Leaving Amsterdam and off to Wegberg

Sad to say that when I woke up on the morning of the third the weather was just as grim as it was the night before, and after a nice long breakfast I just couldn't face any queues so I decided to cut my losses and split early, hoping that in Germany I would have more luck.

Having already purchased a ticket in advance for a later train, I chose to try and get help from the Central Stations main service centre about if I could move to an earlier train or not.

However, what I found was that the customer services was a warped hybrid of something that resembled Argos, a nightclub and an airport check in desk. You had to take a number and wait for it to come up on the screens and then head off to one of the many many counters where the staff member there would do their best to help you. When I arrived after a short time I was given the number C203, which was quite disappointing since they had not even served C149. To add further confusion they were also serving B numbers, and had reached B88 so what that was all about I had no idea.
The
After about ten minutes they had not progressed beyond C152 and so I figured that there is a good chance I would still be here by the time my original train would leave, so I took my number, mustered all the bravado I could and just went off in search of a timetable for the next train to Dusseldorf, the plan in mind that I would slip on board just before it actually left, remove the original booking reservation attachment and then if any guard queried why I was on an earlier train I would say show the small blue slip number and say that the person on the counter said I could, and if that failed just play on the polite but naive stupid English tourist to carry the day.

As luck, or judgement, would have it I had guessed right that my ticket would be valid on any outgoing train and I just had to show the guard the main ticket in as much of a bored look as I could muster and they stamped it and moved on without even raising an eye brow. Nobody even ask to look at a passport when I crossed over into Germany territory
or got off at the other end.

At this point I thought that I had mastered the German train system, how little did I know.

From that moment on I had a real headache of a journey, as according to the timetable there was only one train per hour going to all the way to Wegberg, which required a change at Monchengladbach. Having contacted my friend over in Wegberg to say that I was already at Dusseldorf and that I wouldn't be much later I was confident that I would be there for most of the day, however I was unprepared for an uncharacteristic failing of German efficiency.

Patiently I watched two trains leave for MG, as they were not on my timetable and as cursed luck would have it just as my timetable scheduled one was about to pull in there was a slight technical fault on a different train that was pulling into the same platform as my one, and thus my one was delayed arriving on time. But only for a few minutes, so nothing too much to worry about I felt.

Yet when I arriving MG I found that there was again only one train an hour leaving MG for Wegberg and on my delayed trip out I had missed it by a couple of minutes, thus had another hour wait. You cannot imagine how I turned the air blue being the only Brit stuck at this German train station with no guard or service person in sight to ask what the hell was going on, assuming of course that I could have got my point across knowing less than five words of German in total !?!

With my mobile phone battery hazardously close to empty, no sign of a recharger point and my rucksack getting heavier and heavier by the second I barely managed to call an SOS to my friend and say that I was going to be even later still, and I think she must of either got bored of waiting, or felt sorry for me, and convinced her other half to come pick me up at the train station instead.

Finally back in Wegberg it was nice to be almost on home soil again, as of course my friends hubby is a British soldier based over there, and their house is on one of the bases.

It is kind of freaky to be walking around an army base, knowing that at the perimeter there is all wire mess and machine gun posts, yet apart from the boring designs and layout of the houses you could almost imagine that you was in a university campus, and with everyone around you speaking English ( or Irish ! ) the only dead give aways is the weather and the fact that everything is either Euro's or US Dollar's.

When you go shopping though, you once again realise that you are on a base as you go past people in uniforms, the nearest store is the NAAFI which stocks not only groceries and dvd's but knifes and combat fatigues, and when you go to buy certain alcohol you have to produce a nations card.

The next few days will be basically chilling out with my friends over here, quite a bit of watching movies, playing first person shoot-em-ups, getting drunk and maybe a few trips to places of nearby beauty. I did make the mistake of asking why we have to get drunk so much over here, and had she forgot that I am on a bit of a diet and a light-weight when it comes to drink and I was simply told, "You are in Germany ... and getting drunk is what you do here". Silly me for forgetting that.

Well as the old saying goes, "When in Rome do as the Romans do".

Cheers

Amsterdam Central

After the rain continued to come down in droves, I decided to give up walking the streets for a bit and headed back to my hostel, where I found that the room only had one electric socket which was being used by another roommate for his rechargable batteries.

Laying down for a bit to try and let my feet recover, I was there when the other guys that I was sharing he room with turned up, one almost a local and the other an Australian, which just goes to show that Australians do seem to get literally everywhere, and goes a long way to say why Australia itself is so empty!

