Hans - CS #6 | Boom Chicago

[I must apologize - I feel my blogs have gotten worse in the sense that they are always rushed and usually late, so I think I am rambling more which is less interesting for you and also writing less because I am always so tired. If you're still reading...thanks. I'll try to step up my game.]

I do dinner, Laura does breakfast. After breakfast, Arthur took us to the cute little ferry dock where we parted ways and he told us to be careful and gave us a little Dad speech.

We've been getting very lucky with weather so far, so the ferry ride was really great.From the ferry, we had to find Hans, our new host who lives much closer to Amsterdam than Arthur. All day we noticed people being very friendly. This guy on the metro was doing everything he could not to laugh at us as we tried to pronounce the metro stops. Dutch is not our forte. Once back on the streets, we had two people say hello to us from windows. A pleasant change from London's rudeness and Belgium's...shyness? I think that's the wrong word but people in Belgium kind of kept to themselves. People in Amsterdam are so laid back, they even stop for you and wait for you to cross the street!

Amsterdam is funky. Everything about it is just a little weird in a good way. There are outlines of feet that lead to a trashcan, and then the trashcan has a thumbs up on it. There is this huge random bright pink bench close to the metro stop. Later on, you see this enormous stuffed bunny rabbit hanging above metro escalators - what?! And I'm pretty sure everybody here wears awesome sneakers. I've seen so many cool shoes! Oh, and to follow up on Arthur's rationale for all the bikes, we also saw a sign that said "Don't Even THINK About Parking Here" and I don't think it was a joke...We have even seen some oddly small go-kart-esque cars that aren't Smart Cars and the graffiti is funny too. I saw a super pixelated smiley face just hanging out on a building. It looked like something out of an old video game. And then, as we're getting so close to finding Hans' place, this crazy Serbian man came up to us and started chatting away! That was actually a little weird because he stood really close to us, too close for us Americans who like our personal space, and kept touching Laura's bags. She was doing most of the listening; I was watching his hands like a hawk. We talked about this later and she said, "Yeah, I figured that's what you were doing." We work pretty well together.

Hans' flat was kind of what I would expect an Amsterdam guys' flat to look like; a little cluttered with very colorful wall decorations and a mattress just chilling on the floor covered in huge blue and bright orange blankets. All of our hosts so far have had free wireless which is pretty amazing I think. Hans himself is a little weird. Definitely the strangest CouchSurfer we've stayed with thus far. On his profile, he has a TON of friends, a TON of references, and a TON of "vouches". It is pretty difficult to get officially vouched for on CS and it is a really good thing. It started with the founders of CS who each had three vouches. You must have three vouches yourself before you can vouch for somebody else. Vouching for somebody else means that you believe and trust that they are who they say they are, etc. Hans has 22 vouches and has hosted over 400 people in the last three years!

Anyway, Hans let us in and was just finishing up making three rather large egg sandwiches for himself. He offered us tea, which he served me in a Heineken mug, and then proceeded to extremely indelicately devour all three of his sandwiches, frequently with his mouth open and while trying to answer little questions we had. Just slightly unpleasant. After that, he showed us some maps and pointed some things out to us, which was helpful. However, he just seemed really blase about everything. I got the feeling that he's hosted so much that he doesn't really care who is sleeping on that well used looking mattress. He was not rude, or mean, or anything officially negative, just very, very indifferent. He asked us very few if any questions about ourselves or our trip and it made me feel like we were just the next two people passing through. Which in all fairness, we are! BUT we both really enjoy getting to know our hosts and spending time with them, and I just have a feeling we're going to be spending very little time with him and just using his place as a crash pad. Which is fine, and helpful because it's free obviously, but just not what CS is really about. Also - and this is just funny to me - a number of his sentences that are supposed to be responses to questions end in "so it's like, yeah..." wondering...what...? Haha. In retrospect, I find it kind of weird that his profile looks so good for such an outwardly apathetic appearance. Enough nagging about that.

We finally set out in the sun to go get to know Amsterdam. We stopped at this little bakery type place and got this pastry like bread with cheese in it that tasted kind of sour. Not our best food find, but it was only a euro. We walked along one of the canals to Leidesplein which seemed to be a pretty happening area. Our mission was to find these potentially free river canal tours which you supposedly bought tickets for underneath this comedy club called Boom Chicago. As we approached Boom Chicago, this friendly woman in a tie-shirt came up to us. Before we said anything, she asked if we were looking for the boats. We said yes, and she informed us that they weren't operating because one sank during the winter and the other hit a bike in the canal. Upon further clarification, we later learned that bicycles are often thrown into the canal, and this naturally causes problems for boats that try to float over them...Weird. I told you, everything is just a little weird here. The lady's name was Carol and she is from Michigan but has lived and worked in like a million different countries. Within probably 3 minutes we were talking about CouchSurfing (turns out she is a host here in Amsterdam). She gave us discounts to see the comedy show that night (which was students' night) even though a comedy show wasn't really on our Amsterdam checklist. We said we'd think about it and wandered off.

Moseying along the cute little streets and the web of water that laces the city, we found the Anne Frank House. Touring the annex was incredible. You got to see all the rooms they actually lived/hid in, and while there is no furniture, in Anne's room there are still magazine cut outs pasted to the wall that she put there 70 years ago. It is really, really eerie and weird to be walking around so casually in a place like that. The walls had lots of quotes from her diary on them, and there were informational videos throughout. They also had the original deportation list with the names of all the Frank family members on it. It is really creepy and intense but I am so glad I went. It is something I have learned and heard about ever since I was a pretty little kid so to see it in person if very powerful.

Once back in the fresh air outside, we went back to Boom Chicago to buy our tickets. Then we searched for the cheapest place to buy dinner and ended up splitting a huge pizza and a dish of ravioli. Really need to work on eating healthier. We stopped in at a convenience store and picked up some little things - I got dried fruit to snack on and a big container of juice with vitamin C in it.

Finally it was time for the comedy show. We got great seats since we were there early. The comedy show was pretty funny; I'm glad we went. Not the funniest thing I've ever seen. But it was students' night, and we got a free drink, and it was definitely a funny and amusing evening. Also, the girls were hilarious (there were two girls and two guys). The guys weren't bad, I just thought it was interesting because both of the girls were seriously hysterically funny whereas the guys were just kind of entertaining.

The comedy show ended around 10ish, which is pretty early still for Amsterdam time. However, I've had this nagging minor sore throat nonsense going on so we didn't want to be out too late. We stopped by a coffeeshop and picked up two Spacecakes, traditional Amsterdam food. We at those and they didn't taste very good and there was really nothing special about them; I will chalk that up to a waste of money. Oh well. The evening thus ended extremely anticlimactically...Laura blogging, Hans watching (what we later learned to be the 1 Dutch) news channel, and me....just kind of sitting there on the couch.

Quotes:
"Don't walk in the bike lanes. The Dutch are crazy. They'll kill you. And if it goes to the courts, you'll be guilty. Best. Advice. Ever." - Crazy Serbian Guy

"I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I'm free." - Anne Frank, 12/24/2943 (extremely strange to read that and then just walk outside like normal).

Accomplishments:
Met another CS friend.
Tried Spacecakes.

Nice People Alert:
Iraqi Convenience Store Man - for giving me free water (NOBODY will give you free water here! He filled up my water bottle for me - so kind of him, especially since I wasn't feeling well).

Travel Tip:
Allow time for spontaneity - Carol invited us to go to the tulip fields with her and some friends tomorrow, so we're scrapping whatever other vague plans we had!