Well, guys. I made it to the Netherlands. It was a relatively painless train ride from the airport to the hostel I was staying at – a hostel that was pretty close to the airport so I could quickly get there bright and early the next morning to pick up my sister. Unfortunately, I can be a complete moron sometimes and definitely got there a day early. It’s a good thing that I have this brand new not giving a fuck attitude, because I was like “WHOOPS! Oh well!” Didn’t think too much of it after that.
Also, side note: this hostel was actually more of a combination of a hotel and a hostel; it was really big and set up like a hotel; the rooms were really nice, the beds were super comfy, and it was basically just a hotel room that I shared with several other people. Who mostly weren’t there, so I could enjoy the space on my own. There was even a TV in the room! Definitely not the kind of place I would normally like to stay in, but for relaxing and trying NOT to meet people, it was perfect.
So after chilling in bed for the rest of the evening and actually sleeping for once, I got up the next morning to go not to the airport, but into Amsterdam to spend a day exploring on my own. Literally the second I got off the train, the smell of weed entered my nose, and stayed with me for the duration of the day.
I didn’t want to do too much without my sister, so I had pretty much decided that I would just wander around a bit, sit in some coffee shops, do some writing, nothing too intense. However, in my hunt I kept stumbling upon many “coffee shops” that didn’t look anything like normal coffee shops: they were often painted black inside, with lots of scary writing on the walls. Where were all the aspiring writers on their MacBooks? Where were dreadlocks, the gauges, the steaming oversized mugs of chai?
I had yet to discover the important information that “coffee shop” in Amsterdam is not the same thing as “coffee shop” literally anywhere else. An Amsterdam coffee shop is a place to buy and smoke marijuana, (mostly) legally. I’m pretty sure you can also get coffee there, but don’t quote me on that. I’m not personally the biggest fan of the effects weed has on me, so I certainly wasn’t looking for one of these places, but that was all I could find for quite awhile. Eventually I did find somewhere to hang out for several hours – but then my day became mostly just that: finding another place to hang out for several hours, out of the rain and the cold, somewhere that I could buy something small in exchange for a place to sit, somewhere not too expensive, somewhere comfortable. After the coffee shop I ended up at a restaurant for a couple hours for a beer and a soup, and then sadly, a Burger King.
I would have returned to my hostel earlier -I was getting pretty tired – but i had purchased tickets to a play that evening that wasn’t on until 8:30. It was a contemporary retelling of “The Maids” by Jean Genet, and I got lucky that it was Thursday and those are the ONLY days that have English subtitles YAY!
THEATRE TALK, feel free to skip this part!
It was a very…strange production. The plot of the original play is basically these two maids who hate their mistress and dress up in her clothes and play-act killing her. She appears for awhile, is bitchy to them, then they get carried away and one of them decides that she actually wants to die, and then gets the other one to kill her. So that’s the original script, and I don’t really understand it. And then to modernize it, they made the two maids Polish immigrants and the mistress was actually transgender. This was an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it was well executed. Even through the idea was to have it be about playing roles, and that how we define ourselves is a choice and is fluid, I think they went too far with the transgender woman. She was essentially a drag queen, which is fine, but it made her seem super performative even in her private life, which felt false. The character also physically beat the two maids – I think this was to show the contrast between the traditional male and female roles, the physical strength coming out of this woman, but it just made her seem evil. And then, because the character is so unsympathetic (or at least was portrayed that way), it read as if it was saying “trans people are evil and over the top and will beat you up.” I don’t think we should be villainizing trans people. I do think, however, that if the character had been played as an ACTUAL trans person, a more sympathetic character who is struggling in love and accidentally takes it out on people she cares about, it could have worked. However unintentional this villainizing was (and I’m quite positive that it was), it put a bad taste in my mouth and took away from the story rather than added to it. Regardless, I’m still glad I went and was able to experience some Dutch theatre!
On my way back to the train station, I became very aware that I was in Amsterdam due to casually passing by SEVERAL red-lit windows framing lingerie-clad women. I knew that I would eventually run into this; I just didn’t realize how prevalent it was and that I would pass by it on a main road. The thing that was kind of unexpected for me was that they were right there, on the ground level. A woman just like me on the other side of the glass, standing a meter away. They weren’t all posing sexily, although some of them were. Some were chatting with each other, coworkers catching up around a water cooler. I was close enough to see all of their imperfections, moments of insecurity, and the humanity of them, and it immediately threw what was once just an idea into stark reality.
I didn’t know what to do. It felt uncomfortable to make eye contact with the women; it felt wrong to walk by and pretend I didn’t see them. I did a bit of both, contemplating the morality of the sex work industry, and finally boarded the train home to my hostel.
Because I was stupid and thought I was only staying one night but then realized I actually had to stay two, my old room had filled and I had to switch to another, which I didn’t check into until that night. And it was DISGUSTING. Food and trash everywhere, full and empty beer cans everywhere, furniture moved all over the room covered in stickiness…it was a mess. And definitely the wrong type of hostel to be walking into that shit. Nobody was there, so I found the bed that was farthest away from everything, piled all of my belongings into the corner where there was no chance of them getting spilled on/stolen/set on fire/snorted, and finally fell asleep.
The next morning it was finally ACTUALLY TIME TO SEE MY SISTER! Ridiculously excited, I met her in the airport lobby with breakfast and hot tea, and we headed off to find our AirBnB in Utrecht, a small city where our friends live. And it was so nice. We have a little bedroom, kitchen, and living room, and most importantly there is a WASHING MACHINE. Not a sink for me to do my laundry in, an actual MACHINE. I almost died because there are several articles of clothing that have not been washed a single time since I started this trip. So that was literally the first thing I did. I plan to take full advantage of this machine this week.
