I believe my last blog entry ended right after I arrived by train at Köln on Tuesday May 19th, it rained on me, I got lost, and then I settled down at the Meininger hostel/hotel at Engelbertstrasse 33-35, Köln, Germany.
Even though I got to Köln at about 19:10, I didn't get to experience too much of Köln's nightlife. When I finally found and settled down at the hostel it was around 9PM, and having been denied internet access for so long and then finally having free WiFi, I spent a lot of time on the computer. I did a LOT of stuff. Besides replying to and composing new personal emails, catching up with friends on IM, catching up with my XKCD and QuestionableContent webcomic readings (latter addiction provided by Andrea), and emptying the pics in my SD card into the computer, I was trying to figure out what to do afterwards. I had the next two days figured out: I was going to spend one night in Köln enjoying nightlife, wake up in Köln, have breakfast, check out at the hostel, and go out to explore Köln most of the day before taking an afternoon/evening train to Düsseldorf, and repeating the same pattern again (pattern cordially provided by Nadya). However, I wasn't completely sure where to go after that. Darja had sort-of told me I could visit her in Berlin for a couple of nights, but we hadn't really specified exactly which nights those were. Thus, I wrote her an email asking if it was OK to come over on Thursday evening. Wanting to plan even more ahead, I sent out a CouchSurfing request to a girl, asking her if I could stay in Prague for a couple of nights during the weekend (Prague is a weekend-stay MUST). All of that took me about 3 hours, and by then it was past midnight. I knew I had missed on the early nightlife of Köln by then, but I decided to go out and try to catch up with the late nightlife, which in my opinion can be a lot more fun.
While I was appeasing my computer addiction, many other young people had come into my 8-bed dorm room, which had been empty when I had come in. Many of them had gone directly to bed and were under the sheets and snoring, so I wasn't sure if it would be nice to start making noise by showering and getting dressed to go out, but then I saw one of the guys putting dress clothes on. Not being the only one now, I looked up bars and clubs in the area, showered, got ready, and went outside of the hostel. It was around 0040 by then. I had not memorized the directions to any of the clubs, so I just followed a couple of guys who had left the hostel before me. A few blocks later, I was on a street filled with light and laughter. Restaurants and bars were all around, and many of the formal eating places were just shutting down.
Happy with my find, I began walking down the street, looking for electronic-music-friendly-looking dance clubs. Most of the places I saw were either just drinking bars (not my type) or places to grab a bite at night. I saw one that had a lot of dance music coming out of it, but it also had many young people walking out of it, so I thought it might not be that good. I decided to ask the guy sitting in the front if I could go in, and he just said something like "Schloss", while portraying a negative gesture with his whole body. My guess was that the place was already closing, so I continued looking for more places like that.
Either because I'm not a good searcher or because it was a Tuesday, I didn't find a thing. Slightly disappointed, my mind switched priorities and realized that I was hungry. Lucky for me there was an asian food place very near to where I was, so I went in and asked for a "Vegeratische Tasche" at 3.00 Euro and for a "Frühling Rolle" for 1.00 Euro. I was very impressed with the prices, and then even more when they gave me a wrap as big as a full-sized Freebird burrito, which I then discovered was densely filled with tomato, lettuce, yogurt (yes, it tastes GREAT), and other delicious and compatibly-flavored vegetables. It was awesome! The Frühling Rolle also had very high quality/price and size/price ratios. Happy with my meal and with the moderately attractive woman who had attended me with a cute smile, I asked for a fruit juice drink with the picture of a weird berry-looking fruit that said "Lychee", and was glad to pay the 1.40 Euro she asked me for it.
Content with a meal and starting digestion, I decided to go get a good night's sleep at the hostel, so I began walking back. That's when I got lost. The way back seemed strangely unfamiliar at first, and then the street ended with a mandatory right turn without me ever seeing my hostel, and I didn't know what was the way to my hostel. I knew I could just retrace my steps and try walking back again, but that felt like cheating, so I took the right turn and began seraching.
