Well, I’m still alive.
This trip has been a bit of a rollercoaster so far, and it’s not slowing down. First off, we arrived at the airport in DC. Things were going alright, and we had everything planned out. We had registered for eight international flights on standby, and we were going to run from gate to gate to see if we could catch one of them. At our second gate, which was boarding to Munich, the gate lady called our names to the front. As soon as we walk up to the little desk she starts yelling at us. And I mean yelling. Apparently you aren’t allowed to register for multiple international flights on standby. Not only is it a breach of company policy, but it’s a breach of national security. We apologized to her, but this lady continued to be rude. Very, very rude. Her name was Dorris. We do not like Dorris.
After breaching national security we had to take the standby thing one flight at a time. This was especially frustrating because about 90% of all the flights to Europe take off around 5:30. Needless to say, we missed every flight that first night and had to set up camp in the airport. While there we met a bloke from London named Russ who was in a similar, albeit much worse situation. You see, Russ had flown down to San Francisco on standby to go to a job interview. He had been trying to get back to London for about a week now, making his way west ever so slowly. By being so late in getting home he had lost his job and was on the verge of losing his girlfriend. Yup, he’d been living in airports for a week. In spite of everything he went through, he still had such a positive attitude. When Blaine and I finally caught our first flight out of DC after 28 hours of being in the airport, we wished Russ good luck and headed in business class to Amsterdam.
For some reason I had always imagined flights to Europe taking a long time. I just thought it seemed logical. Well, seven and a half hours is an awkward time for an eastbound flight, because as soon as you have dinner, you sleep for maybe 3 hours and they serve you breakfast. Kind of messes with your body clock. When we arrived to Amsterdam we were very sleep deprived with no place to stay, and it was 7 in the morning.
Things eventually work out. They just do. We found a place to sleep and explored Amsterdam for a while, trying to stay awake until the night in an effort to fix our body clocks. It was tough to stay awake, but the fact that the Netherlands were playing in the world cup that day helped. The streets were packed, and we literally could not find a bar/pub with a place to sit. We also meandered over to the Van Gogh museum that day. I found that there were some similarities between us. He was 26 and unemployed when he decided to quit everything and become an artist. I’m unemployed and I don’t know what I want to do. Although I hope that’s where the similarities end because he also committed himself to a mental institution and shot himself.
Amsterdam is beautiful. Everywhere you go there is some kind of canal with boats peacefully floating by. We decided to get a little cultural experience one day, and went to the Heineken Brewery (which I highly recommend). For the record, I am now a beer pouring hero.
Today we checked out of our hostel and hopped on a train to Brussels. We are only here for one day, so we tried to make the most of it with three priorities: chocolate, waffles, and beer. Coincidentally, I happened to have chocolate with all of these. I need to say right now that the beers here are the best in the world. I know that probably doesn’t come as a big shock, but OH my GOODNESS. I tried a Belgian White, a passion fruit beer, strawberry beer, coconut beer, honey beer, chocolate beer, apple beer, mixed fruit beer, Duff beer (D’oh!), other local beers, and an extra strong beer (10.5% alc.). I had just about all of these in a pub called Delirium, which boasts a record 2004 beers available, including their own Delirium brew “elected best beer in the world”. Belgium hasn’t been a bad place.
For those of you who know me, I like food. For those that don’t know me, I still like food. Needless to say, food is a huge part of any of my travels. I always want to try the next, weird thing. Well, so far Amsterdam proved pretty weird in that regard. I went to some kind of fast food restaurant that was literally a giant vending machine. You insert some coins into a slot on the wall and open a little drawer to pick out your food. Kind of reminded me of the vending machine restaurants in Japan. I chose to eat a burger, just to be safe, and a beef croquette. Don’t ever have the beef croquette. You know cheese sticks? Well, imagine a cheese stick, but replace the cheese with gravy and you’ll have an idea of how it tastes. Again, don’t ever have the beef croquette. This meal was later followed by our breakfast this morning of some mystery item Blaine and I bought at the bakery in the train station. I quickly dubbed these pastries “blandcakes”.
I’m not going to tell you how delicious the Belgian chocolate or waffles are (but trust me, they are de-licious), but I am going to tell you when you go to Brussels you should have the mussels. They taste so good, like they really should. They are served with fries, I tell you no lies. I’m going to stop rhyming and just finish by letting you know we are on our way to Paris tomorrow. We’re staying there for three days and heading down to Switzerland, then Rome. After that we haven’t planned anything concrete. We might try to make it to the Greek isles, or just head up to Prague and Germany. We’ll see how we feel when the time comes, and most importantly see how our wallets feel.
Oh, and I’ll upload pictures as soon as I can. I lost my little SD card converter, so I have no means to upload pictures. I’ll make it happen soon though.
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