Week two Amsterdam: Got What I Asked For.

After a weekend in Amsterdam, I no longer feel stagnant-- in fact it seems I've been launched from my comfort zone through a cannon.  On Friday 27. Jan, myself and several other bioscience students left the Bonn central station to begin our commute to Amsterdam. Upon our arrival in the Netherlands, we missed our connecting train to the city. Fortunately, the travel policy was lenient, and our expected arrival time was delayed by only an hour or so. But it was the beginning of many problems down the road.  Once we entered the Amsterdam main station, it was quite obvious we weren't in Kansas anymore. 

In spite of my many years living in Germany, where censorship is less severe than the U.S., even I was a taken aback by some aspects of Holland. Things that could easily be seen as taboo or illegal in the U.S. were embedded into the culture and were as commonplace as the crowd of cyclists on the streets. The chaos was controlled and regulated. That being said, it was easy to spot the tourists from the locals because their expressions were a dead give away. 

Apart from the culture shock, the challenges of Holland welcomed us immediately. All ten of us stood outside of a building, baggage in hand, looking for our Hostel. After an hour standing outside, we realised the booking and confirmation was a scam. Fortunately we found another Hostel located above a noisy bar for the night. Regardless of the rocky start, we didn't let the situation get the best of us and we all ventured out to see what the city had to offer. 

The next day we found another Hostel conveniently, or rather ironically, located near the Red Light District. We all had reasonable doubts, but the rooms were surprisingly nice. We spent the remainder of the weekend individually on canal tours, visiting pubs, visiting cat museums, art exhibits, and buying expensive food. [Side note, if you go to Amsterdam, bring your own groceries or be rich]. 

When it was time to depart, we once again ran into major problems with our train commute, and most of us didn't get home until after midnight. 

In general I feel I've learned a lot more about desensitization in different cultures, and how an open mind makes the experiences much more worthwhile.