It wasn't that bad, but I spent about 10-15 minutes walking through unrecognized streets. Not too long after, I had come into my dorm room, changed to my shorts/pijamas, and gone to sleep.
The next day I woke up early at around 6AM (I can't remember why), which allowed me to be the first one to eat the hostel breakfast I had purchased the previous night for 3.50 Euro. I thought about what I was going to do that day - the plan was to just walk around and around the city, looking for interesting stuff. The main stop would be the Köln cathedral, the city's most famous landmark. I thought of renting a bike (a special deal at the hostel offered it for 4 hours for 4 Euro), but then as I was packing up my bag in the room, I started talking to a girl who slept in another bed in the same room. After a little chit-chat, we introduced ourselves. Her name was Jodie, she was from New Zealand, and she was traveling with her brother Jean. They seemed pretty nice, so I decided to tag along with them, as they were also going to explore the city during the day. So we left our big backpacks in the hostel luggage room and began walking throughout the city. First stop was the cathedral. We took a lot of pictures from the outside, but we were only able to take about 10 pictures on the inside before a loudspeaker amplified what a priest said: "Religious service will begin in 20 minutes, all group tours are asked to either leave or participate in the ceremony". Shortly all of the tourists, including us, walked outside. Having no other ideas for places to go to, we just began walking towards the river. We passed a couple of museums, none of which we decided to go into, and then began walking near the shore. A few minutes later Jodie and Jean realized they were hungry, so we sat down at a Thai restaurant and asked for some food. They asked for dishes they knew, while I aksed only for a dessert made out of Lychees. My dessert looked like a soup of engorged toad eggs, but it tasted well enough for me to eat it. Jean paid for the whole meal, and I didn't notice until a few minutes later. That was nice of him.
We then walked less than an hour through the city before Jodie declared she was really tired and wanted to go back to sleep. Jean then decided he would do laundry, so I walked back with them to the hostel and then said goodbye as they walked to their, and no longer my, room. We didn't get each other's contacts, so I'll probably never see them again.
So then I went to the luggage room and picked up my big backpack, leaving the hostel for good. I walked back to the cathedral, trying to take a different path, and went inside the cathedral again. I took a lot of pictures, and then I decided to climb the cathedral. A priest showed me the way to the tower, I paid 2.50 Euro, and then started to climb the cathedral.
It takes more than 500 steps to get all the way up to the cathedral. I'm moderately happy of the time it took me to climb all of it - around 6 minutes. A long video clip and a bunch of pictures later, I walked back down the stairs and kept walking around the city for a few hours.
After satisfying myself with Köln's streets and buildings, I walked back to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), which was right next to the cathedral anyway, hoping to find a postal office there and send all the gifts I had bought. There was no postal station at the Hauptbahnhof, but I was redirected to one at a place called WDR, about 10 minutes away on foot. So I went there and happily began putting the gifts into boxes that they sold right there. I was disappointed when they told me that I could not send alcohol - 2 bottles of wine were (and still are) by far the heaviest gifts I had. I packed what I could, however, and paid about 25Euro to have it sent.
After sending the packages, I thought I was done with Köln, so I walked back to the train station and took the train to Düsseldorf, leaving at 18:14. The timing was just about right - I arrived about 10 minutes early.
I think that it was during the train to Düsseldorf that I realized there were power outlets beside each seat on the train. so I happily plugged my computer in and did some writing or something like that. I didn't do much though - the train got to Düsseldorf in 20 minutes.
Arriving in Düsseldorf was less glamorous than I had imagined. Whereas Frankfurt had greeted me with an impressively-sized Hauptbahnhof and illuminated skyscrapers, and Köln marked its presence with the largest cathedral I've seen in Germany (and probably also in my whole experience), Düsseldorf gave me a mediocre first impression. It wasn't 7PM yet, and people were still bustling in the daylight - hurriedly walking, waiting for the bus, ignoring traffic signs over tram rails - it made me think of Mexico City, even though I'd never been there. I wouldn't say it was dirty, but it was much less colorful than the neighboring cities I'd been to. "Must not be a very touristy place", I thought, as I began to look for a bus that would take me to my hostel.
