The Weather is Great!!!!!
Monday
After class, I took a nap because I was exhausted from the weekend and did my homework. A little later, I went to the Arc de Triomphe for the first time. It was pretty cool, very touristy. Then my friend Caitlin, her friend from home, and I walked to the Trocadero for an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower. The weather was amazing, about 60 degrees F, and walking through Paris on a day like that is so awe-inspiring. That night, we had dinner with my roommate Justin and our other friend Mary. Shrimp with Pinapple and coconut milk, rice, and veggies. It was great. Our dinners are so fun because we start cooking around 7, eat, clean, and just hang out drinking wine until around 11/11:30 when everyone leaves (they're basically always at my apartment). The weather is so nice now and I think it's only going to get better! It brings the city and the people to life.
Tuesday
Happy St. Patrick's Day! I had class this morning - we talked about Affirmative Action in France and in our countries. It was interesting because a lot of countries don't have to deal with that issue (Georgia, Iran, Poland) - they don't have to deal with as many racial and immigrant issues. So it was mostly the Americans, Germans and English that talked. I went out to lunch with 2 people from class today...a girl from the States and a guy from England. It's nice to have friends in the class and I hope we'll do more stuff after class - going to museums or parks or whatever. I came home after doing some grocery shopping and I'm took an hour or so to study the NCAA brackets so I could make my picks. I haven't been able to follow the whole league that well but we'll see how it goes! And now I'm updating my blog! I know we'll do something fun tonight for St. Patrick's Day. That's it for now. Miss you all.
Wednesday
Class from 8:30 to 2. Makes for a really long morning. After class, I went for a run in Jardin des Plantes. It was gorgeous out and I found a really good route. I feel a little strange running outside here. I definitely look very American in my Michigan shorts and white t-shirt. People in France run in funny things...like khakis and converse shoes. I put my facebook status as "Running in Jardin des Plantes" and I got a message when I came back from someone I worked with at Thunderbird saying that he is living in Paris and lives right by the Jardin des Plantes! It is so funny how these random connections keep popping up. So I will go have drinks with him sometime in the next few weeks. After my run, I went to my friend's dorm at Cité U (which is an international student dorm in the 14th) and we went to Sacre Coeur. We tried to make it by sunset but our timing didn't work out quite right. We got there around 7 pm so it was dark but not too dark yet. The city was all lit up and the church was beautiful. Everyone was just hanging out on the steps of the church listening to these guys who play guitar. It's basically a non-stop concert that is free (but you're supposed to tip them a little). Hanging out at Sacre Coeur was another one of those "ahh, I love Paris" moments.
After Sacre Coeur, I went to this restaurant called Le Refuge des Fondues. I went with my friend Caitlin and her friend Eliza who was visiting from the states. It's this really fun place where you sit at a long table (next to strangers) and you have meat and cheese fondue and drink wine out of baby bottles. It's a little strange at first but actually really fun. The food was great and the atmosphere was really exciting. Everyone brings their visitors to Refuge. We saw two other groups of people we knew that night, and it wasn't that cheap for fondue and wine..20 euro per person.
Thursday
After class, I got a bunch of things done on my computer: finalized my Eurail pass, booked my trip to Munich, booked a flight from Munich to Barcelona, updated my resumé. Sometimes it's hard to remember that you have to do the mundane things even when you're in Paris and just want to be exploring all the time. For dinner, my friend Michael came over (he's on a different program in Paris) and Mike, Justin and I cooked burgers. We bought the meat at a meat shop down the street and it was really delicious. After that, some of our girl friends came over and we went to a bar called LongHop to watch some of the NCAA tournament. They had the games!...but not the Michigan game. I was bummed but I had dragged all these people to the bar so I couldn't leave. I could see the constant score updates too. At the bar, I ran into Emily Scott, a girl from my neighborhood in Highland Park that I went to middle school with! We did Problem Solvers together! It was so funny seeing her in a random bar in Paris. She was visiting for spring break. I left the bar a little early and was able to watch the end of the game on my computer (cbssportsline.com has on demand for free). Michigan won! So that was a great end to a great night.
