On Borders...

Let the travelling begin! So Lorik flew to Croatia to visit some family which left Vlad and I to fend for ourselves. Having done the whole local thing to death (2 weekends hah!) we decided on a trip to the nearest capital. Now this trip could have been quite tricky seeing as I don't have my passport. When I applied for my work/living Visa they took my passport and gave me a sheet of paper with a stamp on it. Thinking of the borders between Canada and the US I figured I couldn't go anywhere interesting, but we decided to take our chances. So how safe are we really? I totally missed the sign for 'now entering Holland' since there are no toll booths or walls... anyway, we made it no problem at all. How many terrorist bombings do you hear of in Amsterdam?
Talking to Lorik he warned us that the worst part of his trip to Amsterdam was looking for a hotel/hostel on the strip. So Friday at work I decided to do some research and book us a bed. What do you think €50 ($80+3% conversion fee) gets you in Amsterdam? This -

The good news was that it was only a 15 minute walk to the city center. Being totally ignorant I found out that Amsterdam is actually like Venice with canals all over the place and boats and such. In the guide we picked up at the hostel it said that the best way to experience Amsterdam was to rent a bike. Since we were so close though, we opted out on that...

The architecture and monuments are really sweet. Unfortunately there is a limit on how many pictures I can post on this site and I have to pick and choose what I include. With 4 more months left I will have to post pictures sparingly. This photo was interesting though, look closely at the buildings. Its hard to tell from the picture, but you can make out the fact that the buildings are crooked. Yes, a city built on the water with all kinds of houses etc, that are all slanted. I can't understand how the Romans figured out how to build a structure that will look perfectly vertical even after accounting for angle of perspective, yet all these people live in homes that are falling over...
Vlad and I used to work together, but managed to meet up here in Germany. So walking through the red light district, (not all that it's cracked up to be actually... Although be careful because as one of the people in the window showed Vlad, they aren't all women like they look like) after the Netherlands dropped the game to Russia. Imagine how awesome it would have been to be in the capitol of the Netherlands when their team advances to the semi-finals of the Europa Meister cup. We watched the game in a Hooters rip off of a restaurant with standing room only. Same colors, similar outfits. Lets all hope Germany beats Turky on Wednesday so I can watch the finals in Berlin this weekend, although that would require me to call into work on Monday... Regardless we ran into an old colleague of ours sitting on a bench. What are the odds that you could run into someone you know, let alone used to work with, on another continent?
After a quick whopper and our old colleague wandering away we decided it was time to find the dance club. We spoke with some of the locals when we were at the pub and dinner and found the general consensus was a place called Escape. It was about a 25 minute walk from our hostel and we figured we would check it out. So we danced the night away until...
That's right 5am. Check out the background for what the streets of Amsterdam look like at 5 in the morning... Although that's not nearly as crazy as the guys around 4am making a circle and break dancing in the club. Did I mention that people just through their empty glasses on the ground on the dance floor? Yeah, brilliant!

We hobbled back to the hostel for about a 2 hour nap until breakfast was served. Our legs hurt so bad we decided to bypass the museum and head back for home. The moral of the story is this: Do not walk around for 12 hours and then dance for another 3 if you expect to be useful the next day. A hotel/hostel is totally optional in Amsterdam as we saw a few people sleeping on the streets. As some children may read this, I will save my comments about having British people as hostel mates...

New country count: 2