Arthur - CS #5 | Eurail Drama

We took this travel day as something of a leisure day. This meant...NO ALARM CLOCKS! We had a good little sleep in, took our showers, packed our bags, and set out. We only had a few errands, the first of which involved dropping Estelle's keys off at her work (she kindly left us the keys so we could sleep longer). Then we went to the train station to get our tickets validated. We wanted to be on a 3:22 train for Amsterdam to be sure to meet our host at 8 PM. However, we still hadn't had our last waffles, our last frites, and I hadn't picked up my AWESOME present for Sam yet (amazingly bizarre spandex pants; I bought them on the condition that she would wear them at least once). We had to do some quick thinking, since it was already 2:45. In the end, Laura let me drop off my bags with her, and I went on a last hoorah mad dash through Brussels, on and off the tram, running up the stairs, frantically trying to find a landmark, sprinting through the streets, in and out of shops - phew. Turns out I got to the spandex pants pretty quickly, which left time for a...waffle! I got a plain one with just whipped cream on it. It was delicious.

Laura was a little surprised to see me when I returned to the train station so quickly. We then dragged our bags to our platform, and I went back upstairs to get us lunch (read: frites and fatty delicious sauces). That was a cool experience because since we were in a rush, I asked the Frite Lady in French if she spoke English. She looked a little pained and motioned her hand to say 'kind of, a little bit, not really.' OK. So I quickly asked her if she was making frites today (because I didn't see any). She said yes; I then asked her for two orders to go, asked which sauces she had, chose my sauces, got them on the side, et voila! She made some fresh frites for me and five minutes later I was on my way back to the platform.

Laura looked a little relieved to see me; We made our train with about 3 minutes to spare. We got lucky and even found a little 4-seater area where we could sprawl with all of our bags. We were happily munching on our fries like the fat kids we should be when the conductor came by to check our tickets. This was the first time we were using our Eurail passes. So, la la la we showed him our tickets. He first scolded us for not writing the date on the ticket (since we have multiple day passes, we are supposed to record the dates of travel before we board the train). Then he asked to see our passports, and took our tickets and our passports to go sit down with them and look them over. I was a little freaked out at this point - it really seemed like something was wrong. He did not seem happy and was not very talkative. Finally he came back. It turns out that in the pile of documents that came with my Eurails there are Travel Passes. If you read the first paragraph of the Travel Pass, it clearly says that the date must be written on the ticket before you board the train AND that the Travel Pass must be filled out. If either of these things are not done, your tickets can be considered invalid and you could get them confiscated and/or fined. WHOA! So that was a big wake up call (neither of those two horrible things happened to us, thank goodness, we just got dirty looks from Mr. Conductor).

Between the Eurail drama and my tendency to fall asleep on moving objects, we were in Amsterdam before I knew it. It was only two and a half hours away. Crazy that in Europe two and a half hours easily means being in another country! Love it. Hannah and Lila told us we would see a lot of bikes here, but HOLY MOLY there are bikes everywhere!!!! I have never seen so many bikes in one place in my life; literally everybody had one. Absolutely insane. We took a free commuter ferry to where our host said he would meet us and ended up getting there about an hour and a half too early. So we're just standing at this dock, in this really industrial looking area, thinking 'I wish there was a cafe with a glass of water and some internet around'. Nothing. Then...just like in a movie...people cleared away, the mist rose, and a cafe appeared 100 yards down the road along the river. Ok, there was no mist. But seriously this cafe just popped out of nowhere it felt like! And they had internet! After not drinking anything but beer for a week my body is so dehydrated it should be a prune. Laura got fresh squeezed orange juice and I got some amazing cranberry juice with a vitamin C boost in it and we sat at this cute cafe on the water for the next hour. My progress during this time was to calculate how much money I spend in Brussels. Total was about $190 for the five days we were there. Pretty amazing. I would be thrilled to spend less than $200 in every country.

Soon we found our new host, and he picked us up in his "red, almost pink" car and drove us back to his condo. Our new host's name is Arthur. I think he is around 40 years old, is divorced, has a long-distance Ukranian girlfriend, is Indonesian but was born in Holland, and works for a ship building company. Quite different from any of our other hosts! If you don't know about CouchSurfing (and even if you do) staying with a 40 year old divorcee might seem a little strange. And to locals, it might look juuuuust a little weird having Arthur pick up two blond American girls half his age at the ferry dock; but never mind that...Anyway, Laura and I are always really careful about who we CouchSurf with and have never had a bad experience. Arthur was no different; He was very talkative and knew a ton of cool information about Amsterdam and was very appreciative of the company. He also had a good sense of humor and laughed at our lame jokes and antics. He taught us things I never would have known from reading a guidebook or staying at a hostel. He also gets free Amsterdam guide books from his work, so he gave us one that has a map, descriptions of neighborhoods, a list and descriptions of all the museums, parks, city walks, restaurants, etc. The best thing about this little guidebook is that neatly embedded between "Dry Cleaning" and "Guided Tours" are 20 PAGES of "Escort Services". Hilarious! Since I didn't research Amsterdam at all (the Netherlands was Laura's researching turf), this little guidebook is extremely useful. It even has embassy numbers, where to rent bikes, the customary amount to tip, and a host of other great information.

Arthur took us to the grocery store where we bought food to make him dinner and breakfast (we're only staying with him one night because we found another couch closer to the city center...Arthur lives a ten minute drive + a 20 minute ferry away from the city). Back at his place, I assumed the role of chef with Laura as my trusty sous-chef. We made a huge vegetable stir fry, chicken, and Mediterranean rice. It was not my best cooking effort, but it worked. The potatoes were a little undercooked and the chicken wasn't quite seasoned enough, but it was definitely edible. I just enjoyed eating fresh vegetables! I haven't eaten anything nutritious in...a while. Thanks, Belgium.

Then to satisfy Laura's and my secret desire to be obese, we busted out the ice cream. We bought one container of Stracciatella, but Arthur had three more boxes! We ate a disgusting amount of some of the best boxed ice cream I've ever had!

We spent the rest of the evening just chatting, learning tons of random things from Arthur. He showed us where expensive touristy areas were on a map and told us not to expect to be able to use credit cards here or get free tap water. He also explained how the canals ended up looking like they do (the city built the first one to protect itself, then decided it wanted more land, so it took another chunk of land and built another canal; this process was repeated around four times). He also explained that there are so many bikes here because of outrageous parking fees. It can cost up to 6 euros an hour to park! Other interesting stories he told us were about the justice system, Amsterdam police, and traveling adventures he has had.

Quotes:
Hilary: "Did you like dinner?"
Arthur: "Yes. You can stay."

"You two have changed my point of view about American CouchSurfers." - Arthur (HOW COOL!?)

Accomplishments:
See second quote.

Nice People Alert:
Frite Lady who gave understood my French and made us fresh delicious frites!

Travel Tip:
Read how to use expensive important documents before you try using them.