Wednesday, April 26, 2006, 14:59 - General
Saturday was pretty low key. I read a bunch for school, etc., and passed the time by myself. It was pretty nice because I've been so damn busy lately. I watched Palindromes which was directed by the same guy who did Happiness though I liked it a bit less. The main character was a 13 year old girl who really wanted to have a baby and so was sleeping around but the actress who played her kept changing and I just didn't get that part nor did I think it worked well. Whatever.Sunday morning Eugene woke me up by knocking on my window. He was back from the UK for one more night. We went to Club 11 during the afternoon and played some cards and enjoyed the view. After that we decided to join Marije, Mark, and Marije's friend Els to watch Cremaster 1&2 rather than go see Brant Bjork and the Bros play at the Melkweg because the latter was more expensive and the former seemed a bit more interesting. The films are a series of very artsy surrealist pieces that are hard to follow. Els and Eugene both fell asleep in the theatre and I was throughly annoyed during most of it. I haven't seen many movies with too little story for me to like them, but I didn't really dig on these. Maybe the other ones are better (that's what I hear). Anyway, we all went downstairs afterward and had a drink at the Film Museum bar (that's where the movies were playing - it's right in Vondelpark and very beautiful so at least that was nice). There Eugene and Els started chatting which will serve as some foreshadowing for later events. We all left after one drink and headed to De Zotte for a couple more with Marije's friend Suzanne joining up. Good relaxed times were had but I had to cut it short at around 12:30 or so because I had class the next morning. As we were leaving Marije went to take a picture of Eugene and Els who had spent the whole time talking and she egged them on by telling them to kiss for the photo. They started making out right in the bar which was pretty amusing. As we were about to leave Masha came over and said hello - apparently she was there with some guy she knew. She's unscathed from the arrest I guess.
Eugene ended up coming home with me regardless and we all parted on Leidseplein. The next day I went to class and spoke a bit with one of the professors under whom I'll be doing research this summer. I hope that it works out - I have a lot to learn before I feel that I can do something meaningful but it'll be very good for me if it goes well. I also spent some time looking into various project ideas for the Google summer of code program. I got in touch with a guy from the Mozilla Foundation and I'm going to write up a project proposal this week for doing a rewrite to a 2D rendering library used by X and Mozilla. It would involve writing optimized C and assembly using the MMX/SSE extensions which should be pretty cool. Again, I hope I can pull it off. :)
I got back from school at around 5:30 to pick up Eugene at my place. The plan was to go to Rotterdam because Annelieke and I were holding a birthday party at her parents' microbrewery there. The brewery is closed on Mondays and we'd been planning on having a party there for a long time so we thought that since we'd both had birthdays recently that there could be no excuse not to have one. Anton was going to come but he ended up bailing last minute because Lotta's grandmother was in the hospital suddenly and he wanted to stay with her. Thus Eugene and I met up with the 2 Austrians at the train station. We had a hell of a time getting all the tickets and deciding what to buy and acquiring ice cream and finding a proper train, but we eventually were underway. We'd bought tickets to the Schiedam station which is a little town outside Rotterdam as that station is closer to the brewery than the Rotterdam one, but then we had just missed the train that actually stops there and would have had to wait nearly an hour to catch the next one. So, we just got on a train to Rotterdam which is a stop past that station without tickets that were valid for the whole ride. We figured that the conductors wouldn't be too picky about it since the extra leg would have cost us 40 cents more. I actually asked one at the point where we'd have to get out if it wasn't cool but he was like "well, officially you need a ticket for the whole journey, but it's okay this time". We taught the Austrians to play shithead but the number of rules was a bit overwhelming for them.
