Coughy Shops

After Budapest, my next destination was The Netherlands, to the free, somewhat sinful depending on who you ask, and famous city of Amsterdam. Obviously I don't need to tell you about Amsterdam, if you don't know about it then get out from under your rock and google it.

For me, Amsterdam was one of my top destinations in Europe for one reason - you guessed it - the Van Gogh museum. Duh, what were you thinking? Ever since I read Lust for Life by Irving Stone in high school, which may have been the only book I read completely through in those days, I was hooked on the mysterious man and his unique style of Impressionism. Friends of mine (Drew and Alex) had been to Amsterdam on a school trip a couple years ago and had told me it was a must, which only reinforced my desire to see it myself. I arrived in Amsterdam a day before I was to meet up with Brandan and Aaron, the Aussies I had traveled with in Prague and Poland, so I was given a chance to do all that I really wanted to accomplish before they came in case they didn't have the same interests.

First thing I did was rent a bike. Similar to Copenhagen, the amount of bikes in Amsterdam is astonishing. Right when you leave the central train station you are welcomed by the view of a four-story bike garage, packed full of the two-wheeled machines that Europeans love so much.



OH MY I JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO PUT PICTURES IN MY POSTS. HOW HAVE I NOT FIGURED THIS OUT BEFORE?? I don't know whether to be excited or sad it took me this long to figure it out. I'm going to go with excited, don't tell me otherwise I don't want to hear it (cough denial cough)

So yeah, check out those bikes. In the background you can kind of make out the multi-story garage. You can't tell too well from this picture, but in Amsterdam it's almost cooler to have a bike that looks like a rundown piece of crap than it is to have a nice, new looking bike. And when I said almost cooler, I mean it is cooler. I liken it to how people act like they don't care about something, or do their hair like they its bed head, or say they don't care about what people think though obviously they do or else they wouldn't tell you that. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Or, its because the crappier your bike looks, the less likely it will be stolen. Also a plausible option. Either way, I didn't want to be riding around with a clunky, bright red bike that said Amsterdam Bike Rentals in a big white circle on the front that screams I'M A TOURIST (you think I was making a hypothetical bike up, but I'm not, I saw dozens of people riding these things). I did my research and found a place that rents bikes that look like a piece of junk, I mean, like a local's bike might look. After having to return my first bike because the brakes didn't work, I got one that was actually pretty good. And I didn't have to stick out as a tourist - mission accomplished.

In the day had by myself, I biked all over the city and did my touristy things. The Van Gogh museum met every expectation I had and more - not only did they have tons of Van Gogh's work, but also the works that inspired him, as well as others that were inspired and transformed by Van Gogh. The museum not only told a story of a man and his work through its vast collection, but also the story of how a huge portion of the Impressionist art movement began and its impact. A must if you ever make it to Amsterdam.

Another must is the Anne Frank house. The house that the little Jewish girl lived in with her family, hiding from Nazis for more than three years, is truly an eye-opener. Walking past the bookcase that covered the secret door to the three hidden rooms where her family lived, and walking around the tiny living area that the Frank family lived in, you have an entirely new respect for what the families in hiding had to go through. The house/museum also opens your eyes to all that the Dutch did in resistance to the German occupation, many risking their lives to help save their Jewish friends. Sad, but a must.

When the guys came the following day, I moved to the hostel they were staying at. It was a street over from the Red Light District. This meant every day and night I was walking past half naked women tapping on their glass windows trying to lure me in. I don't get how people do this. And an unbelievable amount do. I can't look these women in the eyes without thinking about what their life must be like, what diseases they must have, and what kind of person gets into that. But time and time again I saw men going in and out. Normal looking men too, not just the weird ones you expect to be doing it. In fact, my day in the city I got into a conversation with a couple British kids from Wales, and it turned out they were their because it was one of the guy's 18th birthday, and his buddies brought him to Amsterdam for the weekend to celebrate, and "get him a girl". Literally, they said that with a smile, like it was the most obvious thing in the world to do for your eighteenth birthday. When his friend told me this I swear a look of shock, disgust, and amazement flashed across my face all at once before I had a chance to hide it, but the birthday boy didn't notice, and instead gave me one of those "oh yeah I did" looks coupled with an oddly satisfied smile. I threw up in my mouth a little. How is this normal to people?

Sorry, I ranted. I loved Amsterdam. I had an amazing time, met some really interesting people (one of my favorites was this guy from Canada staying in my hostel. Just picture the most stereotypical stoner imaginable - long curly, unkept hair, hippie clothing, and talked like he had one-too-many hits when he was younger and stunted his mental growth, and then a few thousand more hits just to make sure it stuck. But he was also unbelievably nice, and I found myself talking to him on more than one occasion.) Going out with Aaron and Brandan, along with their three friends they were meeting up with in Amsterdam, was always a blast. Probably the best thing we did together was visit the Heineken factory and do what they call The Heineken Experience. Its just a tour of the brewery catered towards the 90 percent of the people on the tour high out of their mind. Kind of cool, but not as exciting if you're not stoned.