Friday
I had a quiz in phonetics...wasn't too bad. In my French class, this girl did a presentation and brought food from all these different regions of France. She kept pulling out baguettes and cheeses and madelines, etc. It was really funny and everyone loved it. I have a presentation about Foie Gras coming up this week. After French, I went to get a crepe with a girl from my class. Nutella banane, so good. I walked home after that, hung out with the girls from upstairs for a while, tried to watch some basketball (the internet wasn't really cooperating) . I went to my friend's house for dinner and then a bunch of people, probably 25 (he has a huge apartment) came over. We all went to this club called Duplex that was really fun. I had brought stuff over and slept at my friends house because we had to catch the train to Dijon the next day. He lives next to the train station where we had to meet at 8:00 am
Saturday
Alarms did not go off! 4 of us in the apartment all set alarms to wake up at 7:30 for Dijon and at 9:00, the first one of us woke up. It was pretty disappointing that we missed the trip. We had all tried to plan it so we would not miss it and it just did not work. But, it was a gorgeous day in Paris, and we had to make the most of it. We made a great breakfast: eggs, crepes and fruit. Then Johnny and John from Colgate (I was at their apartment), Holly (from Alabama) and Emily Haymer (michigan) and I went to Parc Monceau. It's supposed to be the best park in Paris. It was an unbelievable day out and the park was packed with people just lounging on the grass, having picnics, playing with their kids, etc. We just layed out in the sun for hours, walking around the park, talking, reading. It was so relaxing. I started to get a headache so we were going to get food but ended up going back home. I took a shower, made some pasta, and took a nap. I woke up feeling so much better. My roommate came back and he has two friends in town who are staying with us. We went to dinner and went to this concert for some DJ named Proxy. It was pretty fun but I ended up going home a little early because I was just really tired.
Sunday
I'm writing this from bed, everyone else in the apartment is sleeping but I think I'm gonna wake them up soon. Things to do in Paris!
This past weekend, I went on a trip to Belgium with my roommate, a girl on my program named Elise and my roommate's girlfriend, Kristen. She is studying in Prague but she surprised Justin in Brussels and spent the weekend with us (me and Elise knew she was coming).
Friday
Took the train from Paris Nord to Bruxelles Midi - One hour and 22 minutes...very easy. Once we got to Brussels, we took a cab from the train station to our Bed and Breakfast hotel, called "A Taste of Belgium". You can see the website here: A Taste of Belgium. Elise had been there before and it was so cheap! 25 euro a night per person. It was also ridiculously nice. The bedroom (we had one bedroom for the 4 of us) was three times the size of my apartment. It had a big TV and really comfy beds. The bathrooms were great too, marble counter tops, a rain shower. 
The owner, Jean Marc, was great. It's required to have a beer with him each night. And he gets really nice, authentic Belgian beer. Each beer has its own glass too and you can't drink it from the wrong glass. The beers we had were all made in abbeys in Belgium and were great. I've never been that into beer but this was great. They also had a dog named Olga that we played with and an unbelievable kitchen where Jean Marc and his wife, Francoise, baked us homemade bread each morning. After having our beer with Jean Marc, we took a taxi to the Grand Place in the center of Brussels. There, Kristen was waiting to surprise Justin. It was very funny seeing them reunite and it was a great surprise. 
It was already around 9:30 so we got a quick dinner and walked around Brussels all night, going in and out of different bars and trying different beers. It is so much cheaper than Paris, which was a great change. We met so many people too. Some college girls from Brussels, a bunch of French guys visiting for the weekend, a crew of Irish people, and more. We made a lot of friends and saw some great bars. It was a nice change from the Paris bar scene where you don't really meet that many people. Then we took a cab back to the B&B because we had to get up early the next morning for Bruges!
