Vacance: Deuxième Partie - Freiburg & Amsterdam

Next I went to Freiburg and stayed with my friend Gabe. It was a pleasant little town. One day we climbed to the top of a hill (or mountain, who knows), on top of which was a tower. We climbed that too. I was complaining the entire second half of the climb, but hey, it was great exercise and it allowed me to take some good photos. I guess I worked off the pickled herring I accidentally ordered the night before.

There was a really fun bar that we went to which played "world music," but it was really just polka with a beat, and it ruled!

Dr. Leary's Laboratory:

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Then came Amster-damn! I met up with my friends Evelyn and Suzy who are also in my program. It was a really cool place for the first day and a half... I didn't see anything significant because my friends decided to go to to the Anne Frank house as I was getting in instead of waiting two hours! (thanks!!) But I enjoyed walking around the pretty place. The canals are gorgeous, and everyone rides around on bikes which is amazing. And a little scary for pedestrians. We stayed in two different hostels which was more beneficial than hasselsome. We got to see two completely different parts of town. The first night we were near a lot of restaurants (ethnic restaurants, Argentinean places everywhere for some reason) and bars, and pretty close to Vondelpark (beautiful!). We had dinner right across from our hostel at a Spanish restaurant. All of us shared a selection of their most popular tapas. Man, was I full after that.

The next day Evelyn abandoned us to go to LIVERPOOL (she thought John Lennon wrote Let It Be!), and Suzy and I galavanted around the city. We stopped at some bar for lunch where this crazy guy working there recruited us to blow up balloons and wear boas and lantern-hats (I mean it, he was crazy) in preparation for Queen's Day. Oh how innocently we helped them prepare!


That second night we were basically right in the red-light district. It kind of fascinated me, and I didn't feel grossed-out at first, which is probably the intent of such a standardized, legitimized form of prostitution, but the more I thought about it the less comfortable I was. I think it's even more unsettling than its illegal, surely less safe, counterparts. Anyway.

There was a carnival set up for Queen's Day, so we took a ride on the swings. But don't let the unassuming name fool you. These so-called swings would lift its passengers higher than all the buildings around it, and spin them at lightning-fast speeds.
Swings of Death
I like these pictures. It's like outer space as depicted in an 80's movie.

Then came queen's day, which totally ruined everything. At first it was fun in a "this is wild" sort of way, but by no means was it intrinsically fun. After a couple of hours of walking through massive crowds and broken glass at a rate of .02 mph I was ready for it to be over. But ohhh no. It's Queen's Day, silly! Meaning 24 hours and not the span of time when the sun is out.

We were planning on hanging out in Vondelpark just to evade the whole situation, but alas! The park, too, was filled with people. We would have had to have walked completely out of town to get away from the crowds. Toward early evening, the mass was eerily drifting toward the train station. It looked like a cult procession.

Deceivingly pretty: all that orange is a drunken crowd blowing deafening horns and wearing orange afro-wigs.

Some of the aftermath (substantially calmer):

Around 10:30, after Suzy had left me too, I had nothing to do but sulk in a café, so I went to a movie theater to dodge the trash and vomit. There were only two [awful] movies playing. I went to something with Dennis Quaid about assassinating the president. DO NOT SEE IT (unless it's Queen's Day).

In brighter news, the next day I got to go home, and I think I had a first-class ticket cause they served me a meal about every hour and a half. It was so nice to be back in Paris, and to my surprise, it had become sunny and deliciously warm! So I just relaxed. One day I sat on the steps of Sacre Coeur (tons of people were there doing the same thing) and colored and watched a cool street artist kick a soccer ball like a hackey-sac and balance it on his neck and head and arms.