Dear readers of my blog,
I apologize for the tardiness of my first post. I will relate its cause to you before describing my first day of travel.
A week or so before leaving for Europe, I purchased an iPad in hopes of having a lightweight computer to carry around with me during my travels. I let it sit for several days before bothering to turn it on and see how it worked, at which point I discovered that it was very difficult to use. Upon arriving in Europe, I found that it was essentially impossible to type on it, as I could not get its attachable keyboard to turn on, and I learned that the hand-held mouse was the most brilliant invention of user interface since that of the computer screen itself. After penning one email that I attempted to send home, but that would not send (for some undiscovered reason), I gave up on the iPad altogether and decided to buy a cheap laptop for use in Europe and resell the iPad in Vancouver.
Just today, I discovered that my iPad had disappeared - it appears that it has been stolen. I am going to contact the hostel at which I was staying to see if they can do anything to help me, but I doubt that there is a hope in hell of recovering it. I did not notice the iPad's absence until this morning, when I was already checking out of the hostel. When I got back to my room yesterday, I noticed that I had locked my day locker but left the key in the lock by accident - I am not sure how I managed to do that. The ironic thing is that my suitcase came with a lock of its own, but I had not used it; it had never entered my head to do so.
I apologize for the tardiness of my first post. I will relate its cause to you before describing my first day of travel.
A week or so before leaving for Europe, I purchased an iPad in hopes of having a lightweight computer to carry around with me during my travels. I let it sit for several days before bothering to turn it on and see how it worked, at which point I discovered that it was very difficult to use. Upon arriving in Europe, I found that it was essentially impossible to type on it, as I could not get its attachable keyboard to turn on, and I learned that the hand-held mouse was the most brilliant invention of user interface since that of the computer screen itself. After penning one email that I attempted to send home, but that would not send (for some undiscovered reason), I gave up on the iPad altogether and decided to buy a cheap laptop for use in Europe and resell the iPad in Vancouver.
Just today, I discovered that my iPad had disappeared - it appears that it has been stolen. I am going to contact the hostel at which I was staying to see if they can do anything to help me, but I doubt that there is a hope in hell of recovering it. I did not notice the iPad's absence until this morning, when I was already checking out of the hostel. When I got back to my room yesterday, I noticed that I had locked my day locker but left the key in the lock by accident - I am not sure how I managed to do that. The ironic thing is that my suitcase came with a lock of its own, but I had not used it; it had never entered my head to do so.
This is the second trip in a row in which I have wasted several hundred dollars through negligence; it is starting to seem a necessary corollary of my travelling. The main lesson that I have taken away from this incident is that, when one travels, one's best-laid plans very rarely work out: travelling is the art of dealing with contingencies. Money tends to spill out of my pockets when I travel, just as berries spill out of one's bucket when one collects them: it is not a total disaster and does not seem to be avoidable. Also, it is funny how fickle our (or, at least, my) intentions are: I was so discouraged by falling behind a few days in my blog that I was almost ready to give up on it when I discovered my missing iPad. I was afraid that I would have to rush my posts, which I did not want to do, and fail to flush my experiences out in detail because of being so far behind, and I was mad at myself for having been too niggardly to shell out a few hundred extra dollars to get a real computer instead of an iPad in Vancouver. Having arrived in Frankfurt, however, I am ready to take on the challenge of trying to catch up.
The most logical point at which to start this blog is on the first day. Having lost the original email and notes for that day, I will reproduce it from memory as well as I can.
My trip so far has been an unalloyed disaster. The flight to Amsterdam itself was not so bad. As soon as I stepped on to the plane, I was surrounded by jolly, avuncular-looking people who communicated in a strange, guttural language, speaking more with their throats than with their tongues. I fell into a very deep sleep until the snack cart came by, at which point I woke up and was unable to fall back asleep. I read some of a Graham Greene novel and tried, to no avail, to doze off for the rest of the flight.
I have no memory of what happened when I got in to Amsterdam except that I was in a busy airport. The train ride to Maastricht was generally enjoyable, though Holland's skyline was illimitably depressing. The combination of incessantly-masticating cows and unbroken flatness beyond the nearest row of trees seemed to bespeak of an absolute absence of life to someone coming from a hilly city with a variegated landscape. Holland's landscape itself was, if one did not raise one's eyes to the skyline, reasonably pretty. I do not remember why I thought this.
