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AAAAAAAH.
Clearly, Amsterdam has been good to us. Actually, Emily and I have been in about 17 countries in the last two days and my head is very much aware of that fact. Taking the Eurostar into Brussels was quite fun; a little girl kept coming up to me, stealing my pen, and drawing all over my notebook. She then proceeded to take my hand and stab my palm with the pen as well, which vaguely hurt but was too funny to stop.
So that took us through England, France, and Belgium.
Emily's family friend Jess picked us up from Brussels Midi. She's an adorable Midwestern gal who's out here with her husband, a military guy who trains dogs. They have two beautiful German Shepherds, who are both currently trying to get my attention. Mind you, they're both about 95 pounds each and it's very hard to ignore them. Oh God, one of them is whining at the phone and it's too cute. I could never be a dog owner; I need pets that understand I CANNOT LOVE YOU ALL THE TIME I AM SORRY DODGE GO AWAY.
We spent all of Friday in Cologne and completely geeked out over the cathedral, which is stunning and amazing and dark and gorgeous and beautifully Gothic and I love it. It's incredibly tall; something you just can't understand by looking at a slide. It's one of the places that makes you feel completely humbled as one person when standing next to it. The kind of place that makes you want to fall to your knees in total ignorance of how simple humans without modern science, technology, anything can create something so beautiful. I don't know much about German architecture outside of the Gothic era, but they really got that one down. We circled around it, meandering through the pretty little graveyard behind the apse, and then inside and stared up at vaulting and stained glass and gilded angels, oh my! Also in Cologne: the Lindt chocolate factory. Bought some white chocolate with rose petals in it and it may be the most amazing thing I've ever tasted. Yesterday was Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, and my head is still feeling it now. We spent the first half of the day as reasonable, cultural tourists doing things like the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh museum, both very wonderful and striking. We walked around, poking in little boutiques and the like and both fell completely in love with the city. You know the phrase "so cute I could kick it"? Pretty much sums up what I think about Amsterdam. It was somewhere between a mist and a drizzle the entire day, and somehow that made the old buildings along the canal more romantic and picturesque. Also, yesterday was the first time since I've been in Europe that I've actually felt like I was somewhere very different. Ugh, just beautiful. Emily and I are already thinking about coming back for spring break next year, when all the tulips are budding. Aaaaaaand then we descended rapidly into debauchery. Had a very long, long, long sumptuous dinner, walked around the red light district and tried to get used to the sight of bikini-clad women standing in windows at street level. After living in New York for a couple of years, it's not easy to be surprised by anything-- I mean, if you've seen a towncar full of sleazy guys from Jersey trying to pick up a butch transgender hooker in a three dollar blonde wig or three in the meatpacking district, you'd think seeing a young, pretty, very female prostitute who happens to be in a window would be a step down. Alas, no. Also-- seeing groups of middle-aged Asian tourists waiting to get into a sex show: funniest goddamn thing EVER. Ever.
Within in a ridiculously short period of time, we were completely blazed on a couple of joints the size of baseball bats and decided to leave a whole lot of time to get back to the train station. That walk was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, heh. How hard? Well, once Emily figured out where we were, it took me another five minutes to realize that we were actually in Amsterdam-- I could have sworn we were in Berlin. The only way we made it back was by linking arms and marching-- yes, marching, just picture it-- back to the station. Emily doesn't remember anything between being about 100 yards from the station and being two stops from home, during which I was trying so hard to stay awake because everytime my eyes closed, I got completely lost and terrified in my own head.
It was awesome.
Today we're planning on going to some little artsy town in Germany where there's a cool glassblowing studio. Which may sound kinda tame, but you have no idea how good tame sounds right now. Aaaaaaaaah what the fuck.
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