06 Aug 2012: Adieu to Europe

06 Aug 2012:

Adieu to Europe

Freiburg am Breisgau, Baden-Württemburg, Germany/Saint-Louis, Alsace, France/Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands/Detroit, Michigan, USA/Lansing, Michigan, USA

H: 19/20/19/27/29 L: 16/16/16/14/12 Weather: Showers/Showers/Rain/Clear/Clear

I couldn't believe that I was leaving Europe already, but, unfortunately, it was the case.  Chris and I set off fairly early in the morning so I could see more of Freiburg than I had already.  We tried to budget ourselves some time, but, of course, given that it was a morning, both of us were moving pretty slowly.  We were also stymied by the ridiculous hours kept by some of the stores of Freiburg.  I wanted to get my brother an official U. Freiburg t-shirt, and their official store was open for about three hours in the early afternoon of Tuesdays and Thursdays...?!  I did get to see the city center in the day, though, which was nice.  What a lovely town.

Chris looking super sexy.  I have no idea why I'm so shiny.

Chris is pretty much the best tour guide in the whole world, besides being a fantastic person in general.  Hooray and schwa for Chris!

By this time, it was time for us to head back to his dorm to pick up my stuff.  Once we got there, though, I realized how close I was cutting it.  It would not be good for me to start my trip back to the US by missing the bus that would get me to my plane to get to my plane to get to my plane to get to Lansing.  No sirree.  We ended up sprinting through Freiburg, and I felt so rushed that I ended up having him take my money and run to the bus stop ahead of me and my luggage to pay for my ticket.  Luckily, desperate measures were not needed, and I made it on the bus with just about exactly a minute to spare.  Whew!  I said my goodbyes to Chris, then headed to the EuroAirport.

The EuroAirport, despite being, officially, the "EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg", is actually a ways outside Freiburg, 70km away.  So I had about an hour bus ride to get there.  After a bit of a struggle to actually get my tickets, I passed through security fine. (I did almost lose half of my identification documents in the scanner, but luckily some unknown force made me look back and see that they had fallen out of my travel belt.)  Then I had an agenda: I needed an Orangina.

Orangina is one of my fondest memories from my first trip to Europe.  Every restaurant we went to, it seemed, offered the deliciousness that is Orangina.  (For those who don't know, Orangina is an orange pop that has 1) real orange juice, 2) some pulp, and 3) probably crack or something in it.  Seriously, give it a try.)  And I hadn't seen it at all on my second trip to Europe.  If I had seen it, I would've had one, trust me.

But, finally, in EuroAirport, I sighted my prey in a vending machine.  I paid however much it cost, then quaffed it almost immediately.

Sweet orangey goodness.  The only drawback was the plastic bottle that it came in, rather than the original funny-shaped glass one :(

My flight from EuroAirport to Amsterdam was uneventful, besides learning that I could apparently gate-check my carry-on that was too large for European standards.  In Schiphol, I realized I had only gotten my first ticket in EuroAirport, not my other two, so I had to print off my next two tickets at a KLM counter.  This probably makes me one of the few people in the world to have a KLM-branded Detroit to Lansing ticket.  Once more, I went through the at-gate security too early and ended up waiting around to no good end, though at least this time my layover was shorter than my previous one to Glasgow.  (I'm not sure why everyone is so obsessed with Schiphol.  Maybe others have longer layovers that make it seem like they don't have to get to the gate so early.)

My flight from Amsterdam to Detroit was fairly similar to mine in the reverse direction. My seatmate was not as awesome as mine on the way over, but he was still pretty cool; he was a professor of marketing from Wayne State returning from a conference in India.  He said he had taken an extra day in Amsterdam on the way back just because he could, and was as disappointed as I was by the prices of Amsterdam museums. (He seemed to like the Van Gogh one better than me, though.)  We had a friendly chat for a while, then I turned my attentions to the entertainment console, identical to the one on the flight over.

Going east to west, you're supposed to stay up rather than sleeping.  Thus, in quick succession, I watched the Hunger Games (good!  followed the book very closely, which I was impressed with), The Ides of March (good, if depressing), and Captain America (alright, but by this time I probably would've thought that YouTube video of the panda cub sneezing looped a bunch of times would've been quality entertainment).  And finished it up with an episode of Parks and Recreation for good measure.  Alright.

The plane landed in Detroit, and then the wonderful process that is "US Customs" began.  I think I was there for about an hour and a quarter, or something like that, which was not fun.  In line, I chatted with my seatmate and a woman returning to the US from a week in Vienna, where her son and his girlfriend were staying.  One of the wonderful things about not having a checked bag was how much easier it was to stroll through security after the initial check, but, of course, I had to wait in line behind everyone who had like five checked bags.

Oddly, though, after going through customs, I had to leave security entirely and then go back in again.  To make matters worse, I thought I had misplaced my Detroit to Lansing ticket.  (At this point, I was having a very hard time braining.)  So, I went and printed a ticket at one of the check-in booths, only to find that it was proudly branded "DTW-->LAN".  So, obviously, the security guards would conclude that I was flying just from Detroit to Lansing!  How embarrassing!  (Like I said, I was having problems braining.)  Luckily, though, I somehow re-found my KLM-branded ticket to Lansing, and proudly showed it off at security.  They seemed unimpressed by my awesomeness.

