Amsterdam: a bit of our itinerary

Thursday:

Left around 9 to catch a train to düsseldorf, from there caught a bus to amsterdam. It was a horrendous ride through traffic.

I also tried my best to sleep but it was not to great success - I did however enjoy some wonderful ipod time.

We arrived around 8:00 in the evening, and had no idea what to do...it was kind of funny.

We arrived at the hostel, dropped our stuff and then went and looked around downtown for a coffeeshop for activities that I did not participate in.

It was such a cool vibe in there, and we saw some old lady canadians just getting their smoke on which was super random.

Friday: Got up and headed downtown and walked around for a while, then met up for a free three-hour tour which was so fantastic - you really have to be quite liberal to live in amsterdam though, and enjoy poor weather

Then we went to dinner and it was the strangest place and the decor was just strange. It so difficult to explain why the dutch are so weird - to much tolerance for me I guess...

After I had to find a shirt for going out that night

Then we went home and napped for a while and then headed out to rembrandtsplein and wandered, not really sure what bar to go to. We chose based on where we could get in for free. I did not enjoy the music, and it was a huge sausage fest. And as weird as the dutch are, they are even odder dancers. We had one drink, and then left. It was not a successful evening. I think we got back home around 2 but not much of that.

Saturday

Wandered around for a while. Where going to go to Anne frank house but decided against it due to the enormous line. Opted for heineken factory instead.

Went to the i amsterdam sign next for the classic tourist pictures.

Then off the three sisters pub which had the most amazing fries. Even better was the frites sauce!

Afterwards we wandered a little more until our red-light district tour which was so so good.

profiling

So I don't know how many of you have worked in retailing, but I feel like I was the subject of profiling today. Even if you don't work in retailing I'm sure may have some idea. By profiling I mean those moments when people walk in the store and you are pretty sure that they are going to steal something.

When I was working at bootlegger we had a special code for trying to indicate someone we thought was suspicious to other co-workers. The first time someone did it to me I had no idea what they were talking about. Anyways - when someone like this comes in you don't want them to be left alone so that they feel suspicious.

So todays experience began after class and I had to go to the bank to take out some money, so I decided to walk through the city. I wasn't in a rush so I walked through a couple little shops and there's this place called douglas and it's like perfume and cosmetics and nice smelling things kind of place. I am thinking of getting a new perfume before I leave because I want to get something special so I wanted to go and see what the deal in there was.

So I walked in and I hate talking to people in stores because my german isn't really that great so I just kind of keep to myself. There was a male worker that was clearly a poorly hidden security person type guy that just gave me a weird kind of look, but I thought whatever and moved on. I was looking over at the chanel makeup because I know that one of my roommates liked her mothers blush so I was going to see what the prices were (still exorbitant). A lady asked if I needed help and I replied in english that I was just looking around.

So I kept making my way around, picking a few things up here and there. Before I knew it I was near the back of the store smelling some more perfumes and I realize this fella followed me all the way to the back of the store. Most places have people staying in kind of "zones" and his spot I felt would have been in the 'welcoming area' of the store. It made no sense for him to be back where I was. I felt immediately uncomfortable and kept smelling the perfumes and gradually left the store feeling like I was a criminal. As I was at the front, the guy is back! Clearly he was suspicious. If I find a better place you are screwed Douglas!!!

By the way - if someone would like to mail me lord of the rings I think it's high time I actually read the books.

my presentation

This is how I felt after my presentation today

First off...the group that started off the presentations was soo organized and professional. Ordinarily at Brock professors will indicate whether or not it will be a formal presentation and whether or not we need to dress nicely or not.

I emailed, and no response was given. So we had some nice jeans and decent shirts.

The group after dressed a little bit more classy with blazers and nice shirts.

Their presentation then began and it was just fantastic. I sat there and just wanted to laugh because they were presenting on the exact same paper that we were given. I just hung my head and went with a craaaappppp.....

So as mentioned, their presentation was clearly worked on for more than a half hour. Our powerpoint slides really could have used some improvement. At one point we had one of the charts from our case and we hadn't cited it because we've never done that before and they were laughing.

All in all - our presentation was fine by brock standards, but perhaps we will see what a masters evaluation would be.

I also think that ours was much more focused on explaining the article to the class than actually analyzing the article.

The whole thing made me feel like I was staring in my own degree commercial because boy did I start sweating!

Amsterdam: stinky roommate

I still cannot get over how bad our hostel mate smelled.

I fee like my expectations of a hostel consist of a few things. (Note: this was my first hostel experience)

- someone who drinks way to much

- someone who comes home from the bar with a friend

- loud people really early in the morning

- someone waking you up really early because they are awake early

- the person who doesn't like anyone

Note - the smelliness of my roommate was not something that I was anticipating.

She was horrible.

The room that we stayed in had a pretty neat set up. You walked in and there was a little bathroom area with separate rooms for toilet and shower with a sink outside. Then ahead were two bunk beds. On the right there was a steep set of stairs that went up to a loft with two beds on a platform. This is where we were hanging out when our roommate first arrived. We smelled her prior to seeing her. The odour wafted all the way up and it became nearly unbearable.