It took me about 20 minutes to find my bus, after which I took a tram that took me on a bridge over the Rhein river to my hostel - Düsseldorfer Strasse 1, Düsseldorf, Germany. I checked into the hostel speaking in German, but it wasn't long before I had to give up and tell the hostel woman to please speak to me in English. I noticed that I got a regular metallic key instead of the magnetic keycard I'd been getting so far at other hostels. Upon reaching my dorm room, I saw that several beds were already taken. I began unpacking and taking out the things I would use that night, when two USA-accented young guys came in and began talking to me, making small chat, trying to get to know me. Their names were Phil and Robert, they came from a Jesuit college in Omaha, Nebraska. We were still chatting about general information about us, when another guy came in, a Polish guy raised in Canada called Pawel who, he told us later, had a chinese girlfriend he was going to meet right there in Germany. "How multi-cultural", I thought. He was really cool - he had already traveled a lot, so he gave us several tips about the places we were all going to. He gave me a list of chinese cities he recommends visiting and told me he could hook me up with possible hosts in Russia and/or China. As we all sat down talking around the central table, several beers and glasses of gin were downed, mostly by Phil and Robert, who then proposed we should go out to the Düsseldorf clubs, to which I heartily agreed.
We walked outside of the hostel and over the bridge the tram had taken me over a few hours before. We saw lots of lights coming from the river's shore, so we followed them and eventually found the night hotspots. Restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, and alcohol shops were all open, even though it was a Wednesday night. Pawel explained this by saying that May 21st was some kind of religious holiday in Germany.
We went into an alcohol shop, and Pawel bought a polish beer for all of us. We all offered to pay ours, but he insisted on paying, so we accepted. As we then walked finding a club to go into, we found a moderately-fancing looking club: "Peaches and Cream". The bouncer almost didn't let us in because of my casual clothing (khaki pants, Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt, tennis shoes, long hair, & blue bandana), but he then thought about it and let us in. "Hmm", I thought, "must be kind of empty if he changed his mind". The music that came out of it was great, though (some kind of house/dance), so I happily went in.
I'm glad we did. We got again treated by Pawel to two rounds of beer for all of us, after which I felt my mind go light and my feet nimble. Behind the bar, several LCDs displayed the Alien movie. "Weird", I thought. A bar-club-cinema. That was a new one to me. There were several girls dancing on the dancefloor by themselves, and I began talking to Pawel about how it's hard to get a girl to dance with you if she's dancing with her girlfriends. He began telling me how it was easy, that all they need is a little attention and confidence, being a gentleman to them, and how that was enough with girls who are looking for a guy. I had not been too worried about girls for a while now, but the music was pretty good and I wanted to dance with one. Phil first took the dancing lead. He told the DJ he wanted one specific song, so then the DJ played it and Phil began dancing. He knew some spinning breakdance moves and he displayed them on the floor. They weren't excellent, but he impressively kept at it for a while, and then came back with us and continued with his beer, now eyeing girls who had possibly seen him dance and who would now like to dance with him. He tried to ask a couple of dancing girls out, but they all either ignored him or furtively told him off. "Poor him", I thought, "I know how that feels". Like being a beggar, and a crappy one at that. He didn't dance much for the rest of the night.
It was around this time that I didn't care if I got a girl to dance with or not - I just wanted to dance to the music. So I did. The music was a little faster now, so my feet paced up. My feet began following the melody, the rest of my body followed the rhythm, and then in a flash, I was dancing with all I had: flailing arms, rhythmic jumps, spins, air punches! Euphoria struck! I soon noticed several people looking at me, especially a couple of cute blonde girls in the middle. Now in the mood, it was fairly easy for me to go and dance around them. But then I noticed that they had liked my dancing, but not my appearance from up close - disappointment was evident in their faces as the tallest one gestured "no" to me and danced away with her friends. Uncaring, I did the same.