My first dinner back on US soil was a cheeseburger at Fuddrucker's, because, for serious, Fuddrucker's.  Then I got on board the flight to Lansing.  I was picked up there by my soul sister, Jessica, and my friend Jaya, who I'm quite grateful to for doing that for me, because I'm not exactly sure what happened the rest of the night except for realizing when I got to my apartment that the trash can had disappeared from my kitchen.

As it should be clear—at the very least, from my going back to complete this even more than a month after I actually got back—I had a fantastic time in Europe.  Thanks to everyone who made it possible, from the funding for the travel to the people who made staying in hostels and seeing the sites wonderful!  Lessons learned:

• No matter how well-planned your itinerary is, things will still fail.
• That said, a well-planned itinerary can still be a wonderful thing.
• Make sure to have a cell phone that works in the countries you're visiting.
• Trust the sites that have crowdsourced reviews—they know what they're talking about.
• Muesli is delicious in yogurt.
• Croissants are a wonderful breakfast food.
• The best way to make friends is to mention food.
• Europeans don't believe in "fast casual" dining, so, either get take-out or realize you'll be there forever.
• When in doubt, public transit workers are often kind or helpful if you're lost.  Sometimes even both!
• Minnesotans sound like gay Germans to Europeans.  (Possibly even gay Jewish Germans.)

Thanks for sticking through with my blog.  I loved writing it!  As should be clear from my Facebook status updates, I'm having a fantastic time at grad school.  I hope your fall is off to a great start!  Thanks for helping make my life absolutely wonderful!  :)

Flails,

Chris

31 Jul 2012: Amsterdam DNA

31 Jul 2012:

Amsterdam DNA

Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands/Brugge, West Flanders, Belgium

H: 18/17 L: 12/11 Weather: Light Rain/Mostly Cloudy

The next day, I had even more time in Amsterdam. As you should probably tell by now, this was a quite rare experience for me, to actually be able to savor a city a bit.  Speaking of savory, did you know that combining plain yogurt, muesli, and brown sugar makes deliciousness?  Omnomnom.

I headed out to the Anne Frank House right after breakfast, because I knew it was a very important thing to see when I was in Amsterdam.  It was, well, pretty much what you expect.  "Claustrophobia" is the name of the game, and it really wasn't a fun one to play.  The stairs lurched up at impossible angles, and the rooms were quite cramped.  They preserved some of the wall hangings she had put up, framing them behind some glass, and preserved some of the original pages from her diary.  It was a moving experience.  (And one I couldn't take pictures in, again.  Grr.)

My next stop was the Amsterdam Museum that I had also tried to go to the previous day.  Unfortunately for me, on the way to the Amsterdam Museum, I discovered a couple of stores, side by side, that were basically stores custom made for me.  One had a bunch of old collectibles: stamps and such.  Interesting, yeah.  But the bookstore: now that was awesome.  Rows and rows of old books were stacked side by side, haphazardly, in a store that had steps everywhere and winding spiral staircase on the side to get to rooms with even more old books.  I was basically in heaven.  This is a problem, though, because heaven is hard to leave (see also, the London Science Museum).  I basically had to handcuff myself to hustle myself out of the store having only bought a $15 map of Amsterdam that had been cut out of an old atlas.

The Amsterdam Museum had received somewhat underwhelming reviews on TripAdvisor (I mean, they were very good, but some people complained about some aspects of the museum), but I found that those reviews were not at all merited; I was very impressed.  Looking obsessively at the social history of one town was much more impressive to me than giving sweeping overviews of social history.  You got a real taste for the city that you wouldn't otherwise.  I mean, there were some aspects that were a bit distracting--the museum had an obsession with this hokey QR scanning thingy that bordered on unhealthy--but overall it was well done.  The museum offered an "Amsterdam DNA" feature that was essentially a personality test, and it told me that I my "Amsterdam DNA" was "civic virtue" and "trading strength".  Okay, I guess it understood that I'm lawful :?  Someone should probably tell my ancestors the Langestraets, who I'm descended from.  I do suppose that the Amsterdam city burgher still is pretty pimptastic.

The Museum took a while, though, and I had no time to visit the Dutch Resistance Museum before I went to Bruges.  At the Amsterdam train station, though, I had the absolute best pasta that I've ever had at a take-out place.  They made me (fresh - I saw them making it with my very own eyes!) a salmon pasta that was absolutely delicious.  Despite the fact that it was piping hot, I wolfed it down and headed for the train to Brussels, then connected to Bruges.

The train to Bruges was rather disorienting; the only language used for announcements and on the screens overhead was Dutch.  I practically had a panic attack when I realized I hadn't checked the monitors to confirm whether Bruges was listed as a stop on my trip; the only cities I had seen were Ghent and Ostend.  Thankfully, I had caught the right train.