Saturday
Waking up around 8, we got ready pretty quickly and had our amazing breakfast with Jean Marc. He has all of these different spreads and jams for us to put on our bread. My favorite was called Speculoos. It looks like peanut butter but it tastes like gingerbread. It's amazing. Jean Marc gave me a jar to take home at the end of our stay! We took at 10:00 train to Bruges, which was really easy. It was only an hour and a half to get there. Bruges is near the coast of Belgium. It's an old trading town but a lot of the canals dried up and people left. Now they're main industry is tourism...because its pretty much the same layout as the 1400s when Bruges was very prosperous. Lots of the same buildings are still in tact, a ton of churches and abbeys and really cool streets. We wandered around for a while, climbed the bell tower to see the entire city, got fries and waffels in Maarkt Square, bought amazing chocolates (some of which were in the shape of boobs, very funny), and just enjoyed the winding roads and beautiful gardens of Bruges. 
In the afternoon, we went to De Halve Maan Brewery for a tour. This is the beer that has won the World Beer Cup the past two years and its made in Bruges. De Halve Maan. It was a really funny tour, going over the history of the brewery and the process of making beer. They kept trying to convince us that beer was healthy for us. They even have advertisements from the '50's, signed by doctors, that say "instead of eating meals, you should just drink beer. You'll get all the nutrients you need!" After the tour, we got our pint of Bruges Zot (The Lunatic from Bruges), which is the beer that won the World Beer Cup. It was great! Then we tried one of their other beers that was basically the same but a little stronger. The brewery was packed the entire time. They had 3 tours an hour, one in French, one in English, and one in Dutch. And each tour had about 50 people on it...they must have been raking in the dough. We wandered around more after that, going in and out of stores, finding really amazing parks and bridges, and just enjoying the nice weather. Around 6:00, we decided to go back to Brussels.
At the train station, we saw probably 100 young people dressed all in white. They were wearing crazy outfits. The girls wearing white miniskirts and boots. The guys had their faces painted, white pants, white shoes and white shirts. They told us they were going to a huge rave in Hasselt, Belgium called "Sensation White", where they have DJ's playing from 10 pm to 6 am and the only rule is that you have to be wearing white to come in. We seriously thought about going but in the end, decided that we wanted to be in Brussels and be able to wake up and see things the next day.
After getting back to the B&B, showering, and having another beer with Jean Marc, we went into town to find somewhere to eat. While searching for ATMs, which were few and far between in Brussels, we heard the sound of somebody throwing up. The 4 of us turned to see a bride, in her wedding dress, being held up by 2 other people while she violently vomitted all over the sidewalk. A woman stood on the side holding her vail. After she was done, she was carried back into a car. Definitely an odd sight. All night, we kept trying to guess what had happened to her...we'll never know! We had dinner at a Thai place that was really good and went to a few bars after that. 
This one place, called Delirium, was great! It had 3 levels and the walls and ceilings were covered in beer paraphenalia. Beer umbrellas, beer lights, beer bottles, beer signs. You also order beer out of a huge book and the different levels serve different types of beer. The place was packed and we met a bunch of people, some Italians, some Irish, some Belgians, some Brits...it was really fun. We had a great day in Brussels and Bruges.
Sunday
We tried to take the tram into town but got a little confused. So we had to take a taxi to the Brussels Central train station. There, we got on one of those bus - sightseeing tours. I know, it's corny, but it was a really good way to see the city because a lot of the major sites are pretty far from each other. The tour companies were fighting over who would get our business and it got pretty heated! We felt kind of awkward in the middle and finally just jumped on one. The tour was great...we sat on the top of a double decker bus and got to see all the sights in Brussels! The European Parliment, the Atomium, the Royal Palace...It was great. When we got off, we had to find some more fries. We went to Fritesland, ate our fries, then jumped in a taxi back to our B&B to get our stuff and head home. Kristen took a cab to the airport and we took the train to our main station. All of us slept on the way back. It was a great trip. Brussels was very relaxed and friendly. Bruges was so fun - gorgeous. It was a great city that you wouldn't always put on your list of places to visit but we definitely enjoyed our time there. And the B&B made it so comfortable so I definitely recommend that place if you ever go to Brussels.
