Tuesday, September 24
The next week-ish is gonna be more flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants than any other part of the trip so far. I have very little idea what's in store for me between here and Sitges.
Last night i didn't want to go to bed until i had a solid plan for today, because if i needed to be on an early-morning train, i was obviously gonna need to know that.
My intention was to go to Luxembourg, so i started off by looking for that. There were some options, it's about six hours. I could get on a train at 7:30am and be there around 1:30pm, that seemed doable. Or i could go later. But there weren't any feasible night trains, it's too short a distance. The only overnight options extended it to 14 hours of travel, with many transfers, and probably sleeping on a train platform. No thank you.
Okay, next let's look for accommodation.
Uh.
There is only one hostel in the entirety of Luxembourg City. It's called Luxembourg City Youth Hostel, but they say they accept any age as long as you're "young at heart." So i might be disqualified anyway. But the point is, they did not have any availability.
All i could find was a hostel that's half an hour away from the city, by car. That's not gonna work for me.
The cheapest hotel i could find in Luxembourg was €170. Also no thank you. Hostels are expensive enough these days, and i hadn't budgeted for them at all; remember, when i started this trip, it was supposed to be couchsurfing all the way. I've been trying really hard to keep it under €50 a night, and i've been...mostly successful.
So Luxembourg became logistically impossible. Where else can i go?
I thought about going to the UK, which i'd initially planned to avoid, but i kind of want to see Stonehenge. They have a tour you can do now where you can actually go inside of the ring, but it's booked out to 2025. So maybe i'll plan ahead and do that one in a few years.
I'd thought about Munich. Amanda and i went there in 2013, and our plans got royally derailed. She had wanted to see the Olympic grounds and Castle Neuschanstein. Due to scheduling problems, we never made it to the Olympics and only saw the outside of the castle. I could go fulfill those. But, after Paris, i think i want to avoid retreading ground from that trip right now.
Bern? Same story as Munich.
Zurich? Maybe.
Prague. Lot of people have been saying, "Go to Prague."
I found a decent night route to Prague. It's further east than i probably should be heading this close to the film festival, but i do really want to see it. I would've gone there earlier in the trip if i'd planned things out better.
I looked up hostels. There are plenty, and they are very, very cheap. Wonderful. It was almost 1am, i'll just get on the train at 19:44 tomorrow and book a hostel on the way.
I went to bed.
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I got up first this morning. Check out is at 10, and i wanted to make sure i had time to shower beforehand, especially since i'll be on an overnight train and will be sleeping in my clothes anyway. I don't want to get *too* gross.
I also needed to poop, as humans do, but since i'm more private about that sort of thing than most people are, i didn't want to do it with the others in the room. So i headed down the hallway and used one of the public ones.
When i got back to the room, all three of my roommates were gone. The noisy one below me still had her stuff strewn all across the room, the other two beds were completely cleared out. Both overhead lights, the lights in both bathrooms, and the reading light in the bunk were all on. Exactly as it had been every time i'd come back to the room after being out for a bit during the day.
I hadn't realized that everything left out in the room all belonged to her. I guess i'm not really surprised, of course she was the type to claim every surface and corner as her own.
She came back to the room as i was getting my shower things out of my locker. The room had two separate, closet-sized bathrooms; one for the shower, one for the toilet. There was a sink in each. I disappeared quickly into the shower room.
When i was done with that, i got dressed before opening the door, but she turned out to be gone again. So i took my shirt back off, to give myself time to air dry. She came back into the room just a couple minutes later.
"Is that room a shower?" she asked.
"Yeah," i said.
"Four days and i didn't even realize that was there," she said.
Then...why do you keep turning the light on?
The switches for both bathrooms are on the outside, as is common in many parts of Europe. I think she's just been hitting them all.
She gathered a few things, and then went into the shower room herself. I was repacking my bag quickly, hoping to be out of the room before she finished.
Didn't quite make it. We didn't interact again, though.
I left the room at 9:55.