For the rest of the day, we wandered around Utrecht. We found a cool astronomy and weather museum, and had a hilarious time trying to translate Dutch into English. We ate some frickin DELICIOUS nachos and had a round of beer at a brewery. She was jet lagged and I was tired, so we settled in pretty early with a dinner of hummus, crackers, and ice cream. My friend from Budapest crashed with us that evening, and we made ourselves stay awake until bedtime by forcing ourselves to watch a couple of movies. Good times.
The next day, we went to see our friends! It had been a long time since we had seen each other, but they are the kind of friends that you’ve known your whole lives and nothing changes ever. They made us breakfast and showed us all around Utrecht, we explored a cool church, took us to a delicious cafe for some traditional food, They also took us to a huge outdoor market where we ate a lot of cheese and bought stuff to make dinner. We also tried Stroopwafel, which is a traditional Dutch sweet: basically two crispy thin waffles (think tortilla chip thickness) sandwiching some delicious syrup. So yummy!
We made dinner at home, and I discovered that not only am I terrible at dicing onions and garlic (or is that mincing?), but the part of onion that makes your eyes water reacts REALLY BADLY with antibiotic eye drops and makes them burn your eyes hardcore. But dinner was delicious, so that helped to make up for it.
The next day was yesterday! Wow, it’s been awhile since I updated this thing. We again had breakfast with our friends, and then headed out to do an underground tour of the church that we were at the night before. Basically, a long time ago there was a giant storm that completely destroyed the church (fun facts: the rubble stayed on the street for 150 years, and instead of cleaning it up they put a wall around it to make it less of an eyesore. This walled-off area became a convenient meeting place for homosexuals!) They eventually sold the rubble (yes, sold it) and rebuilt the church. The tour was super cool because we learned a bunch of history right at the beginning, and then got to do this interactive thing in the dark in the rubble, where we had to discover the little activator for our audio guide with our flashlights. It was so much more fun than a regular (well-lit) museum would have been, and made us feel like explorers. Well, at least me, because I’m a child. Also there was a skeleton.
We sat down for a bit for drinks and a snack, and then walked around some more before grabbing some groceries for dinner. I also made the important purchase of a selfie stick, which I told myself long ago I would never buy, and I don’t think I will ever regret. I’ve already gotten far more than 7 euros use out of it.
Dinner was again lovely; I contributed by cutting mushrooms and grating cheese, which is unfortunately one of the few skills I have perfected after waitressing for five years. My friend made a stupidly good risotto and I don’t understand how people have the patience to cook. We finished our meal with a dessert of halva, which is like eating sweet fluffy sand that dissolves in your mouth.
And now today! We woke up super early to catch a train to another city in the Netherlands, Groningen. It’s a two-hour ride so it’s not particularly cheap, and I made a mental note to be super careful about my ticket so that I didn’t lose it because I was going to need it later. This may or may not be foreshadowing.
We met my friend during her lunch break at my new Official Favorite Place in the Universe, a cat cafe. It is a cafe. With cats. AKA heaven. They were so cute and fluffy and they just hung out with us while we ate, and you could pet them and play with them and I want to live there but also I miss my cat. I would like to start a petition that every single cafe in the USA and probably actually the world becomes a cat cafe so let me know if you would like to sign.
After lunch, my friend gave us a tour of her workplace, which smelled really good because they make perfume there. My sister and I then climbed up the steep, winding stairs of the clock tower overlooking the city; there were buttons for ring some of the bells, and spiked bars outside to prevent suicide jumpers. We did a lot of shopping and I accidentally bought an adorable coat that I didn’t need and also a hat because I have to match. We all went to dinner when my friend got out of work, and had actually THE best tiramisu I’ve ever had in my life.
Everything was really going great, except the minor detail of…GUESS WHO LOST HER RETURN TICKET TO UTRECHT?!?! Honestly, it really isn’t that big of a deal; literally losing anything else would have been worse, but I’ve been trying so hard to save money – except for today, when I spent way more money than usual. So now I feel like a dumbass for losing my ticket, guilty for spending money on things that I shouldn’t have, and just overall kind of upset even though my day was otherwise totally lovely. Part of me is just like UGHHH WHYY, and then another part of me is trying to refuse to be upset over something so stupid, and then another part of me is like dude, you can’t control your emotions, stop trying pretend to be something you aren’t feeling. And then I start questioning whether or not I’m being honest with myself when I have moments that ARE upsetting and I refuse to react to them, because all emotions are totally valid and important.
Anyway. What ended up happening with this particular situation is that I searched my bag and pockets approximately twelve times, decided that I definitely had lost them, and said fuck it and tried to buy my ticket with a machine. Naturally, my credit card didn’t work in the machine and it’s after hours so there is no one there to help. So I got two error receipts, boarded the train, and now I’m in transit doing all that worrying I talked about earlier, praying that nobody will come around to check tickets, and that if they do, they look at my receipt from this morning and my two error receipts and don’t fine me for not having a ticket. I know that worrying about it does nothing. At this moment in time, there is literally nothing I can do about it. So I’m just word vomiting on here for a bit to calm my nerves.
UPDATE: They came around, checked the tickets, and I explained myself. They were annoyed with me but didn’t fine me, and as usual, all the worrying I did was for nothing. I’ve GOT to work on that.
SO that’s where I’m at right now. This post is long as hell, which is probably a sign that I should update more often. Goals are good.