Torenlicht Egmond aan Zee

... is. AMSTERDAM: Friday, February 20: Our taxi picked up all 7 us at our flat at 5am (he was actually like 15 min early, why I do not know). We arrived at London Heathrow where I preceded to take a nap until our flight left at 8:30am. We arrived in Amsterdam around 10:30 (they are an hour ahead of us, that's how fast the flight was!). The first thing that we did when we got there was...get some chips! They were from the Chipsy King and I'm embarrassed to say just ...

... to me: highly-organised and neat).  I left Amsterdam four months ago with various intentions: obviously to see the world (or parts of it I've always dreamed of seeing), experience new cultures, catch up with relatives and friends some of whom I've not seen in many years, but most importantly, I wanted to use this time to reflect on myself and my life, and to get back in touch with the real me. In a certain sense, I considered this trip an 'investment'... an ...

... them. So end result: we saw a lot of Amsterdam but we never knew where we were. The one thing we had to do was reserve our spots on the train for Paris but when we got there I was very overwhelmed by all the people and noises and had to get out of there. We decided to wing it the next day because there was a train every hour (not the best idea, you'll find out why soon). Apparently I was pulling off my spaceiness pretty well ...

... into a gay bar (Old Sailor, har har, arrr Billy and all that.). There are a few in the area. I wandered over to the door to look for the telltale rainbow flag or sticker that I might have missed on the way in but couldn't find any, although there were some multi-coloured light bulbs wrapping the sign. When I turned to go back in, I could swear the guys sitting and standing near the door were checking me out. Then it occurred to me, duh, it's ...

... owned our hostel, a couple from New Zealand. The cafe was amazing and cheap and we ended up eating dinner there on Saturday and brunch there again on Sunday! We really only had one full day in Berlin to do sightseeing, so we took one of the New Europe Free Tours. They have these tours in most European cities and they really are free! The guides work for tips only. So we did a four-hour tour and saw all the sights- Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie ...

... a ilha" (sobre os resultados positivos e negativos dos primeiros 7 anos da revolucao em Cuba) de Fernando Morais, "iraque plano de guerra" de Milan Rai, "sem logo" de Naomi Klein, entre outros. - tentar comer menos, tentar parar de comer carne - Me ver livre de moveis, cama, geladeira, fogao, ... e ser capas de carregar praticamente todos os meus pertences em duas mochilas.

The title for this entry may seem slightly alarming at first, but I can assure you that all will become clear, and you have no need to worry. From Rotterdam we got the train (of course) to Amsterdam, where we arrived in the heat of the day with our giant rucksacks. Having sucessfully dumped these at the station (seriously, those lockers were confusing), we made our merry way towards the Jordaan area, and into the Noordermarkt. As you can ...

... down the red light streets one night with a bunch of Kongsberg guys (we were all in suits, akward) and I really felt morally torn about the whole situation. Part of me said, "Wow, this is great!" eager to tell my college buddies how it went down. The other part of me said, "I wonder what it would be like to have THAT job" wondering if these girls were at all obligated to do what they do, or if it was really as regulated and tranparent as it ...

With a great delay but here it is, a trip is not complete without the return journey! After a lot of days with good weather, the return to Amsterdam brought back some of my initial bad luck, with a lot of rain and fully-booked hotels although the high season was over. Didn't matter much, this day was only the start of the comeback, I spent it just buying the stuff I hadn't bought ...

WEDNESDAY, 26th July We found a bigger supermarket in Capsicum called Deans near the station at which we arrived. An even bigger range of products here. Several items caught our interest, one of which were the huge jars of apple sauce which is used like tomato sauce over her. There was only a very small section devoted to cereals, that is, if you can find it in the first place. At least there were cans of baked beans...even Mr Heinz variety. Packaged hamburgers ...