9.29.21

Today I said my farewells to Belgium and departed to the Netherlands.

After packing back up my rucksack and walking the 30 minutes to the station (this time in the rain), I boarded a 3 hour train to Amsterdam.

I got off at Amsterdam Centraal Station and walked the crowded, chaotic, and overall strange streets of downtown Amsterdam for the afternoon. I got Manneken Pis fries with BBQ sauce for dinner. Apparently a Dutch favorite, and rightfully so! Super yummy. I also stopped to get a Valrhona chocolate cookie, it was super good also! Street food in Amsterdam is definitely top tier.

After aimlessly wandering for about 4 hours, I have made the following observations about this city:

• It loves weed
• It loves shrooms
• It loves sex
• It loves bikes

It is just so different from Brussels or any city I went to in Belgium, and I am a little intimidated. Maybe I just need a couple days for adjusting.

My goal is to make friends in this city. Given that in my last hostel I never had a roommate and it wasn’t the most social setting, this feels like my first hostel-backpacking life experience. I have 4 roomies so far. Ive met 2 (they are cousins) from Austria who seem super nice and I have yet to meet the other two. One is from Minnesota and the other they said was pretty quiet.

The hostel is super cool though. Crazy artwork and murals and right downtown. I am working up to going to the hostel bar. I am intimidated going alone but I think it is something I’m going to have to do. Wish me luck!

There is definitely a lot of adjusting to do, but ill manage.

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Rest of the night…

I was (and still am) super nervous about meeting people and making friends- it is just a super hard thing to w up to a bar and sit alone. As I was encouraging myself to do so, walking up to my hostel room, I meet another roommate- a girl from France. As she was leaving the hostel room, she mentioned that she would be having a drink at the bar and that I was welcome to join her. Excited by the opportunity, I followed her to the hostel bar and (unsure of how or what to order) got a coke with 2 shots of rum- bartender recommended.

I sat with the French girl (forgot her name) and we talked a lot until her friend arrived too, think her name was Mershka. They a re 24 and 25- friends who meet every few years in a different city to catch up, and this year was Amsterdam. We all ended up going to dinner together and then went out on a search for good bars/clubs. Most were either empty or closed (since it’s as a Wednesday night) so we settled on a pub full of men watching a soccer game with beers. I got a rose beer which was super good. We all sat and chatted for a while.

Mershka asked us all where we would like to be in 5 years- she would like to be married, possibly with kids. The other girl wished to be a photographer. I said in 5 years I would like to have successfully graduated from UBC and living in Canada. It was crazy to me how in 5 years I will be about their age now, yet we are all sitting down carrying a pleasant conversation together.

We finished the night at the hostel bar around 12:30

I am so happy I met people and so grateful for the opportunity to meet people leading such different lives than my own, or people who have lived what I am about to live. It was a very nice first night in Amsterdam.