We also had trouble navigating the Rotterdam metro system for some reason even though there are only 2 lines but in the end we made it to the brewery at around 8pm - 2.5 hours after we set out. It's just not supposed to take that long but we had also had a delay for about 20 minutes en route on the tracks. The brewery was absolutely gorgeous with a big bar, outdoor courtyard, huge banquet hall, etc. It's in the oldest surviving building in Rotterdam and it's where the Pilgrims spent their last night in the Netherlands before heading off toward America. It really is something special to have been able to have that place to ourselves and I felt pretty cool whenever people would walk by and look in to see us living it large in the "closed" brewery. The Utrecht crew was there including Shlomit (who bought me a phone charger for Wouter's old phone because I always complained about the crappiness of Lewis's old phone - sorry Lewis), Job, Wouter, and Marije. Els showed up to hang out with Eugene and there were at least 7 other people there too. We had a big dinner with barbecue and salad and baklava and it was delicious and we also had free run on the tap beer at the bar. I had a great time but I think I've already said that. Mark gave a brief tour of how he makes beer there which was cool. We decided to leave at around 12:30 in order to catch the 1am train back to Amsterdam and if we missed it we'd have to wait a whole hour before catching the next one. We piled into this Dutch girl's car which was meant for 4 but we got 6 people in there somehow and drove fast for the station. The girl is a childhood friend of Annelieke and somehow I passed myself off as speaking good enough Dutch that she actually thought I was Dutch. Ha. Anyway, we ran for the station and thanked her and bought tickets for the Rotterdam-Schiedam leg because they check before you get on the trains at night and then the Austrians and I split off from Eugene and Els for the rest of the ride... Later I heard that a certain amount of oral pleasure was conducted in the train... Anyway, Eugene didn't spent the night at my place and I walked home alone. The weather was amazing - clear sky and warm. I love spring.
I got up and went to my 9am lecture the next morning but I wasn't too happy about it since I didn't go to bed until 3 the night before. When I got home at 11:20 Eugene was already there having been let in by my roommate. The weather was amazing again with sunny skies and temp in the upper 60s. We decided to try to get a coffee at the Brouwerij aan 't IJ but it isn't open on Tuesdays so we tried to go play cards in Oosterpark but it was too wet to sit on the grass. Thus we made a big walking circle and ended up back at my house where we went on the roof and played cards until the wind made it impossible. Then we just went to my room and played even more cards with the door open. I did laundry, blah blah blah, and then Eugene left at around 4:30 to head to visit someone in the Hague. I then went to German class and came home and did a bunch of work on my computer before collapsing in exhaustion.
I worked out today for the first time in like 2 weeks with Petter. I then came home and did even more work on my computer. I have a lot to do before Friday including getting up to speed on my summer research, writing a proposal sketch for the Google project, and meeting up with my Israeli friend Galia who just happens to be coming back for Queen's Day weekend because her 5 year European visa came through and she has to pick it up in person. Then of course Queen's Day is going to be nuts. Fast times at UvA.
[ 1 comment ] ( 8 views ) | permalink |
( 3 / 125 )Saturday, April 22, 2006, 07:50 - General
Last night Marije and Shlomit came over for a few hours. Shlomit had had a date last week and apparently he spilled water on her laptop. It no longer turns on and so she brought it to some IBM outlet store or something outside Amsterdam to drop it off for warranty servicing. I offered to lend her the desktop that I'd gotten from school for free (plus 30 euros for a CD drive and an ethernet card goddamnit) and Marije had a car with which to pick it up. Marije actually brought me a birthday present of 6 whiskey glasses which was really nice of her. We first walked to Eat Mode where they got food cuz they were sooo hungry and they told me stories about horniness from last year and Marije felt bad because she was the only one to order a beer but then we all helped her drink it so she felt better. We then walked to an ice cream shop just off Nieuwmarkt and got a cone each. The men who ran it were friendly Italians who greeted a big group of Dutch people whom they apparently knew in stereotypical Italian fashion and it made the drab decor of the place cheery.On the walk back home we ran into Anton and Lotta who had Lotta's sister and her fiancee en tow. The three of us were way more excited and talkative than the four of them and some embarassment on both sides was had due to that I think. We then took the nicer way home that Shlomit and I had discovered last Sunday down Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat instead of Valkenburgerstraat. I put the computer in the car and we kissed and hugged goodbye and then we were off, they to Utrecht and me to a birthday party for Lena, a German girl in my logic program, and 4 other people who share a flat with Can, a Turkish guy in my program. I was meeting these 2 Austrian people Günther and Marion who've been in some of my classes but with whom I'd not spent any time in the real world. They're both Linux geeks and speak German so obviously they are cool in my eyes. Anyway, we met up at this party which was on the seventh floor of this student complex. The flat housed 17 people with one kitchen and bathroom, but man, the view was insane. It blew Club 11's view out of the water with a straight shot of 2 canals, Museumplein, Damplein, Zuiderkerk, etc. and it had a big balcony facing the city. The three of us planted ourselves there the whole night. Günther and Marian told me about this ISP they'd helped start and worked for for a while which was just a patchwork of nodes around Vienna including some in nightclubs and cellars. They talked about providing early computer services to artists and being able to work however and whenever they wanted - it sounded great.
