When a day becomes a week

You tend to get to know a place decently well in one week. Certainly a walking city such as Amsterdam where everything is at your feet. In the recent days i have had some big ups and downs. I came here with one night booked as i had only planned on being here, one, night. It was a Wednesday and the city was cold and dreary. i felt in good spirits until i waited for 45 minutes to be told i couldn't leave Amsterdam not without flying. I then went out into the city in search of a place to stay for the next few days. It was going to be Thursday night and the price to stay at my Hostel went from 19.95 to 42.95 so i needed a cheaper option i found a broker, no rooms were available but he told me to try between 9-11am tomorrow for cancellations. I was there at 8:45 and scored a great price for the whole weekend, three nights. My new hostel was just fine, i had a top bunk next to the window just like i like. we had private shower and bathroom facilities, even though there was a large hole in the bathroom wall that opens onto a terrace now partly covered by a mirror it was great. 18 of us spent the night in what was once a fantastic living room with a huge marble fireplace and intricate ceiling moldings that had long since been neglected. but the good thing was i was set with a good place with free breakfast. That night i slept well and woke up early as not to miss a free meal, made myself some PB&J sandwiches to go and bounced. i felt a lot better about everything, i visited Rembrandt's house. You know its wild, this dude, whos works are now priceless, had to foreclose on his house because he couldn't pay the bills. he must be rolling over in his grave. I spent the day walking around and ran into a flea market where i bought a pretty nice used Swiss army knife for 5 euro. I then ran into a Hells Angles support shop with a dude sitting out front of the joint. I walk into the shop looked around. When i came out i asked if i could sit with him a minute, i figure he has to have some good stories right? He says sure, this lady shows up wearing a support T shirt and offers to buy us all coffee. So after talking for a bit with our nice warm coffees i find out this is the president of the Hells Angles Amsterdam chapter, a member of the mighty red and white, the big red machine. Unu was a great guy and i couldn't help but smile at the places one can find ones self in. Sitting, having coffee with the president of the Hells Angles Amsterdam Chapter, head of 50 full patch members, on a sidewalk in the Netherlands outside a flea market. He took me on a tour of his place complete with all the magazines he had been in, all kinds of biker mags and PLAYBOY, his favorite, and mine, but he wouldn't let me keep it. I came across a "hangaround" patch, wearing it signifies that you have taken the first step in becoming an Angel. He wouldn't let me keep that either. it was crazy though, a one percenter. After about an hour i  had to go, my bags were about to be spat out of the lockers at Amsterdam central station. i said my goodbyes and i made it back in time, grabbed my bags and headed for my hostel. When i got there, they had moved my bed. they moved it two floors down, one of which happened to be underground. The room they tried to put me in was a box with no windows and a strong to very strong odor of urine. So there i was, the choice i had to decide, stay in the worst room i would have ever stayed in (i was in India!) or head into the city Friday night around 4 with nowhere to go i also would lose my reservation for Saturday night as well. i took one more breath and i knew i had to go. I walked for what felt like a year and found a place. Its a Coffeeshop Hostel, I'm not kidding. After settling in i made my way to the Internet cafe and started researching hitchhiking in Europe. If there were no trains or buses, i had to get there somewhere. Now flying for 200 euros was on the table of options that were growing smaller by the moment. The issue was, would either the Netherlands authorities or the Spanish authorities notice my expired Visa. if they did notice what would they do about it? The missing answers to these questions and being unsure of the exact fine involved with such an infraction, made me decide not to proceed in that direction. As a read on about hitchhiking i find a website for ride shares. So on this website i find a number of people headed to Spain from the Netherlands but to increase my chances i decided to respond to those leaving from Belgium also. Well, i emailed about 10 people and i only got one response from a Belgium guy and he is willing to take me to the Spanish coast for free. He said he found my blog and wanted to help, how neat huh? Yeah, the kindness of strangers really, awesome. with that settled the next issue at hand was that i needed to find a place to hang my head till my ride  6 days away. i had only anticapated staying in Amsrterdam for 1 night and here i fould it would be 7.  i decided to take refuge from the city and headed to a lake near by where there is a really neat Hostel. Almost all of the living quarters are little caravans and its about a stones throw from a really great lake by which i have spent two days swimming to cool off only to get to hot again and eager for another dip, you know the routine. So i head into the city again to get my train to Belgium to meet my ride to spain who might be a serial killer posing as a kind member of society with nothing but killing tools in his trunk. Its a risk but at the moment i have no other options, viable options. Stealing a car was considered. Here i go.

