The Wall

Wow. Another week has already gone by! Who would have thought that my attempt to post a blog once a week would make it feel like time is whizzing by. So interesting items for the week... I suppose we can start with

Bever Sports - Netherlands Edition
There's an outdoor/sports store in Fairbanks called Beaver Sports. It's kind of the go-to place for climbing and backpacking gear, plus bikes, skis, clothes, and whatever. As far as climbing gear, it was the only game in town until REI opened a store a couple months ago. For the record, Beaver has a better selection and is actually a little cheaper. Anyway, there's a Bever Sports in Rotterdam. A guy at the climbing gym told us to check it out when I was asking about getting some chalk. This Bever Sports, besides being spelled slightly differently, has a very similar vibe as the real Beaver. It has a smaller selection, but I'm discovering that that's pretty typical here. The space for massive, all-inclusive stores seems to be lacking.

Sounds Our Apartment Makes
There are some things you never think about coming from a place with minimal wind. For instance, the sounds your apartment makes when you're 10 stories up and you live in the Netherlands. To be clear, it's really, really windy here. And the house whistles when it's windy, which is pretty much always, so the vents make a lovely sound reminiscent of an air raid siren. It can get annoying fast.

Netherlands Observation #1
Everyone here smokes. I would be interested to see the real statistics, because it sure seems like there is an abnormally high number of smokers (compared to anywhere else I've been). I've inhaled more second-hand smoke in the past 2 weeks than I have since the super-smokey 2013 fire season when it rained ash on us. It's kind of disgusting.



Ev started doing some contracting work for PDC last week. Working from home is hard, and I have to profess how impressed I am with his focus and ability to stay on task. Things get harder when you don't have all of your design references and your bosses are 10 hours behind you. There is definitely a sense of being thrown to the wolves, although in this case, Ev is showing the wolves who's boss.

So after I collected my residence permit on Friday (did I mention I got my residence card?!) we went for a run and a climb and decided to go up to Amsterdam for the weekend. I went online and booked us a cheap hotel, and we hopped on the train around 9am on Saturday.

It came to my attention while Google Mapping how to get to the hotel from Amsterdam Centraal that the hotel was 14km away from the train station and the center of Amsterdam where all the excitement is. After some discussion, I called and canceled our reservation. We've never really flown by the seat of our pants before, at least in a city, largely due to my compulsive need to have at least something planned in advance, preferably a place to sleep at the very least.

We arrived in Amsterdam right about the time it started raining (surprise), and meandered across the street towards the multitude of hotel signs. We went in to 3 or 4 of them asking if they had a room available for the night, and finally found a room in an, uh, let's call it sketchy hotel called Hotel Neutraal. We figured we'd do the tourist thing all day then hit up the Red Light District in the evening. The hotel was really, really skeezy and Ev was pretty sketched out by it. By then I had decided to not stress about it, so we had a little role reversal. There was a pretty adorable, twitchy kitten at the hotel, which helped alleviate some of the skeeze.

We started out the afternoon by wandering 4-ish km to the Heineken Brewery, where we did the "Heineken Experience" tour. It was an unguided tour, i.e. no guide, except for three stations. It was fun, if a bit long. Some documentation of this adventure is as follows:

Proof that we are both, in fact, in the Netherlands. It came to my attention that there hasn't been a photo with both of us in it since we moved here.

Old stills

Stereotypical tourist pose; stirring the barley and water "wort"

En route to the brewery, we popped in to the Sex Museum, which was... crazy. Lots of historic porn, sculptures, sex toys, mannequins dressed up in pretty much anything and everything... we spent about an hour in there and didn't see everything.

As we continued our wanderings, we passed coffee shop after coffee shop. Eventually, we decided to partake, since neither of us had ever tried pot brownies (or edibles) before. The spacecake came with this awesome label:

Then we began meandering through the Red Light District. Two things really stuck with me (besides the obvious stuff that I haven't gotten to yet but you can probably guess): 1) There are a LOT of cheese shops in the red light district. Also a lot of sex shops, but a seriously surprising number of cheese shops. I don't know why I didn't take a picture of any of them. I feel like I missed out. Which brings us to 2) this:

 No comment needed.

Which brings us to the later part of our evening. We wandered around downtown Amsterdam for about 6 hours, a large portion of that being in the red light district and surrounding streets. There are a lot of people, all the time.

Something you need to understand is that Ev and I aren't used to serious crowds. In fact, we actively avoid them. Large groups of people make me very, very anxious and I have this thing about strangers touching me. The spacecake helped with this a little and neither of us had a panic attack, which is actually quite impressive.

For a little context on what I mean when I say "crowded," please enjoy the following picture:

 Too. Many. People.


Rotterdam feels so much cleaner and spacious than Amsterdam. Even the newer areas we passed through felt congested and claustrophobic. I suppose what it comes down to is that Amsterdam feels old. You can almost taste the history, artistic and innovative, sordid and dirty alike.

This morning we got the hell out of our hotel as fast as possible and caught the train back to Rotterdam. The evidence of yesterday's adventures is documented by the contents of our pockets and an intense urge to shower.

As we rode home we decided that our next adventure is going to involve a little more seclusion and a lot fewer people. I think a trip to the Scottish Highlands is in order, and possibly a beach outing. I'm sure there's something in Spain near some rocks that we can climb all over...