Sunday night, I went to a bar to watch Selection Sunday. We got there a little early and watched the Marseilles - Paris St. Germain soccer game...very intense. We walked in the bar and 75 people were silently staring at the screen. Paris lost and everyone left right after the game, very upset. But then I got to see Michigan selected for the tourney for the first time in 11 years! GO BLUE!
This month is going by pretty quickly! Here is a recap of the first 2 weeks.
Monday, March 2 - SARAH'S (my sister) BIRTHDAY! We had our weekly Monday night dinner at our apartment. Although this week finally we realized that Monday is probably the worst day to have our dinners because all of the markets are closed and we always end up running to the supermarket. So that may change to a different night.
Tuesday night we had dinner with the girls upstairs, who are all from Colgate. There are 7 Colgate kids here (4 boys, 3 girls) that I've become pretty friendly with. We had fajitas that were great. My first time having guacamole in France! I brought beer so I went to the Franprix grocery store nearby and bought three 10 packs of beer (there were 11 of us at dinner). We opened it at their apartment and it was disgusting. It turns out I had bought a nasty lemonade with a little bit of alcohol. I need to read the labels before I make such large purchases! It was only $10 for 30 beers, so I guess that tells you about the quality.
Classes have been going well. We learned all about the history of Charles deGaulle in my "current" events class. No, not the airport, the French general and former President. French politics is very interesting...pretty crazy...but interesting. It's amazing that Sarkozy won the election because he seems so different from the general, traditional French politician. Our teacher talks a lot about the struggles he has in modernizing France so that it can actually be a part of the global economy...I think the country will change a lot in the next 5 years, if Sarkozy is successful in pushing through his reforms.
Art History was all about Delacroix. The class is OK but our teacher doesn't really talk a lot about the actual paintings and their characteristics. Still, it's good to get this background.
On Wednesday, I went out to lunch with my friend Emily and we went to the Museum of Art and History of Judaism. It's in the Marais (the Jewish quarter). It was great! I found it soo interesting. It talked about the history of Jews in Paris, Jews in France, North African Jews and their migration to France, the Shoah, etc. There were so many artifacts of ancient arks, torah dressings, megillahs (Happy Purim!) and a lot of art depicting Jewish life in Europe. I found the whole exhibit really thought provoking. I feel very seperated from actual European Jewry. As an American Jew, I haven't thought about the fact that Jews were in Europe for hundreds of years before the Holocaust. So much of our Jewish education seems to start with the Holocaust and it was great to see Jews and models of synagogues from the 1200's. There was a Jewish cemetary on the island where Notre Dame stands from 700 years ago! Pictures and stories of modern French Jews were spattered throughout the exhibit. That was also very thought provoking. There are a lot of Sephardic Jews in France, from North Africa, places like Morocco and Egypt. Their stories are great because some of them are first generation immigrants to France!
There was a temporary exhibit about the Avant Garde movement of Yiddish speaking Jews from the 1914 - 1939. It was amazing! Chagall and many other yiddish artists formed these colonies in Kiev and other places around Eastern Europe and Germany. They drew the illustrations for yiddish childrens' stories and magazines. They were facing an enormous rise in anti-semetism leading up to the Holocaust but their art and stories weren't shaped by the Holocaust, but by political movements like socialism and a modernizing Jewish community that held an affinity for Yiddish and tradition but was also becoming more integrated.
I loved the museum. We spent a lot more time in there than I thought we would, and it was a lot more comprehensive than I thought it would be. Security was pretty intense, as I guess they need to be nowadays. Knowing French definitely came in handy. There were audioguides in English but all the displays were in French and gave a lot more information.
After the museum, I went to CEA for a discussion about culture shock in France. It was ok...some of the people asked the stupidest questions. Every single girl just wanted to talk about how creepy the French guys were and why they were creepy. There are creepy people all over the world! It was funnier to hear all the stupid questions the Americans asked then to hear about French stereotypes. I had dinner at my friend from Colgate's apartment that night.