Bruges is a very pretty city; it's one of the best-preserved Medieval towns in Europe, thanks to having escaped much of the destruction of World Wars I and II.  My hostel was a ways away from the train station, so it took me some time to drop off my stuff.  My roommates, unusually for the time, were all in their room after I got done with dinner, and I got to know them.  One was a Colombian woman who had been living in London for about four years, while the other two were backpackers from Perth, of all places.  They were all pretty nice, though the Perth guys had to ask what language they spoke around there.  (I heard them the next day saying that the guy working at the hostel from the US Virgin Islands didn't sound like they thought because he didn't sound Jamaican.  Uh, yeah.  The USVI are not Jamaica.)  They were pretty nice, though.

I gave them hints on what to visit in the US, as they mentioned they were interested in going there later that year.  They said they had New York City, Texas (for a music festival), and Los Angeles on their itinerary.  Okay, sure; depending on the length of your stay, you have to go to NYC.  It's not actually the US, but it's definitely important.  Texas, well, they were there for a music festival, and I hope for their sake it was in Austin or San Antonio.  Los Angeles?  Skippable, in my estimation.

My advice to them was this: Chicago should be one of their most important destinations.  Think about it.  What other place in the US offers the combination of (1) a city-sized city with tons and tons of stuff to do and (2) being in the Midwest, empirically the most US-like region of the US?  In Chicago, you can have your exciting events and your folksy Americana all in one complete package.  And it offers a good public transit system (for the US) to boot!  I also gave a shout-out to the West Coast north of Los Angeles.  They seemed like guys who'd really enjoy the San Francisco/Portland/Seattle axis, particularly because they mentioned they were hoping to go to Vancouver (which I'm also hoping to go to sometime!).

We decided to go out to "da club" later that night.  Okay, well, it wasn't a real club.  It was just a bar that had music.  But I still enjoyed being able to dance.  My dancing won several approving stares, particularly my hip gyrations.  I guess being obsessed with hula dancing as a kindergartener helped me out with that.  Some guys even came over and, having clearly been dared to do so, started dancing with me.  One of them started a dance off, but my ridiculous flailing quickly put a stop to that, as they proclaimed me the victor.  They were amused enough by my dancing that they ended up taking a couple of pictures with me.  I don't actually claim that I'm a good dancer, mind you.  But I like seeing others happy, and, based on the fact that people were entertained enough by me that they were taking pictures of my dancing, well, I guess I succeeded that night!

On the way back, I chatted with the Colombian woman about her boy troubles.  She had this Texan, you see, who had been trying to seduce her.  It sounded like he was kind of succeeding, and, from her testimony, anyway, he seemed to deserve her praise - he was quite kind to her, and her coworkers kept texting her during the evening about how he had been asking for her at the restaurant she was waitressing in.  She also kept mentioning a British guy she was also kind of flirting with, but I told her to go with the Texan.  I'm not sure if she followed my advice.  We grabbed some fries on the way home, then fell asleep pretty soon after getting in to our dorm.  Whew.

30 Jul 2012: Red Light

30 Jul 2012:

Red Light

Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands

H: 19 L: 11 Weather: Partly Cloudy, Scattered Showers

I woke up on the morning of July 30th feeling strangely refreshed.  I had set my alarm for 08:30, to make sure I'd be down for breakfast at 09:30 with time to spare.  After all, I had been starting to look like a scruffy hobo and needed to shave - false advertising in that I would of course be a suave and debonair hobo.  I took a nice shower, successfully shaved, and folded my clothes that I had laundered the night before, then headed down to breakfast.  I went down to breakfast and found the breakfast room completely empty.

I checked my watch.  10:30.  Er, what?

It turns out I had successfully changed every single one of my clocks except for the one in my luggage, which I couldn't get to.  Well, great.  I had successfully stood up the Canadians.

Feeling a bit panicky after my exploits in accidentally standing people up in London, I resolved to make sure the Canadians knew I was not standing them up.  I took a tram out to the Anne Frank House, wandered around for a bit to see if I could spot them in line, then took a seat by the exit.  And waited.  And waited some more.  And read "Lord of Chaos", the 6th book of the Wheel of Time series, because why not.  (Note that I am responsible for about half of the article text on the book's Wikipedia article.)

Meanwhile, people were leaving the House.  I had no idea how long---

Okay, so, I'm sitting in a Noodles in Silver Spring right now, typing this up, and there's a 7 year old white kid sitting at a table outside a Ben & Jerry's rapping along to his iPod, complete with motions... wtf???---

they had spent waiting in line, when exactly they had given up on me and headed to the House, or how long people usually spent in the House.  Finally, at about 12:15, I worked up the courage to ask someone exiting the House when they had gotten in line.  10:15.  Okay.  Good.  I think.  Maybe?  At about 12:30, I start thinking about heading out, but just then the Canadians step out of the House.  Obviously, they seem a bit surprised to see me, but happy (though the wife keeps making alarming references to their having thought I stood them up), and we agree to go to lunch.

