Donderdag 23.04.2009

Donderdag was our relaxing day..it rippled like tiny rain drops because of the long night the day before^^. Anyhow Mission Amsterdam was quite lethargic on this day, maybe the cloudy and muddy weather was a reason for it...who knows:P?

In the morning we decided to have a breakfast in Vondelpark, since the majority of our group missed breakfast at the hostel. Due to this fact we did our supermarket Albertheijn a big favour by buying almost the whole sortiment of food..okay,not all the food but it definetely benefited from our shoppings of some fruits,cookies, baguettes, vegetables, smoothies, salads etc.^^

Well, the ambience in the park was pretty nice and the omnipresent twittering of some birds and a great group of some oriental musicians, who took the pitch of their instruments unfortunately not so in their consideration;), sweetened the start of the day.

Okay, after a really looooooong and expaaaanded discussion- Cafe?Film museum? Cafe? Van Gogh museum? Film museum? Cafe?-

We landed in the famous Van Gogh museum ..yeah and over night we all became over 17 years old:D Thankfully the "ruthless lady" at the counter was not there anymore :P^^.

Van Gogh Museum is placed in the district Oud- Zuid in Amsterdam.

Apart from the biggest collection of Vincent Van Gogh's works it shows further paintings by Paul Gauguin, Toulouse- Lautrec, Claude Monet or Edouard Manet...just to mention a few of them..actually it was quite hard for me to assimilate all the impressions. I was a bit tired and the exhibition was distributed on three floors, I think. However that was worth it!:)

In the so- called "Night- exhibition" I found one of my favourite paintings by Van Gogh, "Starry Night over the Rhône".

I was so fascinated by this marvellous picture and when you directly stand in front of it, it seems to be so real and peaceful...I cannot describe it^^.

Yeah, maybe I stood there for 12 minutes..and that's not a joke, I swear:D

The watchman next to the painting probably thought I hypnotized it:D:D

Then Franco joined my walk through the "Night area" and so we could continue our brisk interpreations and analysis about some works..and we "battled" us by telling to each other some distinctive stations of Van Gogh's life we learned and linked them with his developement of painting, hehe^^. It was quite fun:)

After that we sat on the meadow and we wrote some witty post cards or played "Studenten mau- mau" by replacing the "knocking" in the case of a "King" with some strange animal like noises..oh my goodness, these kind of noises accompanied us the whole journey..weird?-Indeed!:P

Our way back to Bull Dog by the tramway was filled with some feelings of high adrenalin, because 2 of the passengers were without any ticket o.o!

But all of us arrived happily at our destination;)

Anyhow there was a little "collective low" when we looked for some food in the evening...the majority decided to go to "wok to walk", a chinese as you can imagine:P

Then I took some "Grachtenbilder at night" (maybe the aftermaths of the "night- exhibition"^^).At the first picture you can see a witty attempt of kicking Alex into the Gracht :D The second one shows some similarities with a famous painting I mentioned a few lines ago..hmm^^, okay that's a "triple 2":P

Well, then we intended to discover again Amsterdam's night life..however this turned out to be very hard. Our chronical indecison, some disagreements and some drunk people, who weren't the optimal guideposts at all complicated our mission to find a club.

Finally we found the "mp3", unfortunately a teenie lounge and not that "fet", you know?:P But for some people in our circle it offered the opportunity to make some extraordinary experiences..knick knack:P

Later on Maren, Anne, Andreas and me found a really nice, authentic, trendy Dutch club bar:D Not everybody liked it there, however Franzi, Alexis, Franz and me were pretty amused about "bicycle- songs" like "Klingelingeling, klingelingeling- huhu"!;)

Admittedly we weren't enthusiastic at all about some brash Dutch adolescents, who were sooooo annoying-.-.

One of them, the "Spatting Dutchman"made every smalk talk with him to a really wet experience:D Now, it seems to be quite amusing but at this moment it was close to a horror-.-^^

Having sampled all this our little "dutch club- group" decided to go somewhere else. First we landed in the overcrowded Jazz club "Alto", where we sat next to an Barcelonean film regisseur, who pretended to make some music videos...but anyhow after a few minutes he told us to be only an assistent..maybe he is the footboy in the end and not more than this:D

Any further attempts of finding a great location failed. Due to this fact we gave up in vain an walked back to our hostel:)

Woensdag 22.04.2009

"Hmmh..hmmh...wuff..grunz, grunz!"

Maybe this onomatopoeia expresses the best how weird and nevertheless special this Wednesday was:)

In the morning we decided to go to the famous Van Gogh- museum. Unfortunately the proud price of 15 euro for adults and our chronical indecision upset our plan. Well, the ruthless lady at the counter didn't want to believe us or especially Franz with whoom we have started a "rejuvenation mission", that all our passports were at the hostel , because bull dog need a comparable merit for the keys we had. You can guess that this was just a witty attempt of us to avoid that the lady sees on our passports that we are already about 18 years....mhh..So our "rejuvenation mission " with Franz, which consisted of taking his stylish sunglasses away and butting up his shirt, and the possibility of an entry price of 7 euro failed :(

Having provided us with some delicious sandwiches and smoothies, our principal food, we continued our walk to "Roemervischerstraat" and were grateful for the helpful explanation from a nice "green peace- lady".(Franz to Julia: "Was it okay , that we didn't talk about green peace..?Maybe she expected it..first I thought about it, but then ..hmm..")^^.

"Roemervischertstraat" is a hidden street which illustrates the history of European Architecture and is due to this fact a little journey through 7 European cities...however we just found Spain, Turkey, Russia and Germany..;-)

Well, after this outstanding location an apparently innocent traffic light implicated a fatal thing...the separation of the group, Omg!!;-)

Because Franz and me were busy with marvelling at the nice buildings, enjoying the weather and the already mentioned "twittering of the birds"..they forgot the time, got lost and the other members of "mission amsterdam" didn't recognize it^^.

However this incident gave Franz and me the chance to explore the local art scene , which was quite interesting. Next to the Grachten are many galleries with national as well as international paintings and due to this fact brisk discussions and analysis were determined:P

BUT among all this talkies one question waited to be answered:

What is the difference in pronounciation between "ei" and "ij"??

A woman there affirmed our assumptions:

"ei " sounds like "das Ei" in german and "ij" sounds like" EY, du kummst hier net rEIn:D Admittedly, we noticed later on that we forgot to ask about "eij"..ahhhh:P How will this sound like???:)

Well, the next funny incident followed:

Franz and me visited a gallery next to a well attended street and were marvelling at some paintings close to the showcase where pedestrians could clearly see them. Suddendly, like a bolt from the blue, I made a freeze frame in front of the showcase. Spontaneously Franz copied this sudden inspiration...so, two "gheck" people pretended to be a mannequin and obviously not so bad..because two older dutch ladies were almost passing the gallery when they suddenly stopped and starred at us!!

Both of us hoped that they will soon continue their walk but ...no..they were starring, starring and starring:D

As you can imagine, one of us had to laugh so loud and heartly that the women noticed that we were actually genuine human beings^^.

In this case it was Franz