The party was actually pretty cool too and it got really packed. At one point this French Canadian guy who's also in my program started talking about calling my mother or something so I gave him my parents' home number. He then called them for 70 cents and I left a semi-drunken hello. Not one of my shining moments.
I was going to get up to play cards today but I was too tired so now I have the day to do schoolwork!
[ add comment ] | permalink |
( 3 / 123 )Friday, April 21, 2006, 11:53 - Musings
Well, I just read that one of my current favorite bands Behold... The Arctopus has announced a U.S. summer tour which includes a stop at the High Noon Saloon in Madison and in Minneapolis as well. Ugh. Maybe I should go back to the States for the summer after all...[ add comment ] | permalink |
( 3 / 152 )Friday, April 21, 2006, 06:04 - General
I was cleaning my room when at about 4:30 Lotta came over and asked whether I wanted to go get a beer. I was actually pretty psyched about getting my room in order after the savage twister that was the many visitors, but I said sure. We went over to Scharrebier and I got a Wieckse Witte with lemon... mmm. Wheat beer + warm weather = good times. We chilled there for a couple hours at an outdoor canalside table and enjoyed the warm (but cloudy) weather. I'm glad that we're friends because she's fun to hang out with. Anyway, I had to leave around 6:30 or so in order to eat before heading out to meet Masha.Masha is a Russian-born girl who's lived in Holland since she was 12 or something and speaks fluent Russian, English, and Dutch. I met her when she was finishing her last semester at UC during the time I studied abroad there and when I ran into her at the communist party last week I was rather surprised. She gave me her email address and we'd been planning on getting together since she lives in Amsterdam as well. The other day she invited me to come to a protest and I said sure. The protest was against some visiting technology industry figures who're involved in weapons dealing and whale hunting or something - I'm really not sure what it was about actually, and many of the people whom I asked at the event knew even less than I did. That always makes me feel silly, but it does feel good to be surrounded by radicals again. Mmm, free radicals. The demonstrators met up at a squat that I'd never heard of but is maybe a 5 minute walk from my place and is on the way to school so it's surprising that I'd never seen it. It was just a big empty space that looked pretty neat (they even had Linux magazines on their magazine rack). We then walked to the Scheepvaart Museum which is within view from my place.
There the people against whom the protest was directed were dining as guests of the city or something. The idea was to have a drum circle outside the museum and just dance around and make music so that the dinner would be less nice for the people inside. I thought it was a good form of protest, actually. No violence, just dancing and music. The police were already there (in fact while we were walking to the place a woman cop said to us jullie zijn tien minuutjes te laat (you guys are 10 minutes late!) with a smile on her face). I hadn't brought any musical instruments so I mingled in the crowd talking with some dude named Remko about what the deal was. He was surprised to hear from me that this kind of thing goes on all the time in the U.S. Apparently the view is that the U.S. is one big sea of patrotism! I don't know where he got that. :) Anyway, police were talking often with one of the organizers of the protest and all of a sudden Remko came up to me and was like "we need to leave now if we don't want to be arrested". I guess the standard procedure is that the police ask you to leave 3 times after which if you don't leave then they arrest you. They had just asked the third time. I quickly walked away with Remko to avoid getting arrested - I didn't feel like being taken custody in a foreign country for an unknown cause. I feel kind of bad about not going back for Masha, but she could have left as well. I think everyone knew it was going to happen since the police announced it with a megaphone. Anyway, it was surreal to see the huge group of police in riot gear pile out of the police vans and surround everyone - I'd never seen anything like that before. Masha later called me from inside a police van after she'd been arrested. I guess she's ok but they'd taken her passport. She said she'd give me a call the next day to let me know how it went.