Checkout at ClinkNoord is automatic, unless you owe them money. There was never a door key, you're supposed to unlock it with an app on your phone. I'm still averse to that kind of thing, though, so since they also give you a 4-digit pin code "in case your phone is dead," i've just been using that. This also means, if you're not out of the room right at 10, they probably don't even know. So as long as you're gone by the time housekeeping gets there, it's probably fine. But i was on time, just to be safe. I didn't owe them money, so i was free to go.
You know, it's really interesting that i ended up in a 4-bed room with 3 other people who came and left on the same days. It clearly wasn't on purpose, since i was supposed to leave a day earlier, but extended my stay.
I sat downstairs in the bar for an hour, sipping my aminos, figuring out what to do for the day. It was already cloudy, it was expected to rain, so today i did zip the arms back onto my coat preemptively. I've been rained on the last three days in a row, i'm probably gonna be again, i've already got the sniffles. I'd like to try and at least keep a little warm.
I waited to leave the hostel until just past 11, knowing i would need to pay for a locker. I'd checked the instructions on the lockers yesterday, they need to be paid for by a certain block of hours in advance again, like the last one, in Brussels. I had thought the blocks were 4 hours or 8 hours, so i figured if i locked it up at 11, i'd be back at 7, giving me 45 minutes before my international train. Perfect.
It turned out to be 4 hours or 12 hours, so it didn't matter either way. I probably could've been out the door half an hour sooner. Eh, it's fine. I didn't have a lot on my docket today anyway.
I still really wanted to try that Indonesian food stand, Stick Up, so i headed that way first. Instead of walking out to the main road and going left, as i've been doing, i thought i'd try crossing a bridge closer to the hostel first, maybe find a shortcut.
And it might have been a shortcut, if the restaurant across the canal were open. Since it was not, all its gates were closed, and the only path from that position directly to the food stands was through their outdoor eating area. I had really thought there would be a foot path.
Rather than accept this and turn back, i went left, away from my objective, and followed the only available foot path into some foliage. This brought me to another restaurant, hidden away in the trees, which was just opening. I passed through it. Aside from that place's open outdoor seating area, i was taking note of all the lush greenery around me. Soon i came to an informational sign. This was a small, maintained botanical garden. Cool.
After that, there were a bank of outhouses, and then the exit.
I was over near that incredibly slow café from a couple days ago.
So not too far away, just further than expected.
I made my way back to where i wanted to be and...Stick Up was closed.
Dang it.
Walking around in the chilly, cloudy weather, with occasional sprinkles just to be sure i knew what it was capable of, had reminded me of a warning i'd seen on the Eurail app several days ago. And again last night.
There had been an advisory for Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland, among others, that severe weather was causing rail delays. I should probably check into that.
I pulled up the Eurail app, and the warning was gone, but i didn't trust it. It might just be because i've dismissed it a few times. I got to the section where it lists disruptions, delays, and other ongoing rail issues, and...yeah. There it is. Very first thing listed, overall.
"Severe weather in Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, and other parts of Central Europe," it reads. "OBB, the Austrian National Railway, urges travelers to postpone non-essential travel to another period of time to avoid getting caught in the storm." The Eurail site went on to recommend checking the web sites of the individual rail carriers for more specific information.
I went to the Czech National Railway's web site.
Prague Main Station: Flooded.
Perhaps i should just head south.
I had some more postcards to mail, so i decided to head toward the post office, and then i'd figure out a spot to eat near there. Once i was sitting down, i could figure out my next move.
This was the easiest post office i've dealt with, and they charged me half as much for international stamps as France did. I wish i'd had more postcards to mail. I damn near bought more, just to take advantage.
Okay. I know i've had the poffertjes, but since "i can't leave Amsterdam without having Dutch pancakes," i thought i'd try a full-size version. Plus, the Pancake Club had savory options on their menu; my favorite items at Waffle Love are savory, so i'd like to see how that translates to pancakes.
I searched for "Dutch Pancakes," and the first result was called Dutch Pancake Masters. Oh. Well, that sounds perfect. Half a mile away. Let's do it.
As i was walking there, i passed a small, kind of hole-in-the-wall looking place that was advertising pancakes. They didn't have a single customer inside or on the patio. I thought about just going there instead, it's here and there's no wait, after all. But i pushed on, to see the Masters.
Dutch Pancake Masters was completely overrun. I didn't see a single open seat on their much larger patio, or in what was viewable through the open door.
