But all excuses aside, I am devastated that I only have less than a month left in this incredible city. I have fallen absolutely in love with London and each day that passes my love just grows stronger. From the fashion to the boys to the public transportation system to the adorable words and phrases to the currency system to the nightlife to the proximity to other fun places to the literally everything. I could see myself living here for the rest of my life. But alas, I know that's not in the cards just yet...
So, it's been awhile since I last blogged. Naturally I've done a lot, seen a lot, and been to a lot of places. My trips thus far include: Edinburgh, Scotland; Stonehenge/Salisbury, England; Dublin, Ireland; Brussels/Bruges/Ghent, Belgium; Berlin, Germany; Liverpool, England; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Oxford, England. Plus, this weekend I'm going to Prague, Milan, and Venice. Now that's what you'd call a wanderer :)
I really want to write individual blog posts about each city, but the more time that passes by the more I forget about each trip. So, for now, here is a little post about the last place I visited:
Amsterdam, Netherlands
This was the trip I was looking forward to the most. If you don't know (and you probably don't) my mom was born in the Netherlands and therefore half of me is 75% Dutch. This means that the purest part of me is Dutch (as far as I know... I think my dad's side is very mixed). My mom speaks Dutch to her mom on the phone, I grew up dipping my fries in mayo, and I used to eat Dutch chocolate sprinkles on buttered toast as a meal (it's called hagelslag.) Basically, I've been wanting to travel to Amsterdam ever since I learned how to say 'thank you' in Dutch. Plus part of my favorite book, The Fault in Our Stars By John Green (the movie adaptation comes out in June! Read it! Watch it! It's amazing!!!), takes place in Amsterdam, so I was doubly excited to visit. My high expectations made me nervous, but fortunately for me I loved it just as much as I had hoped to. It's such a beautiful city with canals running all through it and cyclists covering every surface. The food was pretty amazing (ahem, pancakes) and everyone seemed so happy. It's such an interesting place to me because at first glance it seems like any other beautiful city in Europe yet when you look closer you find that Amsterdam is unlike any other place in the world (that I know of, at least.) For instance, in Amsterdam a "coffee shop" is actually a place where you can buy and smoke marijuana (some sell coffee too though). And there are a lot of them. And it's totally normal. And everyone knows about the Red Light District, which honestly was different but a lot more tame than I expected it to be. But you probably wouldn't realize that you can literally shop window to window for prostitutes if you didn't get lost and stroll in the area at night, and you wouldn't realize what really happens in a coffee shop if you hadn't stumbled into one in an attempt to buy a latte. As John Green puts it, “Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”
Over the weekend we also took a canal tour, went to the Van Gogh museum, took the cliched 'I Amsterdam' picture, toured the Anne Frank House, went to the park they go to in TFiOS, stuffed our faces with food (including but not limited to: dutch pancakes x2, fries, waffles, stroopwafels, stroopwafel mcflurries, ribs, cheese, and chocolate), saw the movie Divergent with Dutch subtitles, and visited the floating flower market (which was extremely underwhelming). I was pretty bummed out that I didn't get to eat Indonesian food while I was there because my mom and I are also Indonesian and considering that the Dutch colonized Indonesia, the food is supposed to be pretty good. And naturally I wanted to have some crazy out of body ethnic experience by eating food that my ancestors ate in the country that my other ancestors lived. Also I almost got coffee with my second cousin(?) on my mom's side that I've never met before but unfortunately we didn't connect in time. It would have been nice to really discover some of my Dutch roots (or at least talk to someone I'm related to who Dutch was (probably) their first language.
OVERALL: My trip to Amsterdam was pretty great and I will definitely come back (and hopefully explore more of my culture next time.) Here are a few of my favorite photos from the trip:
it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses."
Dank je wel, Amsterdam.
Wandering away,
-h