Stuck in the Netherlands

I'm back in the Netherlands, working at the B and B. There have been some interesting developments since i was last here both of the other employees quit. so i am literally running the place by myself. I do the dishes and the laundry the cleaning and the front desk, i am the night watchmen as well as backyard BBQ coordinator. When i was in Southeast Asia every guest house had someone who lived there sleeping in the living room or entrance way, i always thought how crappy a gig that was. I now find myself sleeping in the living room of the B and B.  i am not sure how much longer that i will be doing this job. If there was pay, something, 20 euro a day, i would stay another two weeks. but there isn't. it has been good on the wallet and i am saving money everyday i stay here but i get out very little. I take a half hour walk, outside the doors everyday and for that i need the owner to be here and that's not predicable at all. i don't work all day but i am here all day. i wake up at six thirty everyday and clean up then i sleep for a few hours in the upstairs closet i have turned into my room. The owner hates stairs and i am quite certain my third floor lair will go unnoticed. the only thing between me and full closet room security is the Russian handy man Yuri who seems to be too nosey for his own good. he wanted the keys to the upstairs closet to get a spare bed out the other day and i had to talk him out of it. i have to keep an eye on him all the time. after my nap, i come down around noon and start my day which will end when i kick everyone out of the lounge at midnight. if people are having a good time i tend to stay open a while longer.  I have made some friends here which helps everything immensely. all in all the people who come here are good people and i have liked almost all of them. The people that seem to make the most trouble, be the loudest and make the most mess are the Dutch men. They come in huge groups on the weekend and destroy the place. i think i will fly the coop Saturday morning. i will slip out before the owner gets here to make her famous pancakes. there is a girl starting the same day and so i wont be leaving them empty handed. I don't think i can take another weekend. the past 11 days have been a wild experience but its time to get rolling. To Spain i go, not sure how yet, I'm working on it. i will be headed in the direction of Barcelona where i have a friend from the first week on my trip in the Philippines. I had warned her about a bridge, watched her fall of said bridge and then helped her out of the river she ended up in. I will land there on a weekend, rock Barcelona for a few days and then head to the coast between Barcelona and Madrid waiting out my trip to South America with my feet in the water hopefully. I would love to get to Ibeza but i doubt i will get that far. 


Update: i wrote this and a lot has changed in my life since then. I left the B and B. walked out the door and never looked back, it was too much for too little and i decided to head to Amsterdam for a night and to get a train to Barcelona. however there are no trains or bus's going to Spain, not just Barcelona, spain, the closest i can get actually is Paris. so it would seem that im stranded at the moment. in Amsterdam. im not crying about it but i currently have no idea how i will get to my final European destination. i might stand out by the highway with my thumb up. wish me luck.

Munich with Mom

At first I was supposed to fly to Scotland to stay with my mom for a week. My visa ran out and put a stop to that, if i left Europe now there is a good chance i wouldn't be allowed back in and i need to fly from Madrid to south America in less than a month. So the plans flipped flopped and Mom met me in Munich. We had a fantastic four days.  My mom asked me to find us a hotel and gave me a budget. I found lots and selected one. the hotel selection process is different for every person. each of us has a different set of needs when it comes to hotels. Bar, pool, large bedrooms, room service, downtown location etc. i got us a place flanked by a strip club and kebab shop and across the street from two casinos, in the Muslim section of Munich. I found out later that my Mom, interestingly enough, doesn't care for those amenities in a location. Maybe this place would have been suited better for a trip from Dad. OK, so fine i made a mistake. it was like 93 in the city and we had all of our stuff and no where to go but these are the foundations of great stories, doing it for the stories. i lamented a bit, had we stayed, slept here, we would have some really wild stories that some day I would tell my grand kids about and tell them never to tell their grandma. We did find a place and it ended up being great.  We rented a car and drove up into the alps, visited old castles, drank huge Bavarian beer, and noshed on German grub. We rode Gondolas and visited flea markets, we swam in ice blue rivers and watched the glockenspiel go round. it was a slice of Bavaria complete with lederhosen and dirndl.