Well. That other place was less than a quarter mile back there. I knew i should've just gone for that.
The first thing i noticed when i walked into At Letting was, it's actually an Indian place. Not what i expected, but i'm gonna roll with it. There still weren't any other customers, so i could just relax, get fed, and be on my way, in my own time.
At first, i was concerned, because under the Breakfast section of the menu, it only listed "American Pancakes," and that is certainly not what i'm after here. But then, i noticed there's an entirely separate section called "Pancakes," which does not include the American version. American pancakes are not even pancakes, it seems.
I ordered the mozzeralla, tomato, and pesto pancake. The menu said all pancakes are served with syrup and powdered sugar. I was really curious how that was going to play out.
What i received looked more like a pizza than a pancake. In fact, the "pancake" itself was more of a crêpe. But it looked good.
The syrup and powdered sugar were brought separately, in their original containers, so i could add them myself, to taste. It made me feel like maybe they were not actually supposed to be put on the pancake?
I tried a few bites without them first, to get the full, original flavor of this dish. It was good, but i felt like the pancake was kind of alien to its other ingredients. So i tried putting a little syrup and powdered sugar on about two bites worth, to see how that turned out.
And that unlocked something. It didn't taste like putting sweet things on pesto and cheese. It actually de-alienated the pancake. It wasn't like i dropped a sandwich in my breakfast; it was like i was eating a tomato, mozzarella, and pesto sandwich as well as a pancake. It came together. It worked.
Incredible. I would never have thought of this if i had a hundred lifetimes to live.
Alright let's look at that map.
I messed around with Maps, the Interrail app, and Hostelworld for a while as i slowly drank my latte. It was a regular latte, still very coffee flavored, still not really for me, but i'm still trying new things. They had Indian chai tea, and they had a few lattes, i wished i had just asked if they could make a chai latte. Or just ordered the chai tea, i guess.
I finally settled on Geneva. There's an overnight train leaving at the exact same minute as the one i was planning on, 19:44. That's an incredible coincidence.
...Oh it's actually the same train, i just make a transfer at a different point. Yeah that makes sense.
I left the restaurant and started walking down the street. Suddenly, i realized i hadn't looked for accommodation in Geneva. Jumped on the Hostelworld app quick and...
Oh fuck, there's nothing available tomorrow night.
Alright.
Maybe i can just do one day in Geneva, and then head back to Luxembourg that night?
I don't know. I'll figure it out later. On the train. Right now, i should get a few more Amsterdam things done, before i get rained on.
That tulip museum that i'd barely missed yesterday was actually pretty close. I headed over there.
I spent a lot longer in the tulip museum than i expected. I didn't think i was so interested in the history of tulips, but the presentation is incredibly well done. This is also a small museum in the basement of a shop that sells the product in question, just like the cheese museum next door, but the quality of the experience is so much higher. Which i guess is why this one has an admission price, while the cheese museum is free.
The Amsterdam tulip trade in the 17th century was absolutely bonkers. Rich people were paying more for tulip bulbs than houses. One helpful chart in the museum tries to give an impression of what the Dutch economy was like at the height of "tulipmania." A few examples: a mug of beer cost half a stuiver. A cloth-shearer was paid about 18 stuivers a day. There were 20 stuivers in a guilder. A carpenter would make about 250 guilders a year, and a well-off merchant might make an average of about 3,000. The highest recorded price paid for a single tulip bulb, in 1637, was 5,200 guilders.
The museum had a number of interesting artifacts, including some old paintings depicting the antics of tulipmania, but the most interesting stuff to me was actually the decorations they'd built specifically for this experience. A multi-layered wood carving showed a timeline of events for the 17th century tulip trade, including a couple of intricate miniature buildings. LED strips between the levels gave each row its own hue of backlighting. The woodwork was exquisite, and made me want to steal the concept and build one like it, though i can't think of what mine would represent. I kept shooting more and more videos of this timeline until someone else came into the museum behind me, and then i moved on. Could've been there for hours, admiring the woodwork.
I had no intention of making this stop take up so much of my day. There was another museum i was very interested in, the Museum to the Dutch Resistance, so i thought i'd better go that way.