Friday I had a wine and cheese tasting at CEA. It was delicious. We had Bordeaux and Burgundy and they didn't really tell us anything about the wines. But we had 8 different types of cheeses from different areas of France that were great. I have some new favorites now: Roblochon, Ossau-Iraty, and Cantal...they're great. I met up with Allie White, a friend from Michigan who was visiting Paris from Rome. We walked around the Marais a little and back to Emily's apartment in the Bastille.
That night, we went out to dinner, the three of us and 2 other Michigan people visiting from Rome. I ordered something random off the menu, that I translated but didn't know what it meant in English. A cassolette. It was great...white bean stew with lamb and sausage. Somehow, we figured out that my dad and one of the other girls' mom (Leah Hoffheimer) went to camp together in Zionsville, IN. Such a small world! The 5 of us went out to a bar that night and met up with some other Michigan people. Very fun.
The Weekend:
CEA led an excursion/day-trip to Reims in the Champagne region. This was my second time there, and we actually ended up at the one of the same champagne houses I'd already been to! Mumm was good, for the second time. You can't ever get sick of good champagne. 
We went to lunch and wandered around the town on our own. Reims is a really nice town, with a lot of shops and restaurants. It was great to be there with the sun shining instead of rain like last time. We spent the afternoon in the Cathedral of Reims. It was unbelievable. All the Kings of France were crowned at this cathedral. They have been renovating it since the 1920s after it was damaged in World War I and it's almost complete. The cathedral is home to a Chagall stained-glass window showing the Old Testament and the New Testament. The stained-glass windows in the Cathedral were gorgeous. I think most people on our trip agreed that this cathedral was more impressive than Notre Dame! I guess you also feel more connected when you have a great little old French lady touring you around, giving you the history of the Cathedral, the architecture, and the town. The cathedral is supposed to be read like a book. All of the architecture, the gargoyles, the statues, etc. tell stories from the Bible. Most people couldn't read when it was built so they came to see the stories of their religion on the walls of the Cathedral and in the stained-glass windows. Here are some beautiful pictures:
Saturday night was a kid on our programs birthday so we went out to a club called Café Oz. Of course, we had a great time. Sunday I slept until 2...because I never get sleep here in Paris! Finished some homework during the day and had some friends over for dinner. It was another one of my friends' 21st birthdays Sunday night so I met up with him at this really cool bar called (in translation) "Zero to 60". It's a really small bar, very calm, and you play board games and card games there. The other draw is that all the drinks come in baby bottles. So there were about 15 of us, 21-22 year old Americans, drinking out of baby bottles while playing French children's card games. Quite a sight! But it was really fun.
Monday, March 9. On the way home, I stopped into Notre Dame, just to see how it compared to the Cathedral of Reims. I wasn't really in the mood for touristy stuff so I only stayed for 15 minutes. Both are pretty amazing though. 
It was Purim so I walked over to the Marais and bought some great Hamentashen from a Jewish bakery! They have more traditional flavors in France: poppy seed, chocolate, date, almond. No apricot or jelly. Since it was Monday, we were having a group dinner, again, even though the markets weren't open. I did my shopping at Champion, a really good supermarket near my apartment. I found a recipe on Epicurious.com and made it for a few people. It was really good. Broccoli Rabe, peppers and onions mixed in with Italian Sausage. We also put together a nice salad. I decided that I like cooking and it's not as hard as it seems. I just have to really follow the directions and it's fine if I mess something up.
Tuesday. I woke up and it was pouring. Weather.com also told me this would continue all day...but when I left my French class at noon, it was gorgeous. I came home and went for a run in Parc Montsouris. There were a lot of people in the park and it was a good run. It's about 3.5 miles. I haven't found anywhere else to run just yet but I'm keeping my eyes open. I did some homework, I usually have about 30 minutes to an hour each day, and caught up with some people. For dinner, I made a big salad with cut up sausage...really good. Justin, 3 guys from Colgate, and I met up at a bar called Hideout around 8. It's 2.50 euro pints for happy hour, which lasts until 9 - by far the cheapest deal I've found in Paris. We played some drinking game where you spin a quarter (in this case, a 50 centieme), take a sip, and then you have to stop the coin while it's spinning with your finger...not so easy for me. But then we watched the Real Madrid - Liverpool soccer game at the bar and a bunch of our girl friends came and met us. I really like the soccer here...everyone gets so into it. Liverpool won 4 - 0, which was a big upset, but really fun to watch.
