Adventures in Amsterdam

So as my plane touched down in Amsterdam Friday evening, I was a little anxious about what to do with myself over the next few days... While I had originally intended to meet a few of my friends who work for Delta for the long 4th of July weekend, flights to Amsterdam had become difficult and so each of my friends had decided to either stay in Atlanta or go somewhere else for the weekend instead. Thus this would be the first leg of my journey where I would truly be traveling solo... Thankfully I had booked myself in hostels for the next three nights, and thus hoped I'd be able to meet some other travelers and find myself some sightseeing and drinking companions for the next few days...

After landing at AMS I hopped the train to Amsterdam Centraal, and spent the next 30 minutes joking with two Brits who had just flown down from Sheffield for a weekend Stag Party. Fun guys, and though we didn't meet up the rest of the weekend, they managed to catch me up on the Russian spy scandal that's been rocking the U.S... I really had no idea what they were talking about, and it finally hit me how out of the loop I've been for the past month... I also learned from them that Holland had apparently just beaten Brazil, and as I walked out of the train station, the electricity in the air was palpable... The entire CITY was out in the streets, with everyone decked in orange from head to toe, while the sounds of vuvuzelas reverbrated incessantly in the air... I was exhausted though, and while I did wander the city for a couple hours to get my bearings and enjoy the excitement, I finally called it a night and climbed into bed amidst the light snoring of some roommates and the distant blaring of the horns.

The next morning I changed hostels (to one that had come recommended but hadn't had any vacancies Friday night), before heading to Amsterdam Centraal... You see, Friday night I had talked with one of my Delta friends on g-chat, and although he confirmed that none of the Delta guys were going to make it to Amsterdam for the weekend, he did have a co-worker who had managed to make the overnight flight and would be getting in Saturday morning... She was a tourist like me, had never been to Amsterdam either, and he suggested we meet up. Thus it was at around 1pm that Anning and I met at the airport... She, as it turns out, was even less prepared for the weekend than I was, but luckily my hostel had ONE bed left for Saturday night and she snatched it up on the spot.

Glad to have a wingwoman to explore the town, Anning and I set off on a long walk to the south side of the city and stumbled across the Heinekin Factory... Although Anning doesn't drink, she agreed the tour would be fun, so we spent the next few hours learning the history of Heinekin, tasting wort, and I at least enjoyed a few frosty Heinekins. ;)

When we got back to the hostel, Anning and I went to our respective rooms, and I spent the next couple hours getting to know my roommates: a Canadian guy who was starting a two month tour of Europe, three French girls starting a two week holiday, two Australian girls doing a busabout, and a British guy who was spending several weeks in Amsterdam getting stoned out of his mind. ;) To my enjoyment, everyone was quite friendly and we spent a few hours telling stories and drinking in our room, after which Anning and I decided to join Eric (the Canadian) as well as Evelyn, Charlotte and Emma (the three French girls) for a night out on the town. For the most part it was a very fun night: we went to Leidesplein, which is a square in Amsterdam with dozens of bars, and enjoyed some cold drinks and live music... unfortunately we soon learned that Evelyn had a very poor tolerance for liquor, as she lost her stomach two or three times at the bar (each time stating she was feeling much better, before making another mad dash for the restroom 15-20 minutes later). Ultimately, we all decided it was best to get her back to the hostel, so the six of us caught the tram back home and called it a night.

The next day Anning and I decided to go on a FREE three hour walking tour of the city that we'd learned about from some fliers, and it was awesome... Our tourguide was an Aussie ex-pat who had been living in Amsterdam for a year and a half and his love of the city and the Dutch people was evident in his stories...Over the next three hours we learned the history of Amsterdam all the way from its founding, to its rise as a shipping super-power after defeating Spain in the 17th century, to life under first Napoleonic France and then Nazi Germany. We toured the red-light district, tasted some of Amsterdam's famous cheeses and basically spent three hours being thouroughly entertained... Sidenote, if you're ever in Europe or Israel, check to see if Sandemans New Europe operates there... this Company gives free tours in about a dozen cities, with the tourguides working for tips, and I really, truly enjoyed this one... thanks Ryan from Australia. =)

That night Anning and I were both pretty beat from being on our feet all day, and since it was Sunday night we decided to take it relatively easy... One of Anning's roommates was an Israeli named Oren, who's spending a few months wandering the world, and the three of us just went out for a couple drinks and lots of good conversation before calling it a night. The next morning Anning flew home, and I decided to get some culture while I could, so I caught a tram up to the Museum District and spent the whole day wandering both the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, where I was able to see Rembrandt's Night Watch and Van Gogh's Sunflowers with my own eyes.