Luckily for me and my obsession with breakfast, the place I had found on TripAdvisor for lunch was called "Pancakes! Amsterdam".  It served, well, pancakes.  We moseyed down there, and all of us ordered authentically Dutch pancakes.  I got pancakes with muesli and blueberries, which were odd but rather delicious, and came served with one of the most delicious yogurts I've ever tasted: it was light and creamy and so whipped it was practically mousse-like in consistency.  Mmmmmm.  We chatted a bit about Amsterdam and about plans for the rest of our journeys, and I felt immensely grateful that they hadn't just shunned me.  In fact, they had waited around for just about when I arrived at the breakfast place, then kept their eye out for me - a comparison of timing shows that I must have arrived almost literally just as they were entering the House.

They weren't much museum people, so we split ways.  We agreed that getting drinks at happy hour together that night might be a good idea, but I think I underscored the fact that I was going on a tour that evening meant I wasn't completely sure about my plans well enough that when I didn't show up that night (spoiler alert) they didn't hate me.  I hope!  While they headed off to explore more of the city, I made a beeline for the museums in the southwestern part of Amsterdam.

Unfortunately for me, though, I received a nasty surprise: the Rijksmuseum, where the "big names" in Dutch painting have many of their works, was not free to me using the pass I had bought like I thought it was.  Instead, I headed to the Van Gogh museum, which was full of Van Goghs.  Sure, I appreciate him as an artist and stuff, but I found the museum rather uncompelling.  The only painting I really recognized was "Sunflowers", the painting that in print form adorns the bathrooms of many a semi-upscale hotel bathroom.  Worse yet, I couldn't take pictures, which is half the fun of visiting anything for me.

Next, I went up to the central part of the city to see if I could go to the Amsterdam Museum, but it was closing within about an hour of when I got there.  Instead, I wandered around the most touristy part of town, which was packed with shops catering to tourists.  In Amsterdam, that means a lot of t-shirts that frat bros would probably really, really like.  I ended up getting dinner from a random shop that sold sandwiches and donuts.  Have I mentioned that Europe does pastries and baked goods so much better than the US?  Because it really, really, really does.

After dinner, I went on a tour of the red light district.  Yes, that one.  Yes, this is still me.  I have not been abducted by aliens, to my knowledge.  I have not been replaced by a simulacrum.  But I figured while I was in the area I might as well see what all the fuss is about.  YOLO or something.

The tour was being offered in English and Spanish.  Entertainingly enough, the Spanish groups were twice the size of the English one, and they had to call in for reinforcements to be able to lead them all around.  I had bought my tickets online, and, after buying, was told that I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO BRING A COPY OF THE RECEIPT or else I WOULD DIE.  I had been wandering around for a while unsuccessfully trying to find an Internet cafe with a working printer to no avail, and my smartphone (with receipt included) had died during the day.  My demise was imminent.  Thankfully, though, I had written down the confirmation number on paper that morning and brought it with me, and, lo and behold, that was exactly what the tour guide needed.  I was saved!  The woman taking down confirmation numbers told me I was smart for doing so.

I was shocked by the fact that most people in the tour group I was a part of were pairs in couples going together.  There were only a couple of other single guys, one of them a neuroscience major from Tufts.  We saw the major sights and all had a great time, particularly because our tour guide was clearly a proponent of some of Amsterdam's more unique activities.  It was striking how different the atmosphere was from almost anywhere in the US; Las Vegas really doesn't compare, because there's still an air of furtiveness about it in the US. (I have no idea about Boulder and its Amsterdam-like activities because I've never been there.)

My particularly favorite site to see was the street our tour guide showed us that had some of the more interesting ladies of the night alongside one of the best concert orchestra venues in the city and one of the Christian hostels in Amsterdam that are supposed to be super laid back and immaculately clean.  We also saw Princess Juliana's childcare center in the middle of the district and coffee shops next to ice cream parlors.  It was all just so... chill.  Very Dutch, from my experience.

We ended up in an ordinary bar in the district (no, not a coffee shop; sorry to disappoint), where I got to know some of the other members of the group.  Many of them were from Australia, including a pair of newlyweds from Perth.  Like I mentioned, one of my favorite things about this trip was the international connections I was able to make - such fun!  I ended up accompanying the people back to the central train station, then catching a tram back from there to my hostel and going back to bed.  Though I was going to bed way earlier than the guys doing the "real Amsterdam experience" in my room, they were totally chill and left the room to let me sleep.  Awesomeness.

29 Jul 2012: Laundry Friends

29 Jul 2012:

Laundry Friends

Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands

H: 20 L: 13 Weather: Partly Cloudy, Rain Late

After my time in London, I was ready for a quiet day in Amsterdam.  I didn't want to do nothing, but I definitely wanted to make sure I didn't have any disasters during the day.  I let the French students staying in the hostel wake me up with their noise, then went to get dressed.  Ugh.  My room was a pigsty.  Wrappers were lying around everywhere, and clothes were piled on top of each other haphazardly.  Over it all, the room smelled of products that one would typically associate with Amsterdam.  I quickly gathered stuff together and headed for breakfast.