My French class was pretty good today. We all have to do presentations throughout the semester and this girl from the US did her's about French Jazz and American Jazz. We got to listen to a bunch of jazz music, talk about where to go hear live jazz, and talk about different types of jazz. The whole class was really into it. I've been learning a lot of grammar lately so it's good when we just get to have discussion. We've also been learning about the French political system which I find really interesting. I had to try and explain the electoral college in French to my class...that was not an easy task. It also sounds so stupid and complicated when you are describing it to people who just have simple direct election. Class has definitely been good though and I think I am starting to see improvement in my language skills.
Wednesday. My lecture was canceled, which was amazing! It was such a nice, sunny day out and I was not in the mood for class. I read walked through the market and bought some great chicken filets and sweet potatoes for dinner. I made myself lunch (I've been making lunch at my apartment lately, it's a lot cheaper), and looked into some things to do in Brussels for my upcoming trip. For lunch, I always just buy a baguette and I have meats and cheese in my fridge that I buy from the grocery. That afternoon, I went to CEA for a weekly lecture series they have. The person giving the lecture was the teacher at CEA that a couple of my friends have. They all told me he was hilarious. Well, he was pretty funny, but the room was so hot and the topic of "French Gardens" really wasn't captivating my attention. It was a struggle to stay awake. I went home after and started cooking dinner. Mashed sweet potatoes, grilled veggies, and pan-fried chicken filets. I have to say I'm pretty impressed I haven't ruined any meals yet! The food was good! I had dinner with Justin and 2 of our girl friends, Caitiln and Mary. After we cleaned up, the girls left, Justin and I watched "24" on his computer and then I fell asleep right away.
Thursday: Class and lecture in the morning. I had my first quiz today, on the subjonctif and l'indicatif. Pretty easy considering we've been studying it for 2 weeks. On Thursdays, I have to run from Grammar class to my Lecture. There's another girl in my class who does the same thing so we always walk together. Her name is Marianna and she's a 27 year old from Venezuala. Her husband is studying oil engineering in France and she's here just learning French. After class, I got a chicken, cheese and mushroom crepe that was amazing. I walked around the 5th arrondisement, getting lost, and I found the "Jardin des Plantes". It's where the zoo in Paris is and it's a huge park that has tons of different plants, labeled so that you know where they are. It is gorgeous and I just walked around in there for a while. Then I walked home. On the way, I stopped at the Jewish school on my street and asked if I could speak with someone about volunteering there. They didn't really get the concept and were kind of weirded out that I just randomly came to their door asking to volunteer. But they gave me a phone number and told me to call the director of the elementary school tomorrow. Now I'm just updating the blog, finishing up some homework, and CHEERING ON MICHIGAN IN THE BIG TEN TOURNEY THAT STARTS IN A FEW HOURS! GO BLUE!
Amsterdam! My first real trip in Europe.
The night before I left, I went to my friend Emily's house with Johnny and Laura Lapidus. We relaxed and talked over a few bottles of wine, cheese, and baguettes. The plan was to go to the Eiffel Tower that night. Somehow, the time escaped us but we ran out, made the Metro and got to the Eiffel Tower at around 11:15 pm. Of course, we brought another bottle of wine with us. The 4 of us sat on a bench in the Champ de Mars, the huge field across from la Tour Eiffel, drinking wine and staring up at the monument. On the hour, the lights start blinking and flashing for about 5 minutes which is really cool. It was an amazing night, just to be in Paris, sitting at the Eiffel Tower, realizing how unbelievable it is that I'm here, in this city, at this point in my life. It was a lot of fun.