Luckily in the night we were able to get used to the stench and survive the evening. Even though I was sleeping near a window there was not enough fresh air in the entire city for me to get a non-stinky taste each breathe I took. Even on the ride home I felt like I could still get occasional wafts.

It came to a climax on the last morning after going down for a delicious breakfast, however my tummy was a little upset and food really wasn't what I thought was going to be the greatest remedy. I felt not so great but better by the time I'd eaten. Upon returning to the room it was as though her smell had mated with itself and created mutant offspring designed for chemical warfare. I gagged and almost lost that breakfast I'd worked so hard to ingest. I had to keep a scarf around my mouth that entire morning in order to mute the stench enough for me to make it through those moments in the room.

I discussed this with my roommate as well - and I brought up the fact that it seems Germans are often not as appealing in smell as people in Canada. Like sometimes taking the streetcar is quite difficult due to the distinct mixture of BO and alcohol.

*Another random story not related to this post at all - I ran into a friend of a good friend of mine that I knew from winnipeg in my hostel....CRAZY!! And the girl I ate breakfast with saturday was going to bodensee - a school that I have known previous scholars from

amsterdam: track suits

boy twitter has really kept me from being a good solid blogger - my apologies.

Anyways...

I started noticing that when we were in Amsterdam, there were so many people wearing tracksuits. Like the adidas ones. I understand that they are comfortable and look alright, not great but alright, but I really don't understand why the entire tracksuit at one time.

This might be a weird thing, but it seems like the tracksuit is the business suit of the athlete. I think it may just be the top and bottom matching that I find slightly irritating. Back in my athletic days I never enjoyed being completely matchy matchy unless you had the really nice high quality tracksuits that actually looked good together. But, when I had the sweatsuits with hoodies and sweatpants I made it a point to never wear the matching ones because it just looks so silly.

Anyways, my noticing of the tracksuits happened the saturday morning that I was in amsterdam was the first time I really made it a conscious thing to notice all these tracksuits. I shared my findings with becky and sylvia and now we have this stupid game of pointing out adidas whenever we see it. It ends up being an average of 5 spottings at least everyday.

Maybe I have just never really thought about it before, because I didn't really notice how many people here in germany are dressing in a similar fashion. I will admit though there are many more complete track suits in Amsterdam.

I feel like everyone here dresses so nice that an adidas tracksuit is the very lowest level of bum you can go without wearing sweats and still remain socially acceptable.

pure imagination

Come with me

And you'll be

In a world of

Pure imagination

Take a look

And you'll see

Into your imagination

This was the exact song that was running through my head the moment I got off the tram heading to the heineken factory this weekend. For those that don't know, I made my first official road trip of the semester abroad to amsterdam. It's quite humorous as well that my last blog was even about willy wonka. This factory reminded me of him exactly. The magic...the mystery...

I'm just getting ready for bed right now - but I have decided that instead of doing one long blog post for you to suffer through I'll just do a whole bunch of different posts. Hopefully I will get those finished soon because I'll have a whole bunch more to write about after Oktoberfest this upcoming weekend.

Dirndl out...

willy wonka

No I didn't watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory recently, instead upon meeting someone over skype I simply quoted the great willy wonka from the 1971 classic.

I shake you warmly by the hand

Now I must say I kept this thought in my mind for the rest of the evening because I have always felt a dislike for the newer remake of the classic (book and film) because Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka is not at all how I interpret this character. In the newer film his sarcasm and cynicism seems to be at the forefront of his character, whilst in the older film and book he truly is a candy genius. He is just much more withdrawn and less emotionally motivated. Of course at the end we discover this apparent heartlessness is only an act in order to discover the true character of the children.

I am in love with this Willy Wonka. I want to grow up to be this willy wonka. What I like about his character is that he really doesn't care about anybody else and he is very intrinsically motivated. It seems that he is not motivated by money because he shuts down his factory. He is truly and artist that seeks to make children of the world happy.

What I like about him the best is that he is respected for all of this despite is elusiveness. I want to be him.

There is one of those questions that asks would you rather be rich or famous. I'd just like to be willy wonka who clearly is rich, but his fame comes because of his wonderful candy, but he is able to keep his privacy and maintain the public knowing little about him.

Going out

So I went out to the bar for the first time last night -

first things first - bars here are open until 5 am. We didn't last that long. I think we left at about 3:30?

Anyways, when we first got downtown to where these two bars are there were two right beside each other. One with a line with probably 100 people, and another with no line at all. Which one do you think we chose to wait in. Obviously the line. Apparently that was "the place to be"

So we waited...and waited in line and eventually we where like screw this we want to party. So we left the line to get into the other club. We had to pay 3 euros to enter - but then we got a free drink. Not a bad deal. The place wasn't super packed but it gave us room to dance.

People in Germany dance so strange though. Like there were some that hadn't graduated from grade 7 dance parties. I don't mean to judgemental but I had no idea what they were doing. Then people started whistling to the music. Sooo odd.

Here's something you can do here that you can't do in Canada...drink in the street! Or in the streetcar on the way to the bar. That's danger.