Breakfast was pretty great, actually; the first "continental breakfast" that was actually continental in nature.  I tried swirling in muesli with the plain yogurt they offered, and it was actually pretty tasty.  (I have no idea if that's at all a normal thing to do, but it seemed like a good idea!)  After breakfast, I helped an Israeli man with tech support.  He apparently had gotten his first laptop (a fact that was painfully obvious) and needed some help connecting to the free wireless internet in the hostel.  My advice basically amounted to "have you tried turning it off and on again?", but it seemed to do the trick.  He was friendly enough, and I wished him luck in finding a job, which he was in Amsterdam to do.

After that, I was off to lunch, at a place recommended by Tripadvisor (my Bible for this trip).  It ended up being well worth it.  I had some sort of honey ham sandwich that came with a wonderful salad.  I'm not usually one for salads in the US, but salads in Europe are a completely different deal: this one had pineapples and strawberries in it, as well as what you might expect out of a salad.  This compared favorably against the American tradition of salads being lettuce topped with lettuce garnished with lettuce and additionally a bitter sort of salad dressing.

However, Europe has a way of teaching you how different it is from the US.  When the waitress asked whether she could get anything else for me when I was done, I said, "No thanks," which in the US is a sign for the bill.  In Europe, it's a sign for "no I don't need anything go away".  So, she disappeared, and I had to hunt her down to pay for my meal.  After I did so, I faced the very real situation of "omg is it polite or not to tip".  I remembered, though, that in the Netherlands tips are not expected but are only to be given if there's particularly good service.  As I didn't have extraordinary service, but was still extremely concerned that somehow I would be rude by not giving a tip, I took my change and FLED IMMEDIATELY, because when in doubt RUN AWAY.

I was off to the Tropenmuseum, a museum about the tropics, not about tropes.  It ended up being a fascinating museum.  The museum started as a way for the Dutch to show off how awesome their colonialism was, and the museum is now interesting in that some of the exhibits are basically about how exhibits about the tropics used to be exhibited, and what that could say about the society of Europe.  The museum had a rotating exhibit about death and the afterlife that I found particularly interesting.

It's a coffin with a duck.  Yep.

After navigating exhibits about just about every corner of the Earth one could think of, I came away convinced that I was looking at a certain Bailey's future workplace.  Marvelous!

On the way back from the museum, I walked through a beautiful park, where a live band was playing.  It was nice to sit down, listen to some good music, and do some people-watching.

Then, I set off for milk.  I had seen a supermarket on the way over, and decided to stop by and see whether I could get a meal to go - such things were very common in the UK, so I assumed they must have been in Europe, too.  However, as soon as I entered the grocery store in Amsterdam, I saw that things were a bit different on the Continent.  I was trapped.  When entering the supermarket, I had to go through a gate, and it was impossible for me to leave without going by a cash register.  Obviously, this wouldn't be a problem if any of the cash registers were open, but the ones that were had closed gates that prevented me from leaving.

Well, this was a problem.  Not only could I not get what I was going for, this awkward situation made it impossible for me to rely on my default "flight or even more flight" reflex; it was clear that I couldn't leave without buying anything (or going through the line with... nothing).  I became more and more alarmed, before I saw a way out: milk!  I managed to spot a little 500 mL carton, grab it, and get in line.  This led to my very first complete conversation in Dutch, at least from my end:

• Clerk: Hallo.
• Me: Hallo.
• Her: (says what the price of the milk carton was)
• Me: (gives her a Euro)
• Her: (asks me whether I want a receipt)
• Me: (extends hand)
• Her: (gives me change)
• Me: Dank u!
• Her: (puts receipt in hand, smiles)

I considered myself victorious.  She was clearly awed by my linguistic finesse.  (Actually, the Dutch were the friendliest in Europe when you spoke their language.  They're clearly used to speaking English with outsiders, so they seem to enjoy it when outsiders attempt their down language.  Also, "u" is the polite form of the second-person accusative pronoun—like many languages, it also means "y'all" or "you guys"—so perhaps they're also amused that I'm being (probably unduly) polite.

The milk tasted LIKE VICTORY.  Also, Canadian painting exhibition?!

Returning to the hostel, I made plans to have a quiet evening.  There was a school group that was pretty loud, but I had some laundry to do and dinner to eat, so I made do.  The hostel offered a pretty reasonable dinner, actually, including a delicious strawberry mousse, for an appropriate price.

Doing laundry, though, afforded me an opportunity to meet other non-school-group people in the hostel who were doing laundry.  I befriended a group of Basques (who had just graduated from high school and were headed to do medical research).  They were amused by my adoration of the Basque language and had no idea how well-loved the language is in linguistics in general.  There was also a husband-wife pair of Canadians; she was a primary school teacher (the second Toronto-area primary school teacher I met, incidentally!), and he (his name was Ransom) was in some sort of business job, though he was thinking about switching to education, too.  It was the hostel bar's happy hour, so we got some cheap drinks and sat around talking about the split between religion and science, the education systems of our countries, and various sundry matters, then planned to head to the Anne Frank House together the next day.  Trust me on this one: meeting people in hostels is a lot of fun to do!