Now for Amsterdam, also a lot of fun! I left for the train from my friday class. For trains within the EU, there isn't really security or anything. They don't even tell you what track you're leaving from until 10 minutes before departure so it's pointless to show up early. I travelled alone because I bought my ticket kind of last minute. It was cheaper for me to get a first-class ticket for "jeunes" (tickets are cheaper for people under 26). First-class was really fun. All the chairs are really comfy and they serve you a full-course meal. And the drink cart comes by every 45 minutes with wine, beer and whatever else you could want - I stuck to wine. It was a 4 hour train ride from Paris to Amsterdam with a few stops: Brussels, Rotterdam, Antwerp. I brought everything I needed for the weekend in my messenger bag, which included my school books since I came right from class. Travel was really easy.
I walked 10 minutes from the Central Train Station to my hostel, St. Christopher's. The hostel was IN THE MIDDLE of the red light district, on Warmoesstraat! But I walked in and saw 3 people from CEA Paris which was funny, and there were a ton of other Americans. I randomly got assigned to a hostel room with my roommate and another random girl. I would think if I were a girl, traveling on my own, staying in a hostel, that I wouldn't want to be in a 3 person room with 2 boys...but I never even met this girl because I was only at the hostel to sleep and either she was asleep or we were whenever we could have met.
My old camp friend, David Dresner, is studying in Amsterdam for the semester. So he came to the hostel and walked me around the city for a while. Amsterdam is a really cool city - it's techincally below sea level and the whole place is canals. The city is built above the water. It's a beautiful city! The architecture and design makes the whole place feel very quaint. Dresner walked me down Haarlemmerstraat and showed me Leidseplein, both cool areas of Amsterdam. I love the dutch words...they're actually not that hard to say but they just look so funny. We went to his apartment, which made me so angry with my living situation. His room was as big as my apartment! And he had a really nice kitchen and living room...it looked all brand new! We ate dinner with a bunch of his friends (there are a few apartments with kids from his program in the same building). Then he walked me back to my hostel where I met up with my roommate, who had just gotten into Amsterdam, and some other people from CEA.
Red Light District
We explored the city that night. Went to some of the coffeeshops, went to a few bars, walked around the Red Light district. We went into this one bar where we must have been the only tourists, even though a huuuge percentage of the city is foreign born. Everybody looked so 'dutch'. They had their pastel colored button downs and shaggy hair and rosy cheeks. It was funny. They had good beer. The red light district was interesting...pretty shocking. You literally walk down the street and there are women in little rooms that have doors/windows facing the street. They make seductive faces to try and get you to come into their rooms. My roommate compared it to a zoo, where the women are in 'cages' and you can go 'pet' them. When the curtain is closed, that means that the woman is with a customer. I found the whole thing pretty awkward and degrading. I was with a girl walking around and she got really freaked out by the whole concept. It was also funny seeing African women in traditional robes and older tourists walking around at the same time as us. I could not imagine my grandparents touring the Red Light District at night!
The next morning we woke up and went to the Heineken Brewery. I was touring around with my roommate, my friend from Paris, Caitlin, and her friend from Barcelona, Stephanie. I'm glad it was 4 of us because it gets a little intense when you're traveling with too many people. It was about a 30 minute walk...which is all the way across the city. It's not a big city, and only around 900,000 people live there. Everyone bikes in Amsterdam! There are bike lanes on every street and bicyclists have the right of way over pedestrians and cars. They will run you over if you don't move. And people don't lock their bikes to anything. They just put a chain connecting the front wheel to the frame so you can't ride it. It's amazing how trusting they are...and that they don't have to worry so much about theft. They also have a really cool tram system that goes through the middle of the streets. People bike and drive over the tracks and then the tram will beep and they will move. I didn't use it ever because I liked walking around and nothing was really far.