The good news is that not only did the Aussie, who heralds from Melborn, correct me on my pronounciation of Cairns { ignore the r totally and with an accent try to say "Ceans" } but he also passed on another good rumour {this place is full of them :o) }, which was that although the hostel itself does not support its own wifi network, if you have a good enough receiver that up this high, on the second floor, there are a number of unsecure local wireless networks in the neighbourhood which one can easily tap into and use, asuming you are not against that sort of thing!!!


Trust the Aussie to try and throw the old moral issue at you while in a Christian hostel just as he is about to highjack a signal himself, lol.


With the rain coming down harder and harder as the day went on, my hopes for a nighttime stroll around the city with Randy Rod's Red Light Distict foot tour was cancelled, but then as I had already visited the area myself and found it to be not quite my kind of place, the idea of having some guy, or gal, take me around it for 90 minutes in the rain was not any longer high on my agenda.

Back in the Christian hostel I found the prices in their restaurant / cafe pretty respectable - although I doubt any Italian would have recognised the offer of a luke warm Spaghetti Bolognaise, but the fact that it came with free fries at they had overestimated the amount they had just fried up and they had a plenty supply of chilled Doctor Pepper more than up for it.


Thankfully, despite having no wifi signal to hijack on the ground floor, the fact that I set up my laptop with a proper outlook account, meant that I only needed a minutes signal in the room to pick up them all up, and then I could go downstairs and use the extra sockets in the cafe to keep the laptop charged while I bashed out a few replies.


One of the craziest things I received was from my bosses younger sister, who had send me a facebook message saying that my boss was just waiting for the main MD to come back into the office before handing in her own notice as she had accepted a better, less stressful, job.


Again I can only thank my over cautiousness in asking her for awork reference before I left, instead of waiting til I come back to the UK from my travels, and knowing that the two of us were the only two that kept all the important paperwork of the entire office straight I wonder whether my choice to leave helped nudge her into looking elsewhere as well, as my last day temping was only last Thursday!



Sitting in the cafe, with my laptop and music blaring through my headphones I was still able to spot the group that came in and I very almost got myself involved in a game of Jenga, before I decided that in fact what I really needed more than anything else was to catch up on the lost sleep of the night before.

And so, after downloading a few photos that I took of the city before the rain really started to come down, I decided to get an early night in the city that never sleeps.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I would be half interested in visiting the following places, but then again if they all have entrance fees then I might easily give them a miss :-

Madurodam The Hague - a miniature map of all of Holland at 1:25 scale; Science Center Nemo; Het Concertgebouw; Artis - Royal Zoo Amsterdam ; Zazare Diamond Factory ;Improvisation Comedy at Boob Chicago ; Sea Life ( The Hague ) ; The Amsterdam Dungeon - scarier than the London Dongeon and more interactive with its visitiors ; Rijks Museum - Art Gallery ; Madam Tussauds ( Amsterdam ) ; Dutch Resistance Museum { which the 4 uni students from Ipswich on the same ferry and train into Amsterdam as me will no doubt be going to visit on their stay }, likewise they will also be off to see Ann Franks House.

Arrival and first half day in Amsterdam

Well I am so glad that I did not bother to try and stay up for the midnight showing of Hancock on the ferry cinema, as I woke up not fully with it and barely had an hour to get up, dressed, showered, fed and all ready for the off.

The previous night before I went to sleep I had a moments paranoia that I had better pack my bag ready for a fast exit should anything happen to the ferry, and I regretted this in the morning when nothing was ready for me and I had packed my passport and onward train tickets.

I was so asleep still that I ordered a very modest breakfast and not only didnt I realise that it wasnt a hearty full english as advertised, but I also missed that I had already paid for it when I prebooked.

Catching the train at 7:45 to Amsterdam via Rotterdam I once again began to feel a bit of a headcold and it was only after I was fully awake that the light dawned on me, that this was he flu-like side effects of taking the yellow fever jab about a week ago.

At the time the nurse said that I would likely get the by Friday if I was going to get then at all, so I guess that I was just a late flourisher.

About 9:55am god washed his hands and then must have left the tap dripping as he went off to do someting else more important, as he failed to ever come back and turn the tap off again - thus turning the whole of Amsterdam into a giant fish bowl.

