AmsterDAMMMMMMMN

So I finally got around to making a blog for this trip. We've been here four days now and i'll try to update about that often, although no promises. Amsterdam was a bit of a mixed bag.

Day 1

It began with what is possibly the largest disappointment of my life; the Heineken Brewery. To try and metaphorically express this, if someone told me there was a film that was going to star Bruce Campbell, who teams up with Bill Murray to battle zombie-pirate-ninjas in a futuristic war situation, while Scarlet Johansen and that chick from Madmen have a pillowfight in the background for 90 minutes, but then when I went to see it it actually turned out to be a period drama romantic comedy where Robert Pattinson played every role, I still wouldn't reach the level of disappointment I did that day.

"The Heikeken Factory, surely then you'll get to see a factory floor, possibly some actual retail beer getting bottled, maybe a little of the fermentation process?" you might say. But you'd be wrong; soul crushingly wrong. Instead they do things like show you some giant test tubes filled with things that could potentially be used to make beer if they weren't too busy being displayed, feed you some beer that hasn't been fermented yet and then make you stand in a queue for 25 minutes to go on the 'bottle yourself ride' (this ride wasn't even optional, we had to sneak out when people weren't looking). There were also some ever so exciting museum rooms where got the priveledge of seeing REAL test tubes and beakers that were quite similar to ones that may actually have been used to make REAL beer in the 19th century.

Then after the tour, we got to go down to the bar area to enjoy a couple of free beers and relax. If I continued to converse with my mythical friend, at this point he'd probably say something like "Well Andrew, surely a bar within the Heineken Brewery itself will be jam packed with interesting Heineken varities to tempt and titillate my pallete?!". You'd be forgiven for thinking so Mr X., indeed these three foolish travelers made just such an assumption. But no! All that the Heineken Brewery had to offer was Heineken extra cold. Apparently they couldn't get their hands on any Heineken Old Dark or Heineken Regular despite the fact that they themselves produce it and the bar 50m down the road had both!

Suffice to say we were not amused. Tim actually took the map, drew a circle around the brewery vicinity and labelled it 'The Vortex of Gayness'. We now can't go within 200 feet.

Day 2

This day started off well enough with a trip to the museum. It was raining pretty heavily at this point, but "what's a slightly damp walk through the rain in 5 degree temperatures going to do to us?" we asked. Thankfully we were right, although I maintain we narrowly avoided death by pneumonia.

The museum itself was actually more of a gallery. It had a large quantity of old dutch pottery and furniture, as well as some very impressive silverwork, but the majority of the space was taken up by paintings. We saw a good number of Rembrandts, several of which were impressive, as well as masterpieces such as "Five pieces of asparagus on a kitchen table". There was also a room dedicated to tulips and tulip related art, as well as some info on how the tulip market managed to send a ton of people broke a few hundred years back. It was the dot com bubble of the 17th century!

So the museum was reasonably good, but the rest of the day was a bit of a fail. We wandered around for ages, browsed some department stores, tried to find some monuments but most of them were under construction or closed. It's amazing how many monuments are coated in scaffolding here. We ended the evening with a lovely stroll through the red light district, which was less than inspiring. However the night was somewhat salvaged by seeing a very excited middle eastern man get ushered into one of the window girls rooms. There's something very odd about seeing people so overtly taking part in the sex industry; there's no backdoors in poorly lit alleys here, if you want in it's in front of everyone.

Day 3

This was by far the highlight for me. In the morning we went and rented bicycles and spent the day riding around town. For people who don't know, Amsterdam is basically built from the ground up with bikes in mind. There are more bicycles than there are people in the city and bikes actually have right of way over cars and foot traffic on the roads.

So it is by far the best way to traverse the city. Many of the roads will see just a handful of cars per hour but a ton of bikes. We covered a huge amount of ground and probably cycled for four or five hours in total. Tim and I shopped a bunch while Nick went to indulge his cultural side some more.

Eventually we had to give the bikes back however, and, determined to have at least one big night in The Netherlands we went on the hunt for a bar. We wound up in this awesome little corner pub which had the perfect combination of atmosphere, beer and leaking fire hoses. There were people playing cards on one table, a chess game going at another and plenty of lively discussion. Australia is severly lacking in these little hole-in-the-wall type places. Just because a place is small doesn't mean it can't have an excellent array of drinks and a lively feel. Six or so (rather strong) beers later, we called it a night.

And now I sit in an Amsterdam bus terminal tidying this up about to embark on a three hour bus ride to Brussels, Belgium. Here are some other random observations about Amsterdam:

- Many things are amazingly cheap. We ate one meal for the grand total of 7.5 euros in total for the three of us. If you know where to look you really can find some bargains. I'll offer a prize if anyone can guess the cost of the cheapest bottle of water we found. It was ridiculous.

- There are queues everywwhere here. The queue to get into the museum was out the door, around the corner and down the block. The same was true of the Anne Franke house and the brewery that shall not be named. , that'll

- Dutch beers are, on the whole, reasonably good.

- Everyone here speaks flawless english. We haven't encountered a single person who hasn't understood us. Even the staff in obscure coffee shops and the underpaid employees of Macdonalds could converse with us.

Okay, that'll do. I'm out for now.

-Andrew