I made a quick stop over by the Embassy of the Free Mind on the way. It sounds super libertarian, and maybe it is, but i was interested in something more...librarian. Within that building is the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, also known as the Ritman Library. It's a collection of 25,000 printed materials related to Hermetic tradition, Rosicrucianism, alchemy, gnosis, esotericism, comparative religion, Sufism, Kabbalah, anthroposophy, Freemasonry, and more, and that is incredibly fascinating to me. Some examples of the rare books they've collected include the first illustrated edition of Dante's Divine Comedy from 1481 and Cicero's De Officiis form 1465.
For better or worse, seeing this collection of books is what inspired Dan Brown to write The DaVinci Code, so take that however you will.
This is the kind of space that really deserves several days to marinate in, so without that kind of time, i thought i'd just poke my head in, take a quick selfie, touch something, and be on my way. But it costs money to enter, and i didn't think that i could make it worthwhile without losing the Resistance museum, and that was the more appealing choice. I didn't even grab a selfie outside the building, i just left.
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It was 2:45, and the Dutch Resistance Museum closes at 5. It was a 35 minute walk. I'd better get a move on.
For some reason, i thought it was closer to the train station, kind of in the main area where i've worked my way out from every day, but by the time i was crossing that courtyard, my GPS was still showing over 20 minutes' walk.
I left the touristy area, and started getting into parts of Amsterdam that look like a normal city. I don't know why i hadn't considered this before, i guess i just thought Amsterdam was the cobblestone streets and the canals and everything. Why would i think that? I've been to so many cities like this on this trip. Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw...as soon as you leave the Old Town areas, they're just regular cities.
The Resistance Museum is right by Hortus Botanicus. If i'd planned things a bit better, more efficiently, i could've and should've done these one after the other.
Just before i got there, i found a neat little public garden with some bizarre metal sculptures in it. First, i saw a five-foot blue sphere, but behind that, a seven-foot-tall tyrannosaurus rex. I walked over to it, thinking how much Amanda would love it, and then noticed that it had human hands. What's up with that?
There was another creature standing on its hind legs beyond the t-rex. I can't say for certain what manner of beast it was intended to be, maybe an anthropomorphic rat or kangaroo, but it also had human hands, and part of its abdomen was open, with a smaller creature pushing its way out, using its also-human hands.
This area is called the Mahatma Gandhi Plantsoen. I could not tell you why.
It started to rain, for real. I could see the museum from the Plantsoen, so i wasn't out there for long.
The Dutch Resistance Museum is meant to tell the stories of Dutch citizens who resisted the Nazi occupation in the 1940s. I tend to like museums dedicated to the rebels who fought back, rather than the more general museums, or the museums that specifically gear toward the horrible crimes of the oppressor, both of which seem to be much more common. Amsterdam even once had a Totalitarian Art Gallery once, but it's permanently closed now.
I thought the museum did spend a lot more time on a general overview of the horrible things the Nazis did to Amsterdam than it did on the resistance itself. Obviously, an amount of that is necessary to understand what you're seeing, but it felt like that stuff hogged most of the spotlight. Still, it was interesting to learn about, because i did not know very much of this stuff.
In fact, even though i haven't done a lot of World War II stuff on this trip, it's not something i like to focus on for great lengths of time, i've learned so much more about the war than i ever did in school. It's mind-blowing to travel around the continent and still see all the scars that are left on every single country from a conflict three-quarters of a century ago. It's utterly baffling to read so many stories of populations who were complicit in the atrocities. Going through this museum and seeing, over and over, bits about how the Dutch tend to respect authority and didn't think Nazi rule was so bad at first is just...disheartening.
Also it's poignant to see all the parallels to the current state of American politics. People say drawing these comparisons is overreacting. It's not. The people who say that are uneducated. All of this has happened before. Things are not good right now.
I do want to point out another thing here, too. I went on a bit of a tangent about the Latvian Popular Front claiming they won through non-violent means, and i thought that was a bit disingenuous. I feel like the Dutch Resistance Museum is kind of doing something similar, but different here.
They also claim that the Dutch Resistance was non-violent, and was successful because of it.
