Amsterdam: need more be said?

So I realized that my journalistic style is getting kind of stale, so I decided that I will write this entire post in 3rd person narritive.

It was approximately 10:30AM when Jesse finally got off of the computer for his last session of meaningless blogging. He slid his chair back with the loud sound of metal grinding on tile to alert the teller that he was done. Jesse was as usual ashamed by his lack of knowledge with the French language. The teller wrote down a the number that he was to pay, and naturally he complied without a problem.

Jesse walked out of the internet cafe with a slightly puzzled look on his face. "where am I going to go?" he asked himself. He stood on the street in front of the interned shop for a couple of minutes before deciding that he would go back to the town sqare to look for the central train station. Jesse still needed to buy a ticket to amsterdam, and even beyond that he needed a ticket from Amsterdam to Cologne. And so he walked. He walked for some 2 hours before realising that he had no chance of finding the Central Station. He pulled out his map again and located the North station, to buy a ticket there, and so he walked once again with his guitar upon his back and wind at his side.

Upon his arrival at the North station, Jesse felt embarrassed. He didn´t really know why, but he did know that he did. It seemed like most everything was closed this day... but of course it was sunday! But unfortunately throughout all of the hustle and bustle and excitement of the past 2 and a half weeks travel, Jesse had forgotten this fact. "how peculiar..." he thought as he entered the main hall of the North Brussels Station, but alas he did find a ticket vendor. "May I get a ticket to Amsterdam for tomorrow please?" Jesse asked. "but of course!" the vendor bellowed with a thick dutch accent. "That will be 23€ please and I need to see your passport as well" Uh Oh! It was about this time that Jesse realized that the unnamed, peculiar feeling he had was that of being a stupid tourist. He had left his passport and credit card both in the safe at the hotel.

And so he walked. He walked for another hour back to the hotel to retrieve his essentials. And then he set out on foot once more. This time to the closer train station, the Midi at which he had gotten off previously. But before he ever got there he once again got sidetracked by that ever so enticing Flea Market accross from the Metro in one final futile attempt to find a tent, what he did find however, was a meal. He bought a game hen and potatoes for one to eat later that night.

And so after realising that there were no tents to be found, we walked to the Metro, and caught a subway train to the Midi train station. There he was able to buy 2 train tickets. One to amsterdam and one to Cologne from amsterdam. He was surprised by how easy the proccess was. Not a problem at all. And so he took the metro back and walked back to the hotel once more.

This was where Jesse made the biggest mistake of the day: Tired from all of the walking, he took another nap, and got up around 7:00 pm. He ate the dinner which he had previously bought at the market, and decided to take one more walk before calling it a night. And after his walk he once again retired to his quarters.

Jesse thought that he would call it an early night, and would fall asleep watching television, but it turned out to be quite the opposite. Instead of falling asleep, Jesse watched the entirey of Ghostbusters on TV as well as 2 episodes of House. He was getting restless. He turned off the little glowing box called the Television and once again he tried to sleep. No avail! He tried harder, which didn´t work at all. Eventually he decided that since he wasn´t tired enough to sleep and would thus make himself such, so he exercised for 1 hour. He still had plenty of energy left over from his nap. After a long period of considering what exactly he was going to do about his predicament, Jesse finally decided to just calm down and let himself sleep naturally. It didn´t work. At least not then... and it was approaching 1:00AM. It was around this time that Jesse decided to think up some more plans for his trip, and so he did for 2 more hours, before finally deciding that he wasn´t going to make it to Fucking, Austria and would instead go to Wacken Open Air the biggest Metal festival in the world. With his mind resting comfortably upon this thought he finally fell asleep. It was 4:00 AM.

Sorry guys... I´m going to have to stop the 3rd person for the sake of time, speaking of which it is almost my bedtime... 2AM

Today was relatively uneventfull. I woke up at 8:00 painstakingly and had some breakfast. I went over to the internet cafe accross the street and found out 3 very important pieces of Info:
1. Dimitri and Kristina, who I mentioned in an earlier post from Basel, are happy to put me up in Cologne for a couple of days! Woo Hoo!
2. Michael in Munich is also willing to put me up for a couple of days. DOUBLE WOO HOO!
3. Danny in Reiser (The jr. year foreign exchange student) Is willing to put me up for a week! TRIPLE WOO HOO!
I have of cours planned accordingly. On the 15th I will leave Amsterdam to Cologne and on Friday I will leave Cologne for Munich, and finally I will leave Munich for Reiser on Monday! It should be a lot of fun. and cheap too! I´m really excited!

Anyways back to today... after the internet cafe I decided to go back to the Midi train station and catch my train to amsterdam. It all went just as according to plan and 3 hours later I was here.

Once in Amsterdam I immediatly procured a map and headed for the Hostel that I was booked at. It took about 3omins and 2 miles of walking to get here, but I did. After that I checked into my room, and went back out on the town. I just really walked for awhile. That was pretty much it. I guess that I did end up stopping in a grocery store and picking up some bread, salami, and cheese, which made a good economical dinner and will make another good economical dinner tomorrow. I also got a beer called the "Amsterdam Maximizer" with a whopping 11.6% alcohol and a 24Oz can. I didn´t drink the beer right away, instead I brought the food back, ate, and then went out and played my guitar in the park across the way.

When I got back around 9:00 I struck up a conversation with some other travelers from the east coast in the TV room and had my beer. It certainly did the trick for a little while at least, but of course it didn´t stop me from going out to Busk on a street corner! And so I walked to a certain corner that the east coasters suggested me, but on the way was stopped by another tourist. He turned out to be a cool guy. His name is Ellen, and he is from S. Korea. Apparently he also just came from Brussels but had a rather rougher time than I did. Someone stole his wallet, so all he had to go by to find his hotel in Amsterdam was the name. The Inner Hotel.

He seemed like a nice guy so I had him follow me back to the hostel to look up where his hotel was. It turns out that it`s less than a block away from this one.

Really tired and going to cut it really short now.

After Ellen found his hotel, I went back out one last time to the same steet corner I was headed to before and played for about 40 mins. I made 1,30€ but hey, It´s better than nothing. Then I came back here and started typing.

Anyways it´s late here now and I´m going to bed.
Sleep well all! Or be awake well all! Whichever makes more sense.

~Jess