Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a really scary place, even scarier than Barcelona, and that’s saying something. At least in Barcelona, people are wary and you get the feel that they want you to stay away from them. In Amsterdam, the male population seems way bigger-built than the female population, and the people seem ready to pounce on you and to pick ur pocket or grab ur backpack anytime. Very ‘approachable’, so to speak. In Barcelona, people hold on to their bags and look around carefully before transacting at the ATM. Here, they people do whatever they want and will probably mow you over if you stand in their way, so they don’t really need to look out for anyone. It helped that I received multiple warnings to ‘Be Careful!’ or to ‘Be Very Careful!’ in Amsterdam. So I guess my ears are pricked up and my nose is in the air sniffing for danger at all times.

Then again, as a cultural comparison, the British are probably more like the French, while the Dutch are more like the Spaniards. No, scratch that, it’s not true.

The train system is as convoluted as can be. The first day I arrived at the airport, I guess I didn’t set my watch properly, as the flight attendant said while we were landing ‘It’s a bout 4:20pm in Amsterdam’, when in fact it was probably 4:17pm. Which in this case led me to take the wrong (earlier) train at the right platform. Hahahar. It wasn’t really inconvenient, just dumb.

(Oh, I have to add a note here to say a big THANK YOU to Auntie Wella and her friend Teresa for stuffing my extra bag and 2kg of carryon luggage into my backpack, so that I didn’t have to pay the extra GBP20 for excess luggage which the meanie check-in lady of Flybe would not let me check in onto the plane. EVEN if I paid to have 2 bags in the hold luggage, I was still only allowed to put 20kg into the hold, which was taken up by my main luggage. Crappers. But anyway, really nice to have experienced travelers around, so cheers to these 2 ladies, the best.)

The weather in Amsterdam is such that if you took too many consecutive pictures or held the frame too long without snapping, your fingers froze and you couldn’t feel them after a pretty short while. Same for if, say, you were walking with a supermarket shopping bag and your bag-holding hand was not in your pocket.