By the end of the evening, I was pretty wiped, so I headed up to my room, dreading the mess.  Luckily, the group that had made the mess had left, so the room had been cleaned.  At first, I had assumed the messy group was the same one as the group that had made the room smell, ah, all Amsterdammy, but in fact that two people somewhat responsible for the latter were still there.  I chatted with them, and they were absolutely indignant about how messy the room had gotten thanks to the students in the room.  My roommates were British, and the students were French - need I say more?!?  We bonded over shared revulsion for the students; they ended up being pretty good roommates, and I learned a valuable life lesson about making assumptions about people based on their recreational activities (or something :P).

28 Jul 2012: Christopher and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

28 Jul 2012:

Christopher and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

London, England, UK/Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands

H: 21/22 L: 14/16 Weather: Scattered Clouds/Clear

I tried to sleep in as much as I could without missing the free continental breakfast my hostel offered, to help recover from my unwanted late night bus-hopping.  When I finally shuffled out of bed, I had been planning to do some laundry; I didn't have anything scheduled for the morning, and didn't really feel like doing anything about that, because I was terrified that somehow something bad would happen.  Instead, I decided to do laundry.  As I rummaged in my wallet, though, I came to the sobering realization that I had money for either my fares around the Underground that day or for laundry, but not both.  Well, it was a nice thought.

The plan was to meet with my cousins Chelsea and Garrett, as well as Garrett's girlfriend Suzy, at 1pm at Garrett's hotel.  He was staying at the Doubletree Westminster, which I had typed into Google Maps the night before.  I saw that it was by the Victoria station on the Victoria line, and headed in that direction, getting there with about a half an hour to spare.  Neither Garrett nor Chelsea were there, but that didn't faze me, as I was so early.  Instead, I settled down to watch Olympics coverage and read a book, though the hotel staff had unfortunately switched coverage to that of dressage.

And I waited.  Fifteen minutes.  A half an hour; it was now 1, the time we were supposed to meet.  Not there.  And I kept waiting, and kept waiting.  I checked to see if the hotel offered free wifi; no dice.  But, I figured, if they walked into or out of their hotel, I would see from the place were I was sitting.  Now it was 1:30, then 1:45, then, finally, at 2, I walked up to the front desk and asked if Garrett had checked in - maybe he had gotten a different flight from the one that he was expecting, and/or Chelsea's train had gotten in early or late and they had met up there or something.  Instead, the desk clerk said, "No one by that name has checked in at our hotel."

Alllllright then.  I ask, panicked, if there's a Starbucks nearby, so that I can use their Internet.  She directs me to the nearest station.  I walk over there, check my Facebook messages, and notice my blunder: I had Google Mapped "Doubletree Westminster", and it had directed me to a Doubletree by the Victoria station on the Victoria line.  Chelsea had told me to seek out a hotel by the Pimlico station on the Victoria line.  Argh.

So I make my way back to the Doubletree desk and freak out a bit (I'm practically in tears), and eventually the desk clerk realizes a little bit of what's happening and lets me use their phone to call over to the proper Doubletree.  They tell me that Garrett, Chelsea, and Suzy have already left, but they've left me a note, and that I should take a bus to their hotel.  Given my dismal record with buses, I find this advice somewhat terrifying, but I say okay and depart immediately.  At the bus stop, they tell me it'll be super easy; I just have to get on the bus and get off at Pimlico (er, I almost spelled that "Pimplico") station and it should be right there.  Okay.

It's not that easy.  I get on the bus, get off at Pimlico, and... no hotel.  I wander around for a bit.  No hotel.  I  sidle into a spa and ask the dude at the desk if he knows where the hotel is.  He has no idea.  I ask if there's a way for him to find out.  He takes out his smartphone and Googles "Doubletree Westminster".  The first search result is the hotel I just left.  The second is an unrelated Doubletree.  The third is the right one.  I try to tell this to the guy with the smartphone to get him to press it, but instead he clicks on the link to the wrong hotel and wastes time with that.

By the time I'm actually pointed in the right direction, march up the correct street, and enter the proper Doubletree, it's 14:50.  I stagger in and make my way to the desk.  The desk attendant there gets me the envelope with Garrett's letter.  In it, he says he's going to circle back and check at 14:30 whether I showed up.  I want to scream in frustration.  Instead I ask the clerk whether he did show up, and she says no.  So I settle in to wait.

I'm there for about an hour, and the group doesn't show up.  This is fine, and totally understandable, given how long they must have waited for me in the first place.  I have to head up to St. Pancras, but before I leave I ask whether there's a post office around; I have to mail a postcard I bought in York to my mom.  They are ridiculously nice to me.  Instead of directing me to the nearest post office (it's Saturday, they remind me; post offices are only open Saturday mornings, not afternoons), they take my postcard, no questions asked, and offer to mail it for me.  I ask how much I have to pay.  They seem surprised and say, "nothing".