I do not think that cyclist have got a very fair deal in Amsterdam, far from it, they seem to have the best deal on the market as you cant seem to go anywhere without a cyclist or two rushing past. And its not just the frequency of them that is unsettling, neither it is that along every canal or boulevard you can see dozen of the things all lined up and hogging the pavement, no its worse.

They are silent, the are fast, they can get through even the tiniest of gaps and there appears to be no law or reason that says which direction they need to travel in.

I have often said that if you can walk the streets of London you can walk anywhere, well Amsterdam is a close second on my list of places you have to keep your wits about at all times.

Amsterdam is an old city, the waterways and canals are everywhere like some demented ring off a dartboard gone insane and although free to litter it still has its criminal element, its beggars and a large amound of decay just minutes away from flaking off before you very eyes.

The strangest part is that the locals all seem extremely proud of their aging buildings, so much so that when they do their repairs { which is everywhere and all at the same time } they have turned their back on modern technology and materials and seem to delight in trying to recycle the old bits of the falling down buildings.

For example, there was a carpenter who was repairing a warped doorway and instead of of replacing a section of wood, he was painstakingly trying to chip away the old bits and then replaces it with a new { or old but newer } bit of timbre and then glue it all together so that the joins dissappear. The instead of a good old lick of paint to hide it all and make it waterproof, on to the next job!

There is no shortage of places to get food in the city, however I was put off from most by the decor and the fact that I very much expect that the knocker would come off in my hand should i knock to get a waiters attention.

Smoking in public places has been banned in most of Holland, and so despite the rain, many an aged covered doorway had a couple of smokers doing their very best to shorten their lives by another few minutes.

I've never been too into the whole drug scene, so the coffee shops hold no lure to me, although having said that if the weather dries out tomorrow I might make it back to visit the Hemp Museum.

I expect their is a very planned link, as the fabled coffee shops and hemp museum are also on the same road as the erotic museum and the main red light district of the city.

Although easy to overlook if you are traversing the entire city, only a five minute walk directly south from the main train station will find you in central red light area, where the windows are covered and filled with plenty for the eye to feast on, although the farther south you go the older and uglier they appear, at least they did on my trip.

Rumour has it that for EU$50 you can get a quick rub, tug and a bit of the other.

Having said that, other rumours also say that you will also feel like a bit of processed meat at how fast and clinical they are and thar you will be gently ushered out fo the door before your trousers have even fully touched the floor, that is unless you fall for their line of double time for double money line that they say.

Rumours and all part of Amsterdam, and the truly weirdest part is that the gossip mongerers do not even try to be shy or discreet about it, probably due to the fact that it is all as close to legal here as it is anywhere on the planet. Listening in on other strollers conversation is almost as fun and educational as if I was having the conversation myself.

For those who feel that they would prefer the more pampered and pay through the nose approach then you can always go to one of the many private clubs just slightly out of the town centre, though be prepared to pay at least EU$75 entrance fee { which is precisely why this other option appealed to me even less than the idea of making the temporary aquaintence of a window girl }.

The internet has a few things to offer about these clubs, but personally I would still chose a place in the sun with a nice drink than the wet alleyways of Amsterdam.

The feel of Amsterdam is not only old and wet, but also empty. Despite the overrunning of cyclist along every highway and byway you can still soon find yourself walking along a side road where you are the only person you can see, and for those who do not like alleys and alleyways I have this to say, Amsterdam seems to expand like a warped tree trunk and so unless you like long and circular treks I'd get yourself a map and / or a compass and brave the side streets.

The hostel I chose ended up being about a ten minute walk as the cros flies from the centre of town, but I challenge even the fittest crow to be able to walk the distance in less than twenty!

What I found interesting was that it is run by a Christian organisation { similar to the ones in Switzerland, complete with bible reading at 7pm every night and a private prayer room for those who could not wait } who run two seperate hostels in the city, the one I am currently staying in which is just outside the centre of town, and the other which could not be closer to the red light district if it tried, yet their website clearly states that these hostels are not for anyone who want to come to Amsterdam for sex.

So I take it from that, that the local Christian community must have a great love of help as that is the only other thing within 50 yards of the red light district that isn't whole devoted to the sex industry.

Because I had arrived so very late in the morning, and this was compounded with my lack of sleep, my yellow fever jab flu like sideeffects, the rain and the fact that the hostel would not let me check in until 1:30pm meant that I was unable to get a look round a few of the best tourist attractions, as I have never been one to settle for a long queues.

By 3pm I felt that I had been walking for an eternity, my feet were tired, all my clothes were damp and I could only think of my bunk.