March

Well, not a whole lot happened in March. I had a bit of homesickness when I got back from Ireland, but it was gone by the time I went to Amsterdam. I just bummed around Marburg for the most part. I had class everyday from 9-1pm and I spent my free time either doing homework, running errands or meeting up with friends. I don't know how I killed so much time, but I did... somehow.
I went to Kassel by myself the day after St. Patrick's Day and checked out two of the castles. One had a museum with Rembrandt paintings and the other artifacts while the other was a smaller medeval castle. I took a tour in German. It was cold.

I broke my laptop sometime in March. I was smart and plugged my adaptor into the wall wrong. It sparked and BAM, my laptop was out. Dead. Unresponsive. I lost everything.

I took my laptop to a repair shop in town, who said it would be 25€ to look at it and more if it requires so. Turns out they couldn't do anything for me and I fried the motherboard, though when I went to pick it up the guy tried to charge me something like 60€. I put him in his place and got my laptop back for the agreed price. ;)

I was feeling distant from my boyfriend during this time. It's hard when you only can talk for once or twice a week, for 10 minutes at a time. It's hard to sum up everything that's happened and to feel connected to that person, especially when you're preoccupied with the excitement of living in another country and the other person is doing the same old thing back home. I sort of knew that I might've felt that way before I left, so Steve and I both handled the bump pretty well. We're always open with each other, which makes it a whole lot easier to fix problems when they arise. He's always loving and supporting of my thoughts, goals and wishes and I can't thank him enough for sticking by my side and loving me! I don't normally like blogging about my relationship, but I felt it was necessary.

Amsterdam

Wow. It's really been a long time since I've blogged. 2 months, actually.

I met my friend Jacob in Amsterdam for a weekend last February. I skipped class and caught an early train from Marburg to Frankfurt (1 hour) and transfered to another train which went directly to Amsterdam (4 hours). I was lucky enough to run into a nice guy from Argentina who asked me to take his picture while we were waiting for our train. He didn't speak any German and was in Europe for some conferences, so we stuck together and had some really nice conversations on the ride to Amsterdam. I was really upset to find out after my trip that I had thrown out the piece of paper with his email address on it. Oh well.

After arriving in Amsterdam, the Argentinian and I walked together towards some unknown destination. I was supposed to meet Jacob at the hostel around 4, so I had a few hours to spare. I had planned to take the tram, which is what I ended up doing... but I wasn't able to use my credit card to buy a 3 day pass, so I had to take a number and wait around for a while to get an actual human being to help me. I didn't feel like waiting, so I just paid for a one way pass to my stop.

After walking in one direction for 15 minutes and seeing no signs for the hostel, I turned around and walked back for another 20 minutes or so. I ended up asking a few people if they have heard of the hostel or if they knew where it was, and none of them had any idea what I was talking about. Thankfully in Amsterdam everyone speaks English, so I wasn't ever too anxious. Finding my way in Dutch would've proved more difficult.

After get lost for another few hours and having someone direct me to another hostel with the same name, I gave up and asked the hostel staff for directions. The owner was nice enough to give me a ride to my hostel, the hostel which infact stole the name of his old hostel after he changed names (taking his unknowning customers as well). He asked for nothing in return, other than me spreading the word of what a crappy hostel Amigo's is and that his is better.

The hostel stairs were STRAIGHT up, though that's apparently the norm in Amsterdam houses. The hostel wasn't that great but the bed was comfortable and our roommates were pretty quiet. The people staying in the rooms next to ours weren't so quiet though, and I heard someone puking their brains out early one morning. Did I mention one bathroom for 30ish people? Yeah...

Amsterdam really took me by surprise. I knew it was something other than anything I had experienced in Germany, but I wasn't prepared for the size of the city. There's so many tourists packed around the main train station... something you'd see in the States I guess, but not in Germany. It's not like I haven't experienced being around thousands of people, but doing it alone intensifies it more I suppose. I don't even know if I actually met any native Hollanders. I didn't venture out of the city far enough.

Amsterdam is the Vegas of Europe, in my opinion. Anything and everything goes! Sex really is a huge business in the city and you can get anything from banana shows to live sex shows to plain strippers or, of course, hire a prostitute. Jacob and I stumbled into the red light district (it's not hard to find) and spent most of our nights around the area actually. It really only worked out that way because everythin else was closed and quieter in other neighborhoods. The district is safe, busy and probably overrated. Jacob and I took a ferry out to one of the "cultural districts" as the tourism office lady said. Turned out to be an abandoned industrial park. We stayed maybe 10 minutes and caught another ferry to one of the residential neighborhoods. The canals in Amsterdam are absolutely gorgeous!

We also had the opportunity to visit the Anne Frank Haus. It was really moving and I'm really thankfully we had the chance to visit. I bought the Diary of Anne Frank after the tour and read it two weeks. Reading it in Europe and walking on the same cobblestones that she had... is more moving than I'm able to write in words.

We also visited the Van Gogh Musuem. It was neat, though busy. There was a nice park outside where Jacob and I drank a cup of coffee and people watched.

Of course I had to buy some special cake... and... other... things...

My weekend in Amsterdam is one I will never forget!