Again, I'd like to underscore this: people in London were generally very, very nice to me.  My London experiences were not caused by anything but unfortunate coincidences and my own stupid judgment, not by Londoners or the people I was intending to see there!  I feel absurdly grateful to them (in fact, writing this post reminds me that I want to send management there a nice email about this incident), but I don't really have the time to express proper gratitude.  I try a hearty "thank you" or two and then practically sprint out towards the Underground.  I'm ready to be out of this town.

St. Pancras reminds me a bit of an airport terminal, particularly because they built a special wing just for the Eurostar, complete with security checkpoint and airline-like tickets.  I check in and make it through security no problem, then take my seat on the Eurostar train.  It's practically empty, but I suppose people would be more likely to be coming into London rather than leaving it on the first day of Olympic competitions.  As the Eurostar makes its way through the southern English countryside and plunges below the English Channel, I am tempted to see this as a clean break from London, a chance to start anew with the same vitality I had enjoyed until I made it to the city of my nightmares.

So, I made it to the Brussels-Midi train station, where I'm told to take a train to the Brussels-Nord station and connect from there up to Amsterdam.  When I make it to Brussels-Nord, they happily inform me that by "to" they meant "towards" Brussels-Nord, and I had to get off at Brussels-Central to make it to Amsterdam. I turn around and go south a single station, then am forced to wait an extra 40 minutes to catch the last train to Amsterdam, which gets in at about 01:00.  Well, so much for a clean start.

On board the train, the booming voice from the ceiling informs us all to keep an eye on our baggage, because, quote, "there are pickpockets on this train".  Well, great.  Now I'm stuck on a late night train feeling super paranoid.  At least, for a while.  Then I manage to reassure myself that it's something like the signs on Michigan State's library saying "thefts are occurring here".  I don't think the MSU Library is saying that, 100% of the time, there are acts of thievery occurring somewhere in the building; it's just trying to say that, in general, thefts are things that happen in libraries, and occur every once and a while.  Similarly, I think the voice from the sky was just trying to tell us to be watchful rather than somewhat passive-aggressively telling us that pickpockets are on board the train but doing nothing whatsoever about them.

Finally, I get to the Amsterdam train station, where Google Maps told me to buy a train ticket to get to my hostel.  I have to buy it for a whole stop, and almost walk over a group of smokers sitting in the back of the tiny commuter train with my suitcase.  Finally, I walk my way to my hostel, up through streets named after islands formerly in the Dutch East Indies, then turn onto Timorplein.  Yes, that Timor.  Now, finally, I can take this as the sign of new beginnings.

18 Jul 2012: Circadian Rhythms Jhghghhhghgh

Howdy!  It's currently 19:24 in Glasgow, and I'm trying to force myself to stay awake until 21:00 so that I don't completely mess up my Circadian rhythms beyond hope of recovery.  This actually worked really well the first time I went to Europe—they forced us to keep moving until 20:30 and then sent us to bed, I had some of the most amazing hours of sleep in my life, then woke up with my Circadian rhythms completely fixed and ready to start my previous Europe trip—so, hey, hopefully it works again?  I figured writing a blog post would give me something productive to do that wouldn't involve me, I don't know, trying to write a manuscript at ???!?!??!?!?! o' clock in my head.  But my apologies if I'm near-incoherent at time.  Based on the emails I sent at rhombus o' clock from Amsterdam, I apparently start using bigger words when I am tired.

Also, wtf, 70 pageviews?  You people are ridiculous! <3

So, let's see, how have travels gone?  Shockingly, the flight from LAN to DTW was uneventful, except the gate we waited at was un-air-conditioned for no apparent reason.  Our departure from DTW was then delayed for about an hour because our cabin was too hot for Delta travel guidelines.  Well done Michigan!  Detroit's temperature of 38C at the time was the hottest in the country, according to the CNN feed I saw on one of the in-terminal monitors.

This is the only picture I took yesterday in the US.

Once we finally got onto the plane, I got stuck next to a chatty guy.  Now, you know me - normally I'm happy to chat it up.  But usually I like to read on plane rides and just use them as a time to disconnect and destress; they were wonderful times to use to write down reflections of different grad school visits this spring.  Plus, I wanted to try to sleep on the plane, at least a little bit.

This time, though, it was different.  It turns out the guy I was sitting next to was pretty awesome.  For one, he has the best birthday in the whole world.  (Along with Madonna.  And me.)  Which I thought was a pretty awesome coincidence.  But he also lived in the DC area for 40 years (went to Georgetown for grad school and stayed there until retirement) and absolutely loved classical music - in his house in Dayton, Ohio (where he grew up and retired to.  protip guys: retiring somewhere cheap is a good idea!), he has more than 6000 classical music CDs and 4000 classical records.  He was headed to Amsterdam to connect to a flight to Budapest to begin a journey down the Danube, which would complete a trans-European river extravaganza he had planned.

