Bruge/Amsterdam

I'm going to keep this thing as concise as possible because this keyboard is crap. The buttons only push in sometimes so I feel like I'm on one of those old-school typewriters. Gah.

So I'll start with Bruge, where I was a couple of days ago, and then move on to Amsterdam. Hopefully I will also stop eating this bag of gummy candy once I get into my stories, because it will inevitably make me sick. I like gummy candy. (and I haven't even been to a coffeeshop today -- I swear)

Bruge
It's a cute city. I always make a list of every museum I want to see in the city before I go there, but Bruge didn't really have much that interested me. So I guess it was lucky that in the hostel I met some kids from New York who were planning to go to Amsterdam the next night also. We all hung out in Bruge and then took the train to Amsterdam together, where we promptly hit a coffeeshop and, well, you know.

At Bruge we went to a hospital museum, which I guess I expected to be kind of like the Cork City Gaol, which was a converted jail and told all about the history of it. But it was more of a building that used to be a hospital and then had some art added to it. We also went to a chocolate museum (best free samples ever) and mostly just walked around town.

Sidenote: I'm finishing this gummy penis and then I'm putting the candy in my bag. Right... now.

Amsterdam
So we took a weird backwards route to Amsterdam, and got there so late that I had to squat in their hostel room, which luckily was a private room they'd booked well in advance.

I had to smack a guy in the head on the train to Amsterdam.

He was greasy and gross and maybe Italian and thought it would be cool to stick his head out while I was walking down the aisle of the train. He said, "Hey Sexy," or something similarly original, and placed his face at a perfect level for me to run into it with my crotch. So I had three options, 1) Stop and tell him to move, 2) Run my vagina into his face, or 3) smack him in the head. I chose the ladder, but I wish I would have thought of Option #4 at the time: uppercut or knee him in the nose hard enough to draw blood. Because the smacking in the head option left me feeling dirty from his Steve-Lavin-hairgrease.

That experience aside, Amsterdam itself has been pretty great. There are so many museums here that I want to see before I leave that I'll probably spend close to a week here. Right now I'm crashing with a friend of my mom's in Wagenhengin, about an hour away from Amsterdam, but tomorrow night I'm going to a hostel in the city because it makes more sense.

So far, aside from the coffeeshop on Night #1, I've been to Rembrandt's old house and studio, the Rijksmuseum (older art), the Sexmuseum (I had to), Nemo (Science Museum designed for kids and awesome) and the Stedelijk (modern art). From here I'm headed to the hash museum, but I may swing by a coffeeshop first and get some space tea.

Now picture a nutshell...
I listened to Dutch phone sex and had a very scary ceramic fatty jump out at me in the Sexmuseum. ... Saw an amazing painting at Rembrandt's house that experts are saying has the qualities of the Mona Lisa (it's called "Girl in a Picture Frame" -- look it up if you're interested). ... Saw "Night Watch" at the Rijksmuseum. ... Smoked a joint in a coffeeshop. ... Played Super Mario at the Stedelijk. ... Made a bucket of clean drinking water at Nemo (had to fight a lot of little kids for that bucket, too). ... Saw the hotel where Canada and Germany signed the agreement ending WWII in Wageningen. ... Eaten Belgian chocolate. ... And smacked a grease-laden European guy on the head not nearly hard enough.

So
Tomorrow will sort of be my Jewish day, because I'm going to Anne Frank's House, the Dutch Resistance Museum, and a few other Holocaust-related places in Amsterdam. I may also check out the Homomonument, just for good measure. I'll probably leave Amsterdam on Wednesday night for Hamburg, where I'll spend two or three days before heading to Berlin.
Until next time...