That night I caught my flight to Copenhagen, where I would begin the last week of my trip, in which I would be visiting my old roommate Michael in Denmark and my friend from studying abroad Pal who lives in Oslo... I'm afraid however that the stories of my Scandinavian misadventures will have to wait until next time... At which point I'll most likely be blogging from back home in the ATL.

It's been an absolutely amazing five weeks thusfar, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to my homecoming. =)

Until them,
-Tom

Stranded in Santorini and 48 hours in Prague

So it's been over a week since my last post, and I've seen lots since then, so I'll try to catch y'all up.

That first night in Santorini was fun: Dustin, Charles and I grabbed dinner on the Caldera (including the WORST fried calamari I've ever had, but some surprisingly good salmon), before heading out on the town... All in all it was a pretty uneventful night, though we did hit up two great bars called Murphy's and The Highlander before heading back to our hotel... Charles woke up the next morning and departed for the airport, leaving Dustin and I as the last two standing.

That day we decided to take a boat tour from Fira's main port out to the Volcanic Island of Nea Kameni. We hiked to the top of the dorment volcano for some great photo ops and then took the boat over to Palea Kameni to swim in the hot springs (which were very anticlimatic, and is really just an ocean cove where the water becomes lukewarm)... Then we took the boat over to Thirasia for lunch, where I got some shrimp and lobster souvlaki which was REALLy good, and all for 7 Euros. =) We finished the day by taking the boat back to the main island, hiking up the cliff to the town of Oia, and watching the sunset before taking the bus back to Fira.

All in all, it was a great day, and we were just getting ready to sit down to a nice dinner around 11PM, when we heard the news that Greece was going on strike... That's right, sure enough the next day (Tuesday the 29th) the fire fighters, police men, metro drivers and domestic airline employees of Greece decided to go on strike(thankfully fires and criminals took the day off too)... Dustin was told that his international flight out of Athens the next day should be unaffected... but that his flight from Santorini to Athens was cancelled... his only course of action was to hop on the 12:40 AM overnight hydrofoil from Santorini to Athens, in a desperate attempt to catch his flight home... This of course resulted in a hurried packing job, and an early goodbye, as Dustin took off for the port... I on the otherhand, was flying from Santorini to London, and thus had no course but to wait for morning and hope my flight took off as scheduled...

Thus the next morning I woke up, grabbed breakfast, finished packing and took a taxi to the airport at 11AM when I learned I had no such luck... As it turns out, all of the firemen in Santorini were on strike, and with no fire support, the airport was officially closed... I was thus told that all international flights would be queued for takeoff beginning at midnight... And I suddenly had an extra day in Santorini to kill... Unfortunately the airport had no luggage lockers and I'd already checked out of my hotel, but I had no intention of lugging my big backpack around all day, and thus I talked to one of the cafe owners and arranged to have him store my pack behind his couch for the day... Trusting that my judgement of his character wasn't off, I took off and began walking from the airport to see what I could see (stubbornly determined not to pay the 12-18 Euros to take a taxi back to one of the islands towns)... after about ten minutes of walking however I was firmly in the middle of nowhere... or at least as close to nowhere as one can get on an island the size of Santorini, when I heard a car slow down beside me, and someone say in a decidely Canadian accent "Hey man, you need a lift?"

Thank God for that guy... He was a Canadian by birth, but had been living in Greece for five years as a construction worker / bartender / good Samaritan... He said he knew I was lost because there was NOTHING the way I was going... When he asked where I was going, I told him I didn't really know, but was just wandering to see what I could see, since I was stranded for the next 12 hours... He, as it turns out, was on his way to the town of Kamari to take a mid-day dip in the ocean, and that sounded like a great idea to me.