When I got to Maastricht, I was immediately struck by the inferiority of Holland's tourist infrastructure to that of Germany. In Germany, one has city maps and information spilling out of one's ears as soon as one steps out of the train station; in Maastricht, I had to walk over half of a mile just to find the tourist information center. I just remembered what happened when I got to Amsterdam: I discovered that I had failed to print out the map from the Maastricht train station to my hostel. I also just remembered why I liked the countryside: as one rode the train, one could see churches, masses of deciduous trees, and winding, clustered rows of gabled two-storey houses. The country felt cozy, as there was enough uninhabited space between settlements for it not to be overcrowded, and its communities were close enough to make them feel somehow tied together. I also liked seeing Holland's inimitable bike paths, which seemed to join the whole country together.
The Dutch love one thing more than all else on Earth: smoking. The only people whom I did not see smoking were infants, and they probably lit up when I was not looking. The Dutch's passion for smoking is matched only by that of the French, Russians, Germans, and other Europeans; the only time when they can be found not smoking is when they have lost their cigarettes. I walked through a haze of cigarette smoke to the tourist information center, where I failed to ask the person dealing with accommodations if there was a booking under my name in the nearby hostel. Instead, I paid a ridiculous price for a hotel, which I only found by dint of a stranger's helping me. Once I got there, it took around twenty minutes to get checked in, as the receptionist was very slowly dealing with another customer. I left the hotel without my sunglasses and discovered that it was sunny out, just like my life.
My main impression of the Dutch people, once I had strolled through Maastricht, was that they were more or less happier, more amiable, less duty-driven Germans. My image of them is defined by that of a smiling, blond-haired man with a receding hairline and willowy limbs who biked past me at one point; the country is made up of such people (and their female counterparts). One such person (without glasses or a receding hairline, alas) helped me to get dinner at a pub; he ordered me a very tasty and filling sandwich for 6 Euros, a good price for dinner in Europe. After dinner, I wandered through a little more of the town, wrote an email that did not get sent, and went to bed at 8:00 PM in an effort to catch up on sleep and get used to the local time zone. I woke up at shortly after 8:00 AM the next day and set out for the second day of my trip.
Before finishing this post, I should not a few more things. Firstly, Holland turns out not quite to be the idyll that I had pictured after my first few hours there - I saw an act of bad Samaritanism while walking through Maastricht's central square. A woman, having knocked down someone else's bike while freeing hers from a bike rack, left it lying on the ground, to my shock and disappointment. The Dutch are capable of acts of supreme baseness and selfishness! Just before I had dinner, a bunch of motorcyclists gunned their motors as they roared through the streets outside of a jazz café, drowning out the sound of the music and destroying my last illusions about a seemingly-flawless country. Finally, the sandwich that I ordered contained slices of boiled egg, which may say something about Dutch cuisine, as it was an otherwise-ordinary ham sandwich (with ham, cheese, and lettuce), and the tiny glass of water that I ordered (thinking that it was free) cost 2.4 Euros. I have not yet pissed on any buildings as a protest against the cost of using the bathroom in Europe, but I would applaud braver souls' doing so, as it seems to me inhumane to charge people money for relieving themselves and rehydrating. Perhaps the fee for doing those things is an analogue to the taxes that we pay to the government in North America for the upkeep of public restaurants; perhaps Europeans defray a tiny portion of their taxes by making innocent American tourists waste money on things that should be free.
My actual final note is that I saw a warbler with grey plumage, white wingtips, tufts of red on each side of its neck, and a call that was vastly more complicated than, and almost as loud as, that of the cardinal. I have generally enjoyed the variety of unusual birdcalls that I have heard over the past few days. On to day 2 of my trip!
Oops. I forgot to mention that suitcases with wheels do not work so well on cobblestones. This was going to be a funny punch line to end my post. I hope that my suitcase lasts for a good while still, but I would not be surprised if it were more or less destroyed by the end of this trip. Goodbye again!
The most logical point at which to start this blog is on the first day. Having lost the original email and notes for that day, I will reproduce it from memory as well as I can.
My trip so far has been an unalloyed disaster. The flight to Amsterdam itself was not so bad. As soon as I stepped on to the plane, I was surrounded by jolly, avuncular-looking people who communicated in a strange, guttural language, speaking more with their throats than with their tongues. I fell into a very deep sleep until the snack cart came by, at which point I woke up and was unable to fall back asleep. I read some of a Graham Greene novel and tried, to no avail, to doze off for the rest of the flight.
