The Netherland´s and the Journey to Sweden

From the flight from London, we arrived in Amsterdam at about 9:30 and made our way directly to our hostel where we dropped off our luggage before going on a walking tour of the city. Our self-led tour led us to a small café on a quiet canal where we had a relaxing lunch. Our room was ready at 2:00 so after lunch we headed back to the hostel for a nap and shower before our big adventure to the red light district. After our nap we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the park near our hostel which is situated right in the middle of the museum district. Then we headed over to the Leidsplan for some Indian food. From the restaurant there was a really nice view of a cobblestone alley which was great for people watching and the waitress told us all about how to make what we were eating. YUM! From there we visited the Rembrantplan for a few beers and finally delved our way into the red-light district. It was like the Disneyland of prostitution. Women standing in lit up windows wearing nothing but bikinis, apparently they do have to wear that now with the conservative government you know, line the streets between sex clubs, greasy kebab stores, and coffee shops. For those of you who have visited this part of Amsterdam before it is probably a bit smaller then you remember. The recession seems to have hit the district hard. We walked the whole six by three block grid in a couple of hours enjoying the bath of neon and the oddness of it all. On the way home to the hostel we got a bit lost and ended up having to take a taxi to save our aching feet. The next day we had breakfast at the hostel and went out to explore some the nicer sides of the city before we had to catch our train to Vreizenween, a small town in the northeast of Holland where our next host lives. First we made a swing by the Van Gough museum but even ten minutes before they opened the line was horrendous so we compromised and went to the Rijks museum instead. Afterwards we went to the Waterloo market to check out the Dutch version of a flea market and I ended up buying a bike lock and bell for about five dollars. In the afternoon before our train Todd went to do the Heineken Experience and Dan and I headed back to the hostel so we could grab our stuff and meet him at central station. One thing Todd forgot to tell us was that his backpack was is luggage room number one not luggage room number two with all of all luggage so before we could leave we spent a good 15 min thinking that all of Todd’s had been stolen. Once we starting thinking logically we figured out what the problem was and finally got the hell out of the hostel’s crowded lobby. The train up to Vreisenween only took about two hours and our hostess Sabrina met us at the train station. She lives with her parents and younger sister so we got to know a bit about the whole family and are welcomed back anytime. It was a bit nice have a mom around for a bit. The first night we had spaghetti Bolognese and this tasty vanilla-chocolate pudding which comes separated in a milk carton. We slept in until noon the first day and generally spent the day lazing about as seems to be our first day routine everywhere we go. In the afternoon we walked around the little city close to them called Alemo, saw some shops and enjoyed a nice beer on the canal. That night we cooked dinner for the family. We had not made a very good plan and arrived at the store about 20 minutes before it closed so we ended up just having baked chicken breasts and a nice salad. Around 10:00 we headed out to meet some of Sabrina’s friends at the pub back in Alemo. Apparently asshole is something like the national card game of the Netherlands. When I suggested we play it sometime during the night I was genuinely laughed at and educated on the longstanding Dutch asshole tradition. The next day Sabrina and her sister drove us all the way to Cologne in Germany where we would have to wait until two in the morning to catch a bus to the apparently obscure airport out of which I had booked our flight. Note to self: when you fly with Ryan Air it is never convenient. So we spent the day walking around Cologne with Sabrina and sister in tow. We spent a lot of time exploring the famous Dom. Before meeting up with a big group of couch surfers who happened to be having a tapas dinner night to welcome someone home. The dinner was fun and I met a few people I would like to come back and visit. Afterwards we went down to the river in a huge group to kill some time and drink beer which seems to be a central social activity most places that we have been. We did that until about one in the morning when we headed over to the bus station to catch our airport line. The walk along the Rheine is really quite beautiful and the views of the Dom at night are amazing. It turns out Frankfurt (Hahn) airport is an old American military base that Ryan Air is leasing from us. When we got the entrance I thought maybe they were taking us to a concentration camp or something, not really but it was a bit creepy. After the terribly long night and three hour wait in the airport our flight was surprisingly nice. We got really lucky and sat in the emergency exit row so we all had mega amounts of leg room. Stockholm (Skanska) is just about as much a part of Stockholm as Hahn is a part of Frankfurt so following the flight we had another two hour bus ride to get into the city where-thank god- our friend Linn whom we have been staying with, met us at the bus station. As you can probably guess we spent our first day here in Stockholm sleeping off the exhaustion from our journey so we did not see much of the city or even Linn’s apartment until the next day. I will tell more about Stockholm and our adventures here when I have a bit more