I'm actually heading back to the Netherlands soon. After Belgium I'm planning on going to Haarlem, a town just outside of Amsterdam that I wanted to go to but didn't have time. One of the things I took away from my experience in Amsterdam was a respect and love for the Dutch people. Truly the first country to have the right to call themselves truly Free (yes, before America come on), the Dutch have had to stick by their principles over the years, even as more and more tourists flood their streets with the majority of them coming just to flood the coffee shops and Red Light District for a good time, and yet they do it without the snobby attitude that I think they would even deserve. I read that last year, less than 10 percent (I think it was 6) of the Dutch population smoked marijuana even once. Instead, they bike by - tall, beautiful and with impeccably straight posture and continue on with their lives around the tourists. Although I have gained a respect for every type of people around Europe, the Dutch have my greatest respect so far, and I think that is what's guiding me to go back and see a different part of their country. Oh, and my guide book. That too - Rick Steves raves about Haarlem.

More on that later. AmsterDAMN this is a long post. Sorry. I'll end with the picture everyone takes -



Don't know how anyone gets it without a dozen people all over it. Still counts. There's so much more to say about Amsterdam, including the food:



Yum, Herring sandwich. I asked the lady for the most Dutch food she had. That's what I get. Actually kind of good, apart from the sliminess. I've already gone on too much, for more you'll just have to talk to me.

- Matt

Location:Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Time to Catch Up

Ok, ok. I'm sick of being behind. Get ready readers - we've got some catching up to do. Needless to say, as my travels have progressed, I have been having more and more fun, which has cut into my writing time - which is when I do most of my writing. Also, why do people say "needless to say" and then say it anyways? I'm going to try to stop that. No I'm not. I'm in a weird mood.

So anyways, I've finally gotten the kick I needed and am ready to bust out some stories. Put on your metaphorical seat belts, some posts are gonna be flying in the next few days. And yes, I am writing this because upon pressing send, I will be forced to write these posts or else I am officially lazy, whereas now you can only assume it. Here's whats been going on since Budapest - Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Paris. So yeah, I'm a bit behind. And this blog isn't called Where Was Matt, so it's due time I catch up. I'm looking forward to the day, hopefully soon, that I can write - I am here, and this is what I'm doing right now. I'm sure you would prefer that too.

So where was I? Right - Amsterdam...



- Matt

Location:Paris, France

Feeling A Bit Hungary

I arrived in Budapest midday. It took me a long time to find my hostel because in the directions hostelworld.com emails you before you arrive in the city, they only gave the address and the not-so-helpful landmarks of a cash exchange store and a restaurant, when they should have just said the door is through the sex shop door. Yes, to get into my hostel I had to walk into a door with a sign for a sex shop, surrounded by two windows full of kinky underwear designs I would never even want to see on models and phallic devices that scream - this guy is a perv if he buys this stuff. But luckily the store was just inside the little courtyard area when you walk in, we didn't actually have to walk through the actual shop.

Luckily when I was pacing back and forth down the street the address claimed to be on, I ran into a friend I had made at my hostel in Prague, who saw my confusion and could only laugh because the same had happened to him, and he led me through the sex shop door to the elevator up to the hostel. The hostel's name is Carpe Noctem Vitae, and the only reason I tell you that is because it kicked ass and if you ever travel to Budapest and are looking for a fun hostel to stay, go there. This was my first "party hostel", a type of hostel that caters more towards younger travelers that are looking for a social experience in their hostel, as they organize things nightly for the travelers such as pub crawls, multi-hostel parties, and other reasons to drink excessively.

My first night was "jäger train" night, where we went to another hostel for a social gathering with multiple hostels, with the climax of the night surrounding a huge table full of glasses half full with red bull with shots of jägermeister carefully balanced on top, then dropped into the glasses with the push of the shots at the end, knocking in the rest dominoes-style. Before the night began they took orders for how many drinks you wanted, and I was tricked into thinking if you did 10 you got a t-shirt and a lot of people do it, so I signed up. But, I was also not thinking about how little time I had to drink them, since the Patriots played that night and I was meeting the manager of the hostel downtown to watch the game in the only bar airing it in the city. Long story short, an hour after the "jäger train" left the station, I was wandering the streets of Budapest by myself, slightly lost and very much intoxicated, taking an hour to find the bar that turned out to be about three blocks away. But I found it, my team won, and hanging out with the manager was fun. Good first night in Budapest.

The next day I went caving. Yeah I know, caving in Budapest? That's what I thought, but damn it was cool. We were given full body jumpers along with helmets with flashlights just like miners wear. Wish I could have brought my camera down because I looked good. No but seriously, sadly I am left with no pictures of the trip, just a pair of mud-stained boots and some fond memories. During the caving I chose to be the caboose of the "cavers", which gave me plenty of chances to wander off on my own for small periods of time and occasionally wait until everyone had left a particular room, then I would turn off my light and experience complete darkness and silence. I know, I'm weird. That night I was too tired to make it out, you don't realize how many muscles you use that you don't normally when you're crawling around on all fours, sometimes squeezing through spaces so tight you become scarily close to developing late-onset and short-term claustrophobia (or at least I did). Slept well that night. Woke up sore. Am I getting old?