Heineken Brewery
Heineken was 15 euro...which isn't that cheap -- but we did get 4 beers throughout the tour (you're only supposed to get 2 but what can I say, I'm a charmer). The tour goes through the history of Heineken, how beer is made, a tour of the beer vats, and taste tests. The marketing is intense! There is literally a room where you lay down in a chair and stare at images of Heineken around the globe and they yell words at you like, "passion, quality, taste, committment!" It's pretty funny. You walk out like a Zombie, thinking, "I love Heineken, it's the best beer in the world, Must Have Heineken!" My roommate bought Heineken beer glasses that we have in our apartment now. They also have a really funny "ride" during the tour..where there you are on a moving platform as you pretend you're a "hopp" and go through the beer making process...really funny.
After Heineken, we walked back to Leidseplein to meet some other people from Paris and Barcelona. Throughout the weekend, I ran into probably 50 people I knew. That is not an exaggeration. It was Michigan's spring break so I saw a bunch of people who were visiting Amsterdam over spring break. I saw people from high school who were studying in Florence and Barcelona. It was ridiculous. We got thai food for lunch which was pretty good. Then we went to the Van Gogh museum.
Van Gogh Museum
There was a special exhibit at the museum called "Colors of the Night" and all of Van Gogh's paintings that featured the night and dusk were brought back to Amsterdam. It was amazing! Starry Night was so cool. You weren't allowed to take any pictures but I really liked Van Gogh's stuff...and he was a pretty interesting character - nuts! We were at the museum for about 2 hours, which was perfect, and I really was into Van Gogh's paintings.
We left the museum and I met up with Dana Bernstein and the same crew that was in Paris the week before. They were in Amsterdam on the last leg of their journey so we had dinner at a Greek restaurant. It was fun to see them. I met my friends from Paris at an Indian Restaurant after. They were there with a bunch of girls from Boulder who were studying in Barcelona. I didn't really eat but had some amazing Indian spinach dish that I definitely want to try again. We went from the restaurant to an improv comedy show. It's called Boom Chicago! and it's all in English. There are some American actors and some Dutch but they all speak English. It was really funny...they made fun of American tourists and picked on people from the audience. I would say there were at least 40 Michigan students, my year, in the audience of 200 or so.
We walked through the streets on the way home. There are some weiirrdd people in Amsterdam. All of these British girls were dressed up like clowns/hookers and were so drunk (or on other drugs) running around the streets. Amsterdam is like a fairy tale land...everything seems fake and totally bizzare. We took an hour or two to walk home, just stopping at random places along the way. They have really good Fries in Amsterdam, which I ate along my walk.
Anne Frank
Sunday morning, me and Justin woke up early to go to Ann Frank. I had a 2:30 train and he has a 2:30 flight. We walked to 263 Prisengracht, where Anne Frank was in hiding, and there was no line at the museum. I think it had just opened...we got there around 10:15. It was a chilling experience. The museum is very well done...and it's so strange to see this typical Dutch street and think that Jews had to hide in the attic for years to escape the Nazis! I know it sounds naive but Amsterdam doesn't seem like the type of city where things like that happen! Everyone seems so peaceful and friendly...I guess they're also not the type of city that could really stand up to the German Army. The house was truly amazing. Otto Frank didn't want the rooms to be refurnished but there are models of how the apartment was set up and there is a display with the original diary. I was really glad I got to see the Anne Frank house. There was this one quote that has stuck with me since leaving Amsterdam, that basically said, "Of all the millions of people who died in the Holocaust, we only read the story of Anne Frank. Maybe it's better that way. It's too painful to think of the immense suffering and pain of so many stories just like Anne's."
After the museum, Justin left for the airport and I went to find the Fluorescent Light museum that my friend had told me about. Unfortunately, after some extensive searching, it was closed on Sunday! So as a consolation, I went to get Dutch Pancakes with Caitlin and Stephanie. They have these mini pancakes called poffertjes that were delicious! By then, it was time for me to head to the train station and go home! No first-class this time, but I fell right asleep.
Amsterdam was an amazing city. I would love to go back sometime later in life, definitely more in the spring time to see the amazing flowers. There is a lot of really interesting culture there and it's a very inviting place. A very easy, successful first travel experience!
Tuesday