But then they go on to have exhibits on individual resistance members like Willem Arondéus, my new hero, a gay artist whose major contribution to history is blowing up the Amsterdam Registry Office in 1943, eliminating Nazi records on thousands of Dutch Jews and potentially saving innumerable lives. Someone ratted out Arondéus and eleven of his co-conspirators. They were executed immediately. A friend of Arondéus attested that, before the execution, he asked her to share his final message with the world: "Homosexuals are not weak."
So we're playing pretty fast and loose with the definition of "non-violent" here.
Anyway i enjoyed the museum quite a bit, the displays are evocative and the stories are compelling. Despite having nearly two hours to get through it, i failed, and had to rush the last few rooms. It doesn't seem that big, but this is really a three-hour museum.
It was still raining when i exited the museum just after five. Despite this, i decided to go see the National Holocaust Monument, since it was nearby, and in the direction i needed to go anyway.
The Dutch National Memorial for the Victims of the Holocaust and the Porajmos stands as a monument to the over 102,000 Jewish, Roma, and Sinti citizens of the Netherlands who were arrested by Nazis during the occupation. A maze of red bricks, each with a name, date of birth, and age at death for each known victim, the majority of whom were deported and killed in Auschwitz and Sobibor. Another 1,000 bricks were placed on a separate wall, left blank, for future additions of any other names that are identified. Several of those have already been filled in.
Above the brick walls are stainless steel Hebrew characters spelling out the word לזכר, "In Memory Of," which can be read from the air.
I walked back to the hostel. It was about time to go.
I knew i wouldn't get another chance to eat tonight, so i really hoped Stick Up would be open, because it was either that or train station food at this point. Originally, i was going to go there first, sit down and eat, before i picked up my heavy backpack. But my bladder was full, that situation was getting difficult to ignore, and all i walked past were pay toilets. So i went to ClinkNoord first. Got my bag. Said goodbye to the hostel i'd called home for the last several days. It's been good to me. I just wish i'd known sooner that they had bitterballen.
Stick Up was open!
I got the chicken Stick Up To Go Box, even though, when i ordered, i fully intended to eat there. However, they only have a couple tables, pulled close to the building to try and keep them out of the rain, which is still coming down, and they were occupied. So in the end, i took my To Go Box to go, got on the ferry, and found a spot to sit down in Amsterdam Centraal and eat.
Which happened to be the Starbucks seating area.
A Starbucks barista came through while i was there, sweeping up the floor. He craned his neck around when he saw me, looking into my box of food, and looked like he was going to say something, but then must have decided he didn't care and moved on.
The food was good! I don't know what it's actually called, since they just label it as "To Go Box" on their menu, but the presentation is much like döner. Many of the ingredients are the same, too, but the flavors are totally different. I know it's not the truest form of Indonesian food, or even Dutch Indonesian, that i could've gotten. But this is where i ended up, and i'm pretty happy with it.
Okay, where exactly am i going? Platform 4. Got it. What's the train labeled?
Zurich?
Huh. Okay.
So, if i don't wake up in time to make my transfer...or if i just decide that Geneva's not worth it because of the housing situation...i can just...stay on the train, and end up in Zurich?
That might not be so bad.
You know, i honestly can't remember if we went through Zurich in 2013. If we did, it was either literally we just rode through it, or else we maybe made a quick transfer there. I scanned through the old logs, and the only Swiss cities i think we stopped in were Bern and Zug. I'm gonna have to think about this.
Also, to get to Geneva, i have two transfers. The first one is at 6:30am in Basel, Switzerland. But the next one is at 7:30 in Bern. So i could also choose to stay in Bern, if i don't go to Geneva. Amanda and i were in Bern, but only for three hours, so there's only a couple things i could do there that would remind me of her. There is a particular picture of her that i absolutely love on the bank of the Aare River that i could see if i can recreate. Hopefully it doesn't make me as sad as the Arc de Triomphe one does.
Decisions to make.
In the morning. I'm gonna sleep on it. This is probably a poor choice.
Uhhh. It's almost 10:30pm, and they've just shut off the overhead lights in my car, which is great...but they've also shut off the power outlets?? I'm not very happy about that. I've got devices to charge.
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