It was really nice outside last night. I decided to take a little walk in the twilight by myself and just ponder what I'd seen. I saw a couple of the demostrators walking in the neighborhood looking shaken. I dunno, I was just happy to be able to enjoy the fresh air and spring evening.
[ add comment ] | permalink |
( 3 / 110 )Thursday, April 20, 2006, 08:15 - General
It's been a week since my last post and for good reason. I've been exhausted and recovering from a week and weekend that were jam-packed with people and mayhem. Here's a brief recap.Thursday evening around 6 Eugene, an Oklahoman whom I met while I was studying abroad in Utrecht since he was as well and who's been traveling ever since (which makes the total amount of time since he's been to the U.S. about 28 months), arrived in my courtyard. I noticed a long-haired American-looking man wandering around aimlessly carrying travel equipment and knew it must be him so I got up and beckoned him to my door. We just relaxed for a bit, made some dinner, and drank a couple beers before heading over to Ansten's apartment where a party was slated to begin. The occasion was his being visited by five friends from Norway. It was a pretty small and logic-filled gathering as they tend to be with us crazy logicians. I brought my flask that I'd purchased in Prague for the first time with a payload of Dalwhinnie and got fairly inebriated while standing in front of the window the whole night. At one point I called Job to ask what the Dutch name for ugly was (I always forgot, though now I think I'll remember - lelijk) which made for some hilarity. At a reasonable hour Anton and Lotta decided they were heading back and I decided to join them. Euge was in a conversation with this Swiss girl I've met before but for some reason right now I can't remember her name and thus he decided to stay. I made sure he knew the way and walked back with the Swedes. Turns out the party kind of imploded when we left and he showed up at my door not ten minutes after I sat down in the recliner with a full bag of paprika potato chips in true slob fashion. The chips were no match for us growing American males.
Euge left pretty early so as to get some coffee before catching a flight to Edinburgh to visit some more UC people whom I don't remember. I cleaned up the place and lazed around for the day anticipating the arrival of my two couchsurfing guests Anna and Cameron. They showed up around 10pm with me again noticing lost-looking baggage-carrying people wandering around the courtyard and beckoning them to my door. They were hot and tired and were glad to drop off their things. Their story: they're two 20 year old American girls (one from DC and one from Chicago) both studying Industrial Design at CMU but studying abroad this semester in Florence. Amsterdam was the last stop on their 2 week vacation that went through France, Turkey, and Spain as well.
Lotta, Anton, and Anton's brother Jonatan (who was visiting from Sweden for the weekend) came over after a while and we all decided to check out a bar on Nieuwmarkt (or according to Anton it was there, but in reality it was more like on the south end of Kalveniersburgwal). We'd never been there but it was really pretty nice and had a lot of Dutch people inside which is always a good sign. Basically it's just an instance of the type of bar that I most like: cozy, brown atmosphere; good beer; local patronage; art on display. The art consisted of black and white photos of war-torn Africa, which may or may not put you in the drinking mood but was pretty cool nonetheless. We had a few drinks and engaged in chit-chat type conversations and had an ok time. On the way home we had a typical Dutch experience by purchasing french fries and pizza at a late-night snack shop.