So, like, three hours into the flight, I realized we were almost half-way into the flight and I hadn't attempted to sleep or made use of the plane's entertainment features.  Oh, yeah, those: zomg.  Everyone had their own little remote control they could use to control the TV in front of them, where we had like 40 movies to choose from and 40 TV episodes it was all so CRAZY and even while I was having fun let's-talk-about-Osmo-Vänskä time I was also like "I JUST WANT TO WATCH 20 OF THESE MOVIES RIGHT NOW" so eventually I just kind of was like "welp I should probably go to a quiet place so that I can pretend to rest some" and watched "Hugo" (which was good!) and then attempted to sleep for an hour but it wasn't very effective.  Meanwhile my awesome seatmate watched Office Space, because he was awesome.

The one drawback to the entertainment system: they had a single episode of Game of Thrones to watch.  Okay, cool, makes sense.  And what was that one episode?  Season 1.  Episode 9.

Season 1.  Episode 9.  w.  t.  f.  FAIL.

Tragically, though, I failed to swap contact information with him.  In fact, I never even got his name, I don't think.  Argh.  I really need to not do that, because yay for friends from all over the world :\

Anyway, as we were landing, awesome seatmate was like "I don't remember Schiphol being all that big" but of course it was huge.  The first thing that Schiphol remended me of was vanilla chapstick, because I think the cleaner they used smelled like it.  I wandered over to my gate and gave my awesome seatmate a manly handshake as we parted ways.  Then I did something really stupid: I wandered over to my gate and went through the random passport checkpoint they had there to sequester all the UK-bound passengers on KLM flights in one area.

Yeah, no.  Don't do that.  Not right away.

Can you spot the semantically-implausible syntactic ambiguity?

You see, I had about a four hour layover. When I landed, the only thing I could think of was "I have to go to the bathroom REAL BAD". So, when I was looking for a bathroom outside the passport perimeter and saw that the first one I located had a long line (i.e., it had one), I immediately thought to myself, "Aha! There will be one through the checkpoint!" and went through right away and it turned out I was the opposite of correct because it turns out that the men's bathroom inside the checkpoint area was entirely closed and so now I was stuck in an area where there was one overpriced snack vendor and nothing to do and AUGH.

I did fix the bathroom issue (there was a unisex one) and the nothing to do issue (free wireless internet in Schiphol?!) but the food issue ended up being anti-fixed because one reason I thought it was okay to go through security was that they said they were going to feed me lunch on the Amsterdam-->Glasgow plane but then "lunch" was A TINY BAG OF SALT-AND-PEPPER CRACKERS WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? (crackers with salt and pepper on them. my Minnesotan sensibilities were offended by the pepper.) Also American carry-on standards are apparently quite different from European ones so I had to be "that guy" who puts his bag in sideways into the overhead bins. The one redeeming thing about Schiphol was that there was a guy with a copy of Storm of Swords, but he wasn't even reading it.
So by the time I get to Glasgow I'm cranky and hungry and frustrated and sleep-deprived, but at the same time I'm exhilarated and excited and enthusiastic and ready to jump around because there's people around me talking in SCOTTISH ACCENTS like that's a PERFECTLY REASONABLE THING TO DO.  What on earth is that about?  So I get cash, get lunch from a lovely lass named Lindsay, then head out the door and onto the Glasgow bus, where I have to ask, in the most pathetic way possible, "What do I do?" to the bus driver to make my way to the place where I'm staying.

One of the things that struck me about important trips before, and international travel in particular, is how interesting the difference is between the perspective of the traveler and everyone else around them.  For me, this is a really important day: it's the start of an exciting and awesome new adventure, a fitting end to my undergraduate career and start to my graduate, where I'll be visiting awesome places in Europe and having a lot of fun.  For most everyone else who got on board that bus as it wended its way through Glasgow, it was Wednesday.  (Worse yet, I was taking up slightly more than a seat with my bags, and whenever I'm doing that a cute old granny sits next to me, and I have to dislodge her from her seat to get out.  argh.)

EU = Holiday Inn = Scotland?

So, Glasgow.  Fun fact, Americans: you know how weather this summer has been hot, sunny, and dry?  Well, Europe's had the opposite of that.

You know what are fun?  25C temperature drops from departure to arrival.

So it's in the low teens here, with occasional rain.  Pretty lovely.  Glasgow itself is very... er, industrial.  I think it's the European equivalent of, say, Toledo, or Lansing, or Rochester, or whatnot.  Some buildings are not without their charm, but overall I wasn't particularly impressed, besides the novelty of OMG THEY'RE NOT AMERICAN BUILDINGS YAY.

To help keep myself away, I took myself on a walk up to the conference location for tomorrow and then visited the close-by Hunterian Museum, which was pretty alright (and free!).  Apparently, though, all museums in Glasgow close at 5, so I didn't see the Kelvingrove Museum, which is supposed to be better.

Siamese deer say "och aye" to that!

Wow this is a long post.  Okay.  Anyway.  Now I'm at my accommodations, which are really just a dorm room that was vacant for the summer and was thus rented out.  That works great for me; I get Intarwebs and dorm-style living, which is basically what I'm used to, so it's nbd.  And it's cheap!  Yay for cheap.  And convenient.

Tomorrow, the first day of the conference and presentation time!

Flails,

Chris