I have no memory of what happened when I got in to Amsterdam except that I was in a busy airport. The train ride to Maastricht was generally enjoyable, though Holland's skyline was illimitably depressing. The combination of incessantly-masticating cows and unbroken flatness beyond the nearest row of trees seemed to bespeak of an absolute absence of life to someone coming from a hilly city with a variegated landscape. Holland's landscape itself was, if one did not raise one's eyes to the skyline, reasonably pretty. I do not remember why I thought this.
When I got to Maastricht, I was immediately struck by the inferiority of Holland's tourist infrastructure to that of Germany. In Germany, one has city maps and information spilling out of one's ears as soon as one steps out of the train station; in Maastricht, I had to walk over half of a mile just to find the tourist information center. I just remembered what happened when I got to Amsterdam: I discovered that I had failed to print out the map from the Maastricht train station to my hostel. I also just remembered why I liked the countryside: as one rode the train, one could see churches, masses of deciduous trees, and winding, clustered rows of gabled two-storey houses. The country felt cozy, as there was enough uninhabited space between settlements for it not to be overcrowded, and its communities were close enough to make them feel somehow tied together. I also liked seeing Holland's inimitable bike paths, which seemed to join the whole country together.
The Dutch love one thing more than all else on Earth: smoking. The only people whom I did not see smoking were infants, and they probably lit up when I was not looking. The Dutch's passion for smoking is matched only by that of the French, Russians, Germans, and other Europeans; the only time when they can be found not smoking is when they have lost their cigarettes. I walked through a haze of cigarette smoke to the tourist information center, where I failed to ask the person dealing with accommodations if there was a booking under my name in the nearby hostel. Instead, I paid a ridiculous price for a hotel, which I only found by dint of a stranger's helping me. Once I got there, it took around twenty minutes to get checked in, as the receptionist was very slowly dealing with another customer. I left the hotel without my sunglasses and discovered that it was sunny out, just like my life.
My main impression of the Dutch people, once I had strolled through Maastricht, was that they were more or less happier, more amiable, less duty-driven Germans. My image of them is defined by that of a smiling, blond-haired man with a receding hairline and willowy limbs who biked past me at one point; the country is made up of such people (and their female counterparts). One such person (without glasses or a receding hairline, alas) helped me to get dinner at a pub; he ordered me a very tasty and filling sandwich for 6 Euros, a good price for dinner in Europe. After dinner, I wandered through a little more of the town, wrote an email that did not get sent, and went to bed at 8:00 PM in an effort to catch up on sleep and get used to the local time zone. I woke up at shortly after 8:00 AM the next day and set out for the second day of my trip.
Before finishing this post, I should not a few more things. Firstly, Holland turns out not quite to be the idyll that I had pictured after my first few hours there - I saw an act of bad Samaritanism while walking through Maastricht's central square. A woman, having knocked down someone else's bike while freeing hers from a bike rack, left it lying on the ground, to my shock and disappointment. The Dutch are capable of acts of supreme baseness and selfishness! Just before I had dinner, a bunch of motorcyclists gunned their motors as they roared through the streets outside of a jazz café, drowning out the sound of the music and destroying my last illusions about a seemingly-flawless country. Finally, the sandwich that I ordered contained slices of boiled egg, which may say something about Dutch cuisine, as it was an otherwise-ordinary ham sandwich (with ham, cheese, and lettuce), and the tiny glass of water that I ordered (thinking that it was free) cost 2.4 Euros. I have not yet pissed on any buildings as a protest against the cost of using the bathroom in Europe, but I would applaud braver souls' doing so, as it seems to me inhumane to charge people money for relieving themselves and rehydrating. Perhaps the fee for doing those things is an analogue to the taxes that we pay to the government in North America for the upkeep of public restaurants; perhaps Europeans defray a tiny portion of their taxes by making innocent American tourists waste money on things that should be free.
My actual final note is that I saw a warbler with grey plumage, white wingtips, tufts of red on each side of its neck, and a call that was vastly more complicated than, and almost as loud as, that of the cardinal. I have generally enjoyed the variety of unusual birdcalls that I have heard over the past few days. On to day 2 of my trip!
Oops. I forgot to mention that suitcases with wheels do not work so well on cobblestones. This was going to be a funny punch line to end my post. I hope that my suitcase lasts for a good while still, but I would not be surprised if it were more or less destroyed by the end of this trip. Goodbye again!
This is Maastricht's town hall.
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