Cameron, the smaller of the two girls, slept on my blue couch which wasn't even big enough for her 5'1" body while Anna took the larger couch. We woke up and I awaited the arrival of Shlomit who was to come between 12 and 1 from Utrecht. When she did arrive she came bearing a yellow flowering plant for my room which was quite nice. The two girls then headed off in the direction of the Stedelijk Museum while Shlomit and I went to the cafe by Nieuwmarkt with all the stuff for sale whose name I thought was Rock N' Roll but it's actually not but what it actually is I can't remember. We had coffee, talked, etc. for a few hours before heading to the Asian supermarket. There we acquired coconut milk, sambal, tofu, veggies, etc. all for really cheap by NL standards. At the Nieuwmarkt market we got some asparagus but that was way too expensive. We cooked a big meal for us and the two girls who arrived back at like 7 from their day adventure. I'd invited a bunch of people to Amsterdam to celebrate my birthday with a Club 11 extravaganza but it turned out that most people weren't going to show up. Shlomit and I went out to Scharrebier to await the arrival of the Swedes and decide what to do. She wanted to go out to Club 11 but didn't want to have to sleep on my floor. Eventually Gaelle called me and said she wanted to come out and would bring over a sleeping bag and a mat for Shlomit - perfect. Simon also was in and brought his sister and a friend. In the end it was Lotta, Anton, Jonatan, me, Gaelle, Shlomit, Simon, and Simon's 2 crewmembers who went out. That's right, the American visitors were too tired to come. The music was exactly the same as it had been the last time I was there: terribly slow and undanceable. Shlomit had thought it would be good but it just wasn't. Oh well, we tried to dance anyway. I had smuggled in my flask this time filled with Beefeater's and that helped stimmie the expense of the venue. We stayed until past 3 and had a reasonably good time.
Shlomit spent the night on the mat and the girls were already asleep. We slept in until maybe 11 or something and made American pancakes for breakfast (yeah). Then Shlomit and I went up to the rooftop with my laptop to sit in the sun (it was nearly 15 degrees I think) while the two girls started doing their laundry. Apparently the laundry setup they have in Florence is bad and slow or something so they took advantage of it being free here. I read a translation of an Israeli short story to Shlomit out loud from the laptop screen and we had a good relaxed time enjoying the first peak of spring we've yet seen here. The daylight lasts really long (until past 9 now) but it's still cold. At one point we wanted to know exactly what a turnip was so I found an unsecured wireless connection on the roof and we looked it up on Wikipedia. Good times.
Shlomit and I spent the day together, watching the first bit of a movie (Happiness) which she'd seen before so we stopped it when I went to call my dad to wish him a happy belated birthday. The movie was really cool and very much my style (though I hope I don't relate to the characters too much). I'm going to watch some others by the same director I think. We cooked dinner (omelet and Greek salad) and then Shlomit left for Utrecht around 7 or something. I finished the rest of the movie with Anna while Cameron slept on the couch. Then we just chilled out - the girls packing their stuff, me doing Sudoku. Early to bed and early awake since they had to catch a train to Eindhoven since that's from where their plane was leaving to Pisa and I had to catch a train to Utrecht since I was playing in a team Magic tournament there. I didn't really want to go though. I would have skipped it had it not been a team event and thus really shitty not to show up. It's just that I didn't practice enough for it and I knew we wouldn't do all that well so I considered it a waste of time and money. We had a good time though, me buying the cards I needed for my deck last-minute. We started by winning our first 2 rounds but then we lost our next two and dropped out and went home. I met some nice people and saw some famous players there which is a regular occurance in the Netherlands. One thing that makes it completely obvious that I'm in Europe is that the venue contained a bar so I saw some people with glasses of Belgian beer next to them while playing in the tournament.
When I got back home around 7 I was dead tired. I hadn't slept well for days due to guests and a cough that Anna had had. I don't really understand why you'd come to Amsterdam for 3 days to sit in my room for most of the time but whatever. They were nice enough people and I wish them well. The last couple days have been catch up with school days and I'm back on track. Tuesday night Job called me late and asked whether he could crash on my couch because it was too late for him to catch a bus from the Utrecht station to UC. I of course said sure.