The second group of girls whose attention I grabbed looked younger, prettier, and unlike the first group, they giggled and whispered between themselves when they saw me get closer. I saw this as a good sign, and a few seconds later I was rubbing lower body parts with the prettiest girl in green. We twirled around salsa-style a few times, we got down, we got close, but when I rubbed my hands up around her waist, sensual-dance-style, she really began giggling and moved back with her friends. "Oh, too bad, she panicked", I thought. I managed to get her back on the dancefloor, but she danced less now, timidly, and it wasn't long before she put on her coat and said goodbye. I näively told her we should keep in touch, to which she responded "no" and walked away. "Too bad", I thought, and kept on dancing.
It was now around 3AM, and Pawel had already gone back to the hostel. Phil and Robert, quite a bit drunker (do people use this word?) than me, told me they were going back too. I still stayed for about an extra half hour - I was enjoying the music so much. But then I too felt the need for sleep, so I walked back to the hostel too.
It was pretty hard to get up the next day early enough to catch breakfast before 9AM and check-out time before 9:30AM. At about 9:20AM we all (Phil, Robert, Pawel, and me) said goodbye in the room. Pawel was staying in Düsseldorf, Phil and Robert were going to Berlin, and though my plans were to go to Berlin too, it wasn't a sure thing that we would meet. They had booked the night train, which I required payment for to get into so I didn't. Then I went into the bathroom to take the shortest full shower I could manage, came out, and I haven't seen any of them since.
My day exploration of Düsseldorf was a lot less than I had expected it to be. I wasn't sure whether there were any important landmarks in the city, so I just aimlessly walked around and around the streets. It wouldn't have been so bad, you know, if it hadn't been a national holiday and ALMOST EVERYTHING was closed. I walked around the city, barely meeting a person every now and then. The highlights of my day were eating at McDonald's, walking through a park filled with lagoons, bridges, and statues, spending my last (in coins) 0.30Euro to call Darja for like 15 seconds before the phone cut me off, and finally, finding an open Internet café! How I got to it I'm not sure, but I spent another two hours there that day, figuring out what to do. Darja had sent me an email about being busy and not being in Berlin until Sunday. Dang. My plans to go to Berlin that night were cancelled. The question now was where to go. If I stayed an extra night in Düsseldorf, I could try out either the same club or another club - the experience the previous night had been pretty good. But my roomies were gone, and there was no holiday the next day, so I didn't expect as much of a crowd in Düsseldorf that night. How about my next destination - Prague? Too early - I was meaning to spend my weekend in Prague. Then I remembered something Pawel had said "How can you come to a trip around Europe and not go to Amsterdam??" Amsterdam. Hmmm. I took out my map, and it was fairly close. It was already 14:30PM, but the short distance made it possible. Where to stay there? No idea. Hostel, for sure. So I looked online - there were lots of them, but I discerned two main kinds: the ones in the center, apparently cheap (18 Euro a night), but in a dorm room shared with 7 or 11 other people, and reported not-so-clean by previous guests. I considered cleanliness a healthwise-important thing to consider, especially in a city with a sex reputation like Amsterdam's, so I booked a hostel of the other kind: not central, but slightly cheaper, rated much cleaner, with free WiFi and a normal 11AM check-out time. I was very, very reluctant to entering my credit card details on an internet café computer, but the place had no available WiFi for customers and I really needed a place to stay. So I booked it a bed in a 6-bed dorm at Hotel Slotania, about 7.8km away from the Central Station and the infamous Red Light District.
Then I checked my Eurail timetable - the next train from Düsseldorf to Amsterdam left at 15:14 and arrived at 17:25, the one after that left 3 hours later. I checked my iPod clock - it was 14:55. I sent out the map for the route from the Amsterdam central station to the hostel to print but it failed, so I had the guy running the place come and help me. He told me I had to change my browser, so I did, and then I was able to print. I paid 5.10Euro for the whole time I was there, a printed page, and a cup of coffee. I took the change from the 50Euro bill I gave him, and while I fumbled it into my wallet I asked the guy where the train station was. He pointed and said "You go on that street, then you turn left and go straight". "How far away is it?". "About 10 minutes on foot". I looked at my iPod clock: it was 15:08. 6 minutes left. I smiled at him, said "Vielen Dank", and ran.
