Coming from the magical land of Oz, people often say to me "Wow, you're from really far away!" I sure am! And then I like to amaze them with my story about how it takes 19 hours to fly here direct, excluding the 3-7 hour stopover in Singapore. I also often say, "I love how I can fly for 1-2 hours and be somewhere completely different in Europe!" On that note, me and Miss Amandine decided to meet up halfway between our respective cities in Amsterdam. She had previously completed a 6 month secondment here and had never returned so we used my touristy nature as a reason to do so :D
Unfortunately, when I got to Franz-Josef Strauss, I realised I'd left my camera at home. All photos are therefore from my phone and since I don't use it very often, the quality isn't great because I realised I'd left the setting on high sunlight, which it clearly wasn't because it was an overcast weekend. I flew in around lunchtime and as Miss Amandine was unable to get the day off work, I met up with Esmee, a lovely Dutchie medic who I'd met as she backpacked around Oz. She took the time off her work to show me around Leiden, her university town about 40km away from Amsterdam.
What can I say? Like the other university towns I've been to, it has survived the times moderately intact and it was so small and cute that I spent the time walking around saying in German (because I can't speak Dutch) - sehr schoen! sehr suss!
Hey look! It's a real Dutch windmill in the distance!!!
An even MORE Dutch scene with the bridges, boats, and bikes *sigh*
As we strolled around, catching up on life and so forth, she pointed out various picturesque views, showed me the really old town houses that are now student apartments, laughed at the people travelling on the canals in a dinghy, and recommended that I eat the local Dutch delicacy of raw herring - served with raw onions (hmmm). It was fun but short and I decided I would do my best to try and return, preferably around the end of April when it's Queen's Day in the Netherlands so I could join in on the Orange festivities!
After meeting up with Amandine at our B&B, we went out to dinner at the Indonesian restaurant Kantjil en de Tijger because she knew I had been wasting away for lack of Asian food. The place was quite busy and service was a bit slow due to that but it could also have been because we ordered a Rijsttafels consisting of lots of little plates (closer to a banquet than degustation because the servings were larger). Anyway, the food! Oh, it was actually spicy and there was seafood! Seafood! Amandine even said she loved the vegetables! As we both enjoyed the sambal, we reflected that colonisation of the Asian continent produced the wonderful effect of cuisine diaspora and, believe it or not, wished the Germans worked a bit harder at that :P.
Walking out full of food and half a bottle of wine each, we decided to do the touristy thing and go to the Red Light District to look at the prostitutes.
I don't know why I was surprised, but many of the prostitutes are actually quite attractive, although there is a fair share of shockers there, one which had too much surgery in particular. They seemed to be of a moderately young age (I'm guessing mid-20s) and a few rocking the librarian glasses. Amandine commented that they were likely to be Eastern Europeans. Also, I don't understand why groups of men cheered when a guy went into or emerged from a room - we all know you just paid for sex!
Following that, we decided to walk back to our lodgings. In doing so, we passed many *Coffee Houses* and decided to get into the spirit of local life. We decided to go the quick route and ordered a pre-rolled *pure* spliff, and some fresh mint tea to wash it down. Now, as much as I'd like to report that the same thing that happened to Pooey with the wavy vision and twinkling things, I experienced none of that. We both felt a bit tired, but that could also have been attributed to the fact it was about 2am and we'd had an entire bottle of wine between the two of us for dinner. And so we continued on back to our place where we snoozed fitfully.
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