[ 2 comments ] ( 18 views ) | permalink |
( 3 / 97 )Thursday, April 13, 2006, 10:39 - General
Google's released their new calendar, and I've created my own. Here is the iCal feed for it if you feel the need to keep tabs on my daily habits. You can download a Firefox extension which can read iCal files and I've also shared my calendar in Google...[ add comment ] | permalink |
( 2.9 / 103 )Wednesday, April 12, 2006, 19:24 - General
Last Friday Petter and I went to Utrecht for a birthday dinner at Wouter's. It was pretty cool with lots of people and food and beer. After that we headed outside for the annual Communist Party, the party put on by all the people who don't want to go to the posh prom that the school holds every year. You may recall that two years ago when I was at UC myself I attended said party with a newly shaved head because I thought the sickle and hammer I'd had shaved into it looked too much like a swastika. This year the party was replete with a big and illegal bonfire right on the campus lawn outside an academic building. I ran into many people I hadn't seen since my stint at UC and hadn't ever expected to see again which was cool. One of them was Masha, a Russian girl who grew up in Holland after she was like 10 or something. She just moved to Amsterdam after traveling with a gypsy band for a year so we made plans to get in touch. I also jumped over the fire at one point, landing right onto a plank that had just been raised for placement in the fire. I twisted my ankle and startled the guy who'd lifted it while I was midair, but luckily I didn't fall back into the fire. Petter and Mark both got pretty wasted (which wasn't surprising hehe). I also talked a bit with Tobias and leapfrogged over Wouter and met Shlomit's visiting friend Michal from Israel who's studying dance in Salzburg. I crashed on Job's couch like the good old days, migrating to his bed when he left in the morning.After I finally reawoke at like 1pm, I called Shlomit and went over to her and Wouter's place. There I found a huge mess from the previous day which Petter was cleaning. I was too tired to move much and at one point photos were taken which were reminiscent of the Last Supper, the mess from the previous night representing God's son's blood and flesh I guess. We then got the brilliant idea to walk to the pancake house (actually called the Theehuis or something like that) (I'm the one who suggested it) and headed out there. Joining us were me, Petter, Shlomit, Michal, Mark, Marije, and Atalia, with Lieuwe showing up later on. It was great fun and the food was good too. I love that place - a really nice authentic Dutch restaurant in some beautiful countryside which requires a nice walk through the woods to reach. We had some fun trying to move indoors after we'd decided we were too cold. We were 8 people and there were only 2 tables for 4 so we tried a million different ways to randomly split into groups before finally noting that whether or not there were an even number of letters in your last name would evenly divide us. It didn't matter though because after that we just decided to leave anyway. :)
Mark and Wouter were getting a ride to the train station from Marije after this so Petter and I decided to hop into the car as well and then Shlomit came along too so that she could give Marije company on the drive back. However, this car is really small, so Shlomit ended up lying across Petter, Wouter, and me and it was pretty uncomfortable, especially when Marije somehow got lost on the way there. (To be fair, the roads are really twisty and one-way, but...) Anyway, we headed back to Amsterdam and then watched this movie called Top Secret! with Val Kilmer that kind of sucked ass actually. Whatever, I wasn't in the mood for high intellectualism after the previous night.
The rest of the week hasn't been too momentous. I am probably going to do programming work on a hardware simulator in the computer architecture group this summer which is great news because it's completely relevant to what I actually want to study. Today I turned 25 years old which is a bit scary. I've noticed a definite shift in my birthday greetings toward the "holy crap you're almost 30 and middle-aged and crisis-ridden and dead and ..." end of the spectrum, which is actually kind of amusing if you can step back from it being so damn scary. My parents mailed me some pancake mix and syrup and candy which was nice. Little do they know that with that I can last another 10 years without coming back to the States! :) Just kidding. Tomorrow Eugene arrives and then Friday the 2 couchsurfers arrive and Monday I'm planning on going to Rotterdam for a party at a Brewery as well as trying to play cards for a free trip to the U.S. and tomorrow there's also a party and...