 Mom and I went into some old dungeon randomly in a church basement costing one euro and it was the official royal crypt. It was really neat and creepy but if i were them i would have wanted to be hidden away in some underground lake guarded by booby traps and buried with all my gold and only a secrete treasure map would lead to my resting place and plunder. This is more practical. 

After seeing signs for a gondola early one day we chased the scent but the trail went dead. Later however we drove right by one. We took a gondola ride to some amazing views of the German Alps. We took a chance and it was well worth it. good call mom!

Carol liked to have a few before we went out for the day. breakfast beer at the famous Hofbrauhaus house.

 

we saw the devils footstep in one church, i figured the devil for a claw guy. these are like size 9 running shoes. but hey, I'm no detective. 

We aren't sure what we saw but we took a picture of it deep in the woods of the alps.

What a nice thing to see Mom again, it helped me gain a little energy and i feel lighter on my feet, it could have been seeing her or the new shoes she bought me. thanks for everything Mom. I left Mom heading for her train it was sad to see her go but in only four and a half months to go i will see her and you all soon enough. 

The scene

Working here is a trip. There are some people i will never forget from just my few days already. there are the two south Africans that are training for the 8 hundred meter dash and hope to be in the Olympics. there is the the lady that has warm chocolate milk in a bowl and dunks her dry bread in it every morning for breakfast. A guy from Uganda who is trying to start a NPO 3rd world investment company. The 40 something American who is biking all over Europe on a tandem bike with his 84 year old mother in tow. The woman who was supposed to be living here for a month with two large rabbits but just got kicked out for refusing to not smoke in her room. its laid back here and people see to be in a friendly mood, something in the air perhaps merely just the type of people who are drawn to a small old city in the Netherlands. My boss, the owner is, sad to say, is a hunchback bearded woman. I don't say this to poke fun, its just the truth. Students, tourist, locals, its a wild mix. Denitza, the girl that got me the job is a twenty something Hungarian student who has been working and living here for 5 months, she is a pro , she could run this place blind. She is an underground gay rights activist slash anarchist, neat stuff, but she just left this morning. this Leaves me and another girl here to run this place into the ground. There is a lot to do, we can hold 70 people. i have plenty of down time but i am constantly on call. i wake up before 7, make breakfast, fried eggs and pancakes with meats of some sort. then clean up and take a break. on and off all day till we shut down at 12 or 1 am. I have to say i really enjoy it so far. Yesterday was a little hectic when the faucet on the sink in the second floor bathroom exploded. we didn't notice until it started dripping from the ceiling. i tried to shove my fingers in the hole to plug it but it was hot water, i ended using a trash can to redirect the flow of the water back into the sink instead of the floor. we crawled around in the rat basement for the shut off valve and finally found it and everything went smoothly till we realised we also had no water to fill the toilets and the guest were beginning to ask questions... plumber came, saved by a wrench.  i have the option to come back here after my stay with my mom in Munich. I should be in Munich for a few days then, i think i will come back. I might stay for a week or two maybe more. There are just too many amazing people in and out, opportunities will come my way in this place i can feel it. The deal is still pretty good, room and board, but i will make sure to make time for myself while here in Utrecht. it will be a great place to hang for a few more weeks. i need to take care of balancing my diet though, there is just far too much random preservative filled meat laying around for free its hard to justify paying for greens. when i come back i think i will purchase a really crappy bike maybe start a gang. grow my beard out again and cut my hair in a mullet. start selling bootleg DVDs and spend my nights riding the mean streets buying Chinese antiques. i will get a tattoo of a mythical creature, half eagle, half ford pickup.  I couldn't be happier. The worlds is my oyster.