMV. I had dreamt that my brother and I were working on our bikes and I dropped mine smashing it all up. Normally when you drop a bike standing still you just bust up the handle bars and dent the tank but somehow I destroyed my exhaust, my head gaskets and other stuff. The bike was leaking oil and gas and was just wrecked.

So yea, I really love my bike and don’t want to drop it.

I was out pretty late last night but somehow I was wide awake at 7am. I decided to head down to the DMV to pick up my custom tag for my bike. They had mailed me about it last week but when I went down to pick it up over lunch last week I pulled my number and there were like 100 people in front of me. Seriously.

This morning it was empty so I got that. Woot! My Monster now says “GRRR”

Then I ran home, grabbed the Exploder and filled it full of excited dog. Took that dog over to Ani-Pals Pet Resort and dropped that dog off. Ran home and back on the bike for a “spirited” ride to work.

Whenever I ride to work I always take the long way. I go out to I35 to 69 and get off at 95th, then backtrack up Quivira. Let me tell you something. Morning coffee’s got nothing on a wild ride to work.

So, I am going to try to post to this site each day during my Europe tour. I’m also going to try to put up some pictures each day.
I leave on Friday and arrive Saturday morning, so I am calling this Day -2.

I think I’ve decided on a route that I’ll take through Europe. I’ll be flying into Amsterdam where I’ll have Saturday, Sunday and Monday to play. Then I’ll be heading south in Holland to Breda where I’ll work until Thursday afternoon.

Thursday afternoon or Friday morning I’ll hop on a train and head to Brussels, Belgium and spend the weekend there. I’d like to visit the Lindeman’s brewery but I’ll settle for about any Belgian brewery 🙂
My goal in Belgium is going to be to drink as much of the best beer I can find. Mmmm…

So then I think I am going to hop on the Thalys train to Paris. The Thalys is a high speed train and I’ll get to see all the countryside in Belgium and part of France. That should be awesome.

In France I guess I’ll just be a regular ol’ tourist. Louvre, Eiffel Tower, bad manners, scary food. You know. Paris.

A few short days in France and I’ll hop a flight to London where I’ll hang until it’s time to go home. In England the only thing I really, really want to see is Stonehenge but I’m sure I’ll find a ton of other great stuff to do.

So that’s my plan at the moment!

Those out of connection error messages should be gone now, I think.
Man, the code for this site is so old and busted it’s just absurd.
I gotta rewrite this thing… ON RAILS!

I think I just paid like $18 for a Slurpee but I can’t prove it. I thought I handed the guy a $20 but he said I handed him a $5. I looked in my wallet and couldn’t remember what I had in there. Lame.

Did I tell you I’m going to Europe for two weeks?

My job is sending me to Holland for a few days work and I’ve decided to take an additional 1.5 weeks or so of vacation and do some exploring. No real plans so far. I’m just gonna explore and hope to find a place to sleep each night. I’m starting in Amsterdam for the weekend, then Breda for three days work, then I’m on my own for a week and a half. My only responsibility is to get to London before the 17th so I can come home.

I leave Friday! Eeep!

Somehow I have to find a way to put everything I need for two weeks into a backpack.

Third post tonight!
I wonder if I’ll delete this one too?
Thank you, goodnight!

This morning the church down the street from my house had the following as it’s little sign out front:

CHRIST DIED AND AROSE
DEMONS BELIEVE IT
DO YOU?

I’m not exactly sure what I am supposed to take from that. Should I do what demons do? Believe what demons believe? I didn’t even know we had demons, but I admit it’s been a while since I read The Bible.

I would guess though that demons also believe people should kill each other, and take Christ’s name in vain, rape, pillage, destroy, commit adultry and all that other stuff.

Should I believe that too?

If demons jumped off a bridge would I jump too?