[ add comment ] | permalink |
( 3 / 89 )Thursday, April 6, 2006, 15:30 - General
When I last wrote I was in an internet cafe in Prague. After we finished up there we all went out to eat again and then went shopping for food for the train ride the next day as well as getting some cheap booze. We then hopped a tram back to the hostel and dropped off all of our crap, rested a bit, and headed right back into town to go out to eat one last time. We decided to go to this Vietnamese place out in a remote area that had spectacular views of the city as it was up on a hill. After finding the place and admiring the view we went inside. We were situated in the end of a long short tunnel-shaped restuarant in the room that had like 5 buddha statues next to us. We split a bottle of wine and had ok food. There was a group of Americans talking next to us and I swear one of them mentioned the independent bookstore scene in Madison during the conversation, but I didn't have the guts to ask about it.After that we went into the center of the city again via tram and had a drink at a rather bland bar. Job seemed to be feeling pretty sick and a bit depressed and he got a non-alcoholic beverage while Shlomit tried this liquor that she had fond memories of from her childhood (Buchovka?). It wasn't that great, but with plenty of lemon it became drinkable. Job then took a cab home by himself while Shlomit and I wandered around for quite a while before finding anything worth entering. We made it to a bar called Marquis de Sade which was pretty cool. It had good art on the walls and a very high ceiling and many couches. We had to sit at the bar at first where we got some gin and tonics. After tasting the drinks we decided to populate them with an extra shot each, which we afterward realized brought our Czech crown count to dangerously low levels. We drank slowly and talked slowly since we were both rather tired. After this it was time to head home so we tried to catch a cab. We only had about 230 crowns but for some reason tried to make sure that the cabbie could bring us back for 250. One guy said no way, but then he found us another guy who agreed and we were off. When we were at the hostel we counted up our money and sure enough we were short. He also didn't want to accept our 1 crown pieces. We told him we'd run upstairs and get more money if he wanted but he just threw back the small change and yelled at us while we hurriedly ran inside. Whatever.
The next morning we had to wake up early as our train left at 7:30 or so. There was some confusion about from which train station it would leave but we eventually figured it out and luckily Job had more than enough crowns to pay for the ride. He exchanged the remaining ones at the station and we waited outside for the train to arrive. The view from the platform was really nice with rolling wooded hills and valleys. We were accosted for a bit by a Czech guy who wanted cigarettes and to sell me some cellphones but we just played dumb and got on the train when it arrived. We sat in an empty cabin instead of our correct one since that one was populated already and the train was pretty empty. Along the way we played the bean game and then the other two dozed while I watched the view from the window. It was pretty amazing. The train followed the Elbe river first through the Sudetenland mountains and then up through Germany. The river was really flooding and many towns were completely submerged - Dresden's main street was under a lot of water as well. I didn't get many photos though as the moving train made it hard to get them to turn out. Speaking of photos, they were all taken on Marije's camera which was in the posession of Shlomit so I'll have to wait until I go to Utrecht this weekend for Wouter's birthday to post them.
At Dresden a lot of people got on and I was of the opinion that we should just move because the ticket on the door of our cabin said it would be filled in Dresden. The other two wanted to just wait and see whether we'd actually get kicked out. A joke was made about the German love for ordnung and Job said "don't worry, maybe they're flexi-Germans." Right then 4 German nuns walked into our cabin to kick us out. Laughter ensued. So we ended up in Berlin at around 12:30 and we all got off the train. The other two had decided to head back to Utrecht right away and we said goodbye and they got on their connection within like 10 minutes. I packed up my stuff, bought a Süddeutscher Zeitung, and proceeded to wander around the area near the Ostbahnhof station. It was a really ugly area, I was pretty tired from getting up really early and carrying my crap, and I hadn't heard anything back from my Dutch friend Jolieke who's studying in Berlin, so I was feeling a bit down. About 20 minutes after leaving the other two, though, I got a call from Shlomit. She asks "guess where I am?" and I honestly had no idea. She responds with "Berlin Spandau - I decided to stay the day." I was pretty surprised. We decided after a couple more phone calls to meet up at the Berlin Zoologischer Garten station which took me way to long to reach since I took the S-Bahn instead of a train. We then spent a while trying to find lockers for our bags and finding out where this cool art exhibition, which was a big reason why she decided to stay, was going on.