Running can be harder when 20+ extra pounds of weight are hanging on your shoulders. I had 6 minutes to reach the Hauptbahnhof, find out what line number the train that went to Amsterdam was at, find that line, go up the steps, and get on the train. As I ran across the first street I began chanting "I'm not gonna make it, I'm not gonna make it", but it was more a challenge to myself than a declaration. "I'm not gonna make it, I'm not gonna make it". I could see the station after the first block. I was so lucky to have found an internet café so near the Hauptbahnhof. Good thing it was a holiday and car traffic didn't impede my street crossing. Even the amount of people at the station seemed a little low, which allowed me to run straight in without hitting anyone with my backpack or having to awkwardly zig-zag anticipating people's movements. I stopped below the table of departures. "Amsterdam: Line 17 - 15:14". I saw my clock: 15:11. I then looked for a direction to line numbers: I found one that pointed up some stairs to lines 1 and 2. Then about 25 meters farther away, a sign for lines 3 and 4. I ran past each sign: 5/6, 7/8, 9/10... I thought it was interesting that that Hauptbahnhof only had 17 lines - I had to run to the farthest end of the station to catch my train. And there it was - the 15:14 train to Amsterdam. My clock said 15:12. I thought "YAY!", and got on the train with a lot of satisfaction and a lot of perspiration.
Computer enthusiast as always, I sat down beside a little girl because the seat had a table to use in front of it and a power outlet nearby. She didn't like my presence there, though, and after a few seconds of her looking scared, she walked over to her mom (I think), who was on the other side of the table, and lay her head down on her lap. I said nothing and just used the computer.
After the little girl left the train at an early stop, a fat blonde guy sat next to me and we began talking. He was from Canada and was Euro-tripping like me. He started out in Turkey and would finish in London. He talked a little bit too much, though, and I was sleepy, so I subtly and gradually ignored him more and more, and I think he eventually got the hint, because he took out some kind of portable game console and began playing with it. Me, I began this blog entry.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Amsterdam. I had already been there once, but that was 15 years before, and at that time I knew next to nothing about the infamous Red Light District, or about drugs being legal there, or even what drugs were... or even what sex was. To me, Amsterdam was noteworthy because of it was the coldest temperature I'd felt (in November 1994 as I experienced it) and because it had a neat little bridge I wanted to go across but my dad wouldn't let me because of something related to something about red lights that my older siblings were talking about. Now I was finally going to find out what was on the other side.
Upon arriving at the station, I tried to follow the signs to find an exit. And then I realized that I did not understand a single useful word from the signs - whatever was slightly similar to the little german I knew didn't make any sense, and most of the words were just plain weird. So I let common sense take over and simply followed the passenger stampede out the station.
When I arrived at about It was cool, about 15C when I arrived, but that was nothing compared to the freezing temperature I'd felt there before. The central station was streaming with people - backpackers, business-looking people, young kissing couples, beggars, all of them scurrying between each other, all trying to cross the tram rails and streets without getting hit. There was an obvious difference from the orderly, utilitarian-looking german cities I'd just recently been to. Though many basic building shapes were mostly the same, they were much more ornamented, more colorful - sculptures were at least 5 times as plentiful, many of them were gilded, and were seemingly of better quality. The city organization, however, was a mess in comparison. Signs were not as clear, streets twisted and stopped unexpectedly. It must've been much harder to build an organized city around and between canals (Amsterdam) that to organize a city around a single river (Frankfurt), of course, but it was interesting to note the difference.
I initially got lost trying to find my way to the hotel. I had a printed Google Map in my hand, but that only told me how to DRIVE the 7.2km from the station to my hotel, not how to take the bus. "Dang it", I thought. After deciding that walking the whole way would be too much of a hassle, I found a city mpa on the street, decided that bus 21 was the correct route for me, and took it. A nice italian girl I talked to on the bus (with difficulty - she knew neither spanish, english, german, or dutch) helped me find which stop to take. Upon reaching Hotel Slotania, I saw it was very nice. A big chandelier and many couches decorated the large lobby, and the presence of an elevator raised it high above a budget hostel. And I only paid 20Euros for the night.