We parted ways when we got to town, but I thanked him a ton for the ride, and he was good enough to point me to the main bookstore in town since I'd run out of English books to read... Thus it was that I made my way down to the black sand beach of Kamari to spend the day laying out, reading and enjoying the good weather... Unfortunately I didn't have a towel, and the black sand was understandably hot, so I resigned myself to paying the 6 Euros necessary to rent one of the lounge chair / umbrella sets for the day... I'd read somewhere however that when the guys comes to collect, you should ask for a receipt since sometimes unscrupulous individuals collect your money and then flee long before the REAL money collector shows up, and you're shit out of luck. So I was laying on the chair reading when this guy with a fannypack walks up and indicates I need to pay him. I look at him and say "receipt?" simply making sure he would give me one, but as I reached for my pocket, he looks at me quizzically and then says "Oh yeah, ok, ok," before walking away... I had no idea what to make of it at first, but then I realized he thought that my question was asking him if he wanted to see the receipt I'd already received, and then before I could pull out my money, he assumed I'd already paid and walked off! Suddenly I was in a much better mood... Sure I was stranded for the day, but it WAS a day at the beach, and though the delay could be costing me a good amount, I'd thusfar scrounged together a free place to store my luggage, a free ride to the beach, and free usage of a lounge chair... Life was looking good. =)

I spent the rest of the day doing a lot of nothing, before grabbing some dinner at a beachside restaurant, watching some World Cup and hailing a taxi back to the airport... I collected my luggage after thanking the owner of the cafe profusely, and went to check in... Unfortunately the extremely unhelpful woman at the EasyJet counter said she couldn't check my bag through to Prague... she could only check it to Gatwick, where I'd have to collect it and re-check in to get a connection... I begged and cajoled, but she remained extremely unhelpful... A fact that would come back to bite me as my flight ultimately didn't take off until after 3AM...

As it turns out, there are only two flights a day from London to Prague on EasyJet... One leaves at 6:25 AM, the other at 6:30 PM... Thus when I managed to collect my luggage, make it through customs and run from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2, I was extremely happy to make it to the Prague check-in counter at 5:50 AM... THAT'S when I was told by the Extremely Unhelpful Woman #2 that check-in closes 40 minutes prior to take-off... and that I'd missed the window by 5 minutes... At this point I was frantic... I begged, I cajoled, I even tried to turn on the Rittle charm... the woman was inflexible however, and even after I explained that I'd been stranded for a day in Santorini, and that I'd had to go through customs because of her colleague, which was why I was late, and that I NEEDED to make this flight or I'd lose a whole nother day of vacation stranded in Gatwick... No dice... Thus began my 12 hour layover in the U.K.

Oh well... I finally DID make it to Prague at around 10pm on Wednesday, and Mike Taylor, who had been exploring the town solo since he'd arrived on Monday, was nice enough to meet me at the airport... And so the two of us headed to the bus stop where we realized the machines only took Czech Crown coins, while Mike only had bills and I only had Euros... Thankfully Mike explained that the whole mass transit system was on the honor code, and that he had yet to be checked for a ticket in his two days there (even though he'd purchase a 3-day pass on his first day in town)... Thus we took the bus into town, hopped off and took the metro into the city center where our hotel was located... It was thus as we were climbing up off the metro train's platform that I saw them: 4 ticket inspectors, trying to check as many tickets as possible, as dozens of people streamed past them! Not knowing what to do, I kept my eyes on the ground and avoided eye contact as the crowd pushed me up the stairs... Thankfully, Mike was right in front of me, and when the ticket inspector asked for his ticket, Mike didn't realize what was going on and tried to brush by him as he would a panhandler on the street... Instantly, two of the other guys jumped on him too, yelling that they were inspectors and demanding to see a ticket... This gave me just the window I needed as I slipped by unnoticed, backpack and all, as Mike finally realized what was going on and sheepishly produced his ticket... Thank you Taylse for being oblivious! That's how I narrowly evaded having to pay a huge fine on the spot. =) ... That's the way this whole trip seems to be going: Good Luck, Bad Luck, Good Luck. ,)

That night we just walked down the street and grabbed one beer to catch up a little before we crashed for the night, as I was exhausted from two days of trying to travel... The next day was spent exploring Prague by foot: from Wenceslas Square to Charles Bridge, and Prague Castle to Old Town Square, Mike and I walked a TON, so that by night time both of us felt like our feet were bruised and battered. All in all it was a great day though... the city itself is gorgeous, with medieval architecture and cobblestone streets making you feel like you really are in a real-life Disney World. We even had a traditional Czech lunch when we met with my friend Karolina and her 3-month old baby for lunch, and we finished off the day by hitting up a packed out Biergarten in one of the cities largest parks.

All in all it was a short trip because of the delay, but a good one, and it was good catching up with Taylor. He left the next morning, and I spent the day exploring the old Jewish quarter with all of its synagogues before catching my own flight to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam was NUTS, not the least of which because I landed at AMS just as Holland beat Brazil, sending the city into an all night party! =) I'll have to save that for next time though, since this blog is already far too long...

Happy Belated 4th America!
-Tom