We figured it all out though with the help of my crappy German and a donut each and were headed toward the Mitte district. It was really sunny and warm and springlike and we were both in great moods. It turns out that I had spent a lot of my time in Berlin this past summer in the very neighborhood to which we were headed. The exhibition is called the Berlin Biennial and it features a lot of modern art and is apparently internationally famous. Also, it's in a really cool area of town (but what part isn't) which since this is Berlin is actually still affordable in which to live. I need to move to Berlin before I'm 30. It's just the best city.
Anyway, the exhibition was set up along this street called Auguststraße. We got our tickets and found out that it was open until 7 and then went out for food cuz we were both famished. We sat outside in the sun and split a German Hefeweizen since it was warm and that's just what you drink when it's warm. Man, it was really good too. The service kinda sucked though since it was too busy for the waitstaff to handle so we tipped poorly. We then tried to enter our first part of the exhibit but I was told that my bag was too large so we checked our bags for free and came back. That actually turned out to be pretty nice because then we didn't have to carry them around. Anyway, the first building was an old Jewish school for girls. It was large but most of the stuff was that unintelligible colors and shapes stuff that gives modern art its bad name. We saw some cool short films and proceeded onward. We saw lots of stuff including an installation which was a slide down a floor to the exit (really cool) and an apartment that was lived in and destroyed and turned into a big art piece over the course of 7 weeks. Lots of neat little things though nothing that really stood out to me as amazing.
After this we decided it was time to find out where we were going to sleep so we walked to the two Circus hostels since Shlomit had had a good time in them. Man, these were the best looking hostels I've ever seen. Clean huge rooms, DJs playing in the bars, really fancy decor - it made me feel like I was in a combination Chicago club and nice hotel but only had to pay $20 to stay there. We booked a room at the second one and went up to the room and then I checked my email. It turns out that I'd gotten an email from Jolieke after all and that I'd just entered the wrong phone number when I'd tried to text message her before about coming over. We decided that it would be nice to actually meet up with her so we asked whether we could cancel our room and they said sure. So we were back outside, though now it was raining. We took a couple trams even though Shlomit didn't have a day pass and didn't buy a ticket but luckily we weren't checked. It was a bit hard to find Jolieke's place at first. She lives with a 34 year old journalist German woman in a really nice apartment on the fourth floor of an early 20th century building. We met up, dropped off our things, Shlomit took a shower, and then we got back on the tram to go eat at an Indian buffet. We all accidentally but in the end gladly ordered gin and mango juice (language barrier) and had the buffet which was really tasty and only 6 euros. Berlin is really cheap for what it is. I love it.
We were all quite tired, Shlomit and I from traveling and Jolieke from working really hard with school (she's a master's student in biochem or something and wants to be a doctor) and also hosting another guest all weekend who left right before we showed up. Thus we all went back to Jolieke's and pretty much went straight to bed. She also left before we got up because she had to be to class across town before 9 so we didn't see much of each other. She's really cool and intelligent and I hope we see more of each other in the future though...
Shlomit and I got up and went out for breakfast at a really cool American-style coffeeshop in the hood. She went to look at some shoes while I read the paper and then we both explored the area a bit before catching the metro to the train station, me buying a Kafka book in the original German. We had a bit of confusion finding the lockers in which our crap was and getting enough food and water for the train ride, but we succeded well enough. The ride was pretty uneventful with us spending a lot of time in the dining car (which we also had done during the previous day's train ride). We split off at Amersfoort so that she could catch a train to Utrecht and I stayed on to the last stop, Amsterdam Centraal.
It's nice to be home but it took a bit of getting used to having to get up for 9am classes again. I started two more courses this week as well so my load is going to be higher. Tomorrow I'm headed to Utrecht for Wouter's birthday, my birthday is on Wednesday though I'm not sure what I'll do, then Thursday Eugene is staying with me for one night and then from Friday to Monday I'm hosting the 2 American girls that contacted me through Couchsurfing.com.
[ 1 comment ] ( 9 views ) | permalink |
( 3 / 107 )Back Next