It was a shared room, of course - I shared my room with 5 Australians who had just taken a mushroom dose when I arrived and who I played a whole round of UNO with - Simone, Emily, Chris, Niki, and Cole. Chris won that round. I doubt I'll ever see them again though.
Since the doped australians would be staying in the room for a long time, I decided to leave for the central part of town quickly. I took my camera, wallet, and iPod with me, and took a tram back to the central part of town. I fell asleep on the way a few stops after the Red Light District, so I got down and began walking around, looking for whatever the city had to offer. I thought Amsterdam was a very colorful town, seemingly very explicit of its sexual and drug liberalism (at least the touristy area), filled with sex shops, cabarets, live sex shows (the Australians mentioned a rotating stage show where the audience watches a couple have all kinds of sex), groups of young people in boats and on the streets drinking, smoking, singing, and shouting, and many signs, both large and small, which said "XXX". I wondered whether the original meaning of "XXX" was about the city, or if it had always been about sex, because some of those signs even seemed to date from the 19th century.
I had an early train to catch the next day - at 7:10 towards Prague, so although I was curious to try some locally legal mushrooms or LSD, I did not want to risk going crazy alone in the Amsterdam streets, get lost, miss my train, get robbed, and wake up to find myself stranded and penniless in a strange city. So I just took out my camera, walked around, and took a picture every time I saw an image that attracted my attention. I took special notice of the plentiful bridges and of several side-by-side buildings tipped to the side. They almost looked like domino pieces, one little push would make them all topple over.
I was vaguely trying to find the Red Light District, trying to remember which one was the bridge my dad had not let me cross. I don't think I pinpointed it exactly, but a few twists and turns in between empty/dark and packed/lit-up streets took me into a little alleyway, where all of a sudden I looked left, and a girl dressed in colorful underwear behind a glass door looked at me, winked at me, and signalled me to come in with her finger. Right next door another one did the same. I looked up at the alleyway, and there they were - little red lanterns lining up the whole alleyway. "Ah", I thought. THIS is it!
I have to say that many of them were very enticing - they displayed graceful winks and sensual, rhythmic hip movements. I had not the slightest intention of buying their services, but it was quite an interesting sight to see. Walking through it looked very hygienic and harmless, but still very real. I would've stayed and watch (the place, not the action - they put a curtain whenever a customer came in), but I didn't feel very comfortable just standing and watching in an alleyway filled with overused sex professionals and aroused guys walking around me. So I walked through, and came in to a cross-street parallel to a canal with very frequent bridges and more frequent sex shops. Across a bridge and through another alleyway I went. Also filled with prostitutes behind glass, I walked right through and found a plaza, where I saw the building I owe my best Amsterdam pictures to. It looked like an old building, three-storied but stout, it was neon-lit, and it had been made into a fancy Cafe-Restaurant. A marble reflecting bench on the plaza in front helped me achieve a reflection effect of the building for my photographs. About 15 minutes taking pictures of that building satisfied me, and then I walked back through the alleyways and to the main street. While I was crossing the bridge, I saw one of the prostitutes open her glass door and shout out something like "Keep walking, fat guy!!". I don't know why she did so - maybe there was a fat guy trying to get some pictures of her or something (there was a no-pictures sign on each glass door) - but her voice was shreakingly horrible - it reminded me of harpies and Medusa. Happy to have seen the Red Light District and happy to leave it, I walked back to the central station.
I took one of the last buses to my hotel, packed up my stuff, and decided I would stay awake the whole night to avoid missing my early morning train. I took my computer down the lobby and tried to blog and plan my next several days, but my body did not cooperate. I fell asleep many times, sometimes for as long as half an hour, and the lobby receptionist thankfully kept waking me up, happy to have someone there as company.
It was a very long night, but at the end of it, I was at Amsterdam central station, buying peanuts, cookies, and 3 kinds of milk for the way. Twenty minutes later, I was getting on the train that would take me to Frankfurt, where I would connect to Dresden, where I would wait almost a full hour before taking my last train of the day to Prague!!
To be continued...
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