Toured the city the next day. Walked along the Danube river, snapping some pictures of the chain bridge for my mom (she has her students do a project on bridges for her geometry class, and this one is commonly used for its unique chain-like structure). The city of Budapest is surprisingly clean and modern, one of the coziest cities I've been to so far. I could have walked around for hours. Well, I did walk around for hours. I eventually made it to St. Stephen's Basilica, a Neoclassic styled church at the end of a large square (St. Stephen's Square - duh, I just looked it up). Built for and named after Hungary's first Christian King and eventual patron saint of the basilica, the inside of the church is massive and beautiful, and yet simple. The coolest part - in a back room that you wouldn't know about unless you're a dork like me and wikipedia'd the church on your phone when you were going in, there lies Hungarian Catholicism's holiest relic - St. Stephen's right hand. No seriously. Story has it that when they decided to make the King a saint they had to exhume the body. When they did so, they found his right hand to be almost entirely intact, even though it should have been well along its process of decomposing, like the rest of him. Instead, they decided it was a miracle and cut up the hand/arm into three pieces and sent it all over the country/nearby world for all to see. Eventually, the fist was kept in Budapest, where it is celebrated inside this little cabinet thing, where tourists pay the equivalence of a couple dollars into a little slot to have a light turn on over the blackened creepy little thing for two minutes to give you enough time to take a blurry picture and feel a little sick. What a way to honor the man. That night- pub crawl.

The following day I went to the Turkish baths along with a few friends from the hostel. These things get a lot of hype in Budapest and I guess I can see why, but maybe its just not my thing. The complex is huge, with a dozen or more pools, saunas, steam rooms, places to get a massage (which sadly were all booked), and locker rooms full of naked old men. We spent a good 4-5 hours there, soaking in the warm waters, especially the outdoor one with an interesting statue of a woman getting an odd amount of pleasure from a swan/goose thing stretching its neck up and biting a certain part of her chest. At one point another guy and I tried to see how long we could last in the hottest sauna there, marked to be 85-90 degrees Celsius. I lasted 5 minutes. Actually, maybe not even that. I couldn't breathe it was so hot. My hair felt like fire. Who enjoys that?? When I went to change after, I went to my locker to find my section completely empty. I left for thirty seconds to return my towel, and came back to 5 completely naked men surrounding my locker in a perfect semi-circle. Where did they come from and how did they get naked so fast? Look I have no problem with locker room nudity, but if you saw these hairy hungarian dudes scrubbing between their cheeks with tiny towels, you would have left the room and given them their privacy too.

Ok, that's enough. Went back to the hostel to get my things and head to the train station to catch my first of two longggg trains on the way back across Europe - where to? Amsterdam!


- Matt

Location:Budapest, Hungary

Slovakia, Not Slovenia

Seriously, who goes to Slovakia?

Answer- this guy.

I was on my way to Budapest, coming from Poland when I figured, why not? I mean, Prague was so great and Czech used to be part of the same country with Slovakia (Czechoslovakia, come on people) so I have to assume it is at least somewhat as cool as Prague...

I booked two nights stay in a hostel right by the Bratislava central station, a funky/weird/I-still-cant-decide-if-it-was-cool-or-creepy kind of place with a scary, horror-movie theme to it, especially in the pub in the basement, (including a glass table supported by an old white bathtub painted to look like it was splattered in someone blood (I hope it was a painted). I arrived at 6am from my night train and unfortunately couldn't check in until 1 so I spent a few hours in the basement by myself wasting away the morning on the internet surrounded by these creepy things.

When time finally came I checked in and headed to the city center to take a free walking tour. The tour was nice, I learned some stuff. And then I went back to the train station and booked a train for the next day, then cancelled my second night at the hostel.

Bratislava is a great place...for a day. DEFINITELY GO TO BRATISLAVA...if you want to say you've been to Bratislava. Other than that, don't bother.

Next stop, Budapest!


- Matt

Location:Bratislava, Slovakia

Even the Floor is Made Out of Salt

Looks like tile, tastes like salt.

Azza and I - Da Vinci's Last Supper

Aaron (Azza) and I in front of a sculpture of Da Vinci's Last Supper, made entirely out of salt.

This Is An Actual Underground Chapel

Carved out of salt by salt miners, fully decorated with chandeliers made out of pure salt crystals or something like that, biblical sculptures covering the walls, and a huge statue of Pope Jon Paul II. Oh, and a lights show.

Going Down

A look downward, going down the stairs of the salt mine. I think they said its about 50 stories deep.

Firing Wall

More than 1,000 prisoners were executed at this wall. Many political prisoners.

Prisoner's Shoes

What makes this even worse - the shoes pictured here are just the shoes from children. Collected by the Nazis at Auschwitz I.