So I finally made it to Amsterdam. I had a very, very long train ride from the northern part of Norway. If you look up Lofoten Islands in Norway to Amsterdam on google maps, you'll see what I mean haha. One thing you can probably not tell from my blog is that when I say I took a train ride on here, sometimes it's actually 6 trains. With the bicycle, they don't let you get on high speed country to country trains so I always have to take the much slower regional trains that make many more stops. I do get to see quite a bit though and meet more people on the slower trains.
Since I've blogged last, I've done quite a bit. I camped another night or two in Lofoten, stayed in a hostel and watched the Germany football game (it's really soccer, not football) with the people at the hostel in Lofoten, rode my bike through a lot of rain, took many ferries, many trains, got stuck a few times between stations and ferries, spent a night at a train station in Sweden with some German students without sleeping, then went to Copenhagen which is mostly a blur because I was deliriously tired haha. Slept a 2-3 hours on 4 more trains, including a brief layover in Copenhagen, then got on more trains to Amsterdam!
I'm here for three days now and I'll update the site as soon as I can with photos and more stories. It's a very unique city and probably the nicest looking city that I have been to. There are more old buildings, canals, crazy people, stores, bars, nightlife that you could ever imagine. Also, I read that there are literally more bicycles in Amsterdam than people and it's ridiculous to see and ride through. It's an intricate maze of bicycles and bicycle trails weaving in and out of city streets and alleys. There is actually a rush hour of bicycles like we have rush hours of cars back home with traffic jams at lights. There are pot stores are called "Coffee Shops" everywhere by the way because they are not allowed to call themselves pot stores haha which is very strange. It's not really my thing so I'm actually just excited to see the finals of the Eurocup out at a bar tonight and to walk and bike around the city!
I will post updates soon! For now here's a couple of videos of biking around amsterdam towards the city center in one and towards my hotel area west of the city in the other. Have a good Sunday, Jamey
I dare you to try to get even a rough count of how many bicycles there are on this 2 block bicycle ride:
Oh, when I got stuck at the train station in Sweden, here's a photo of me and the recent graduates I hung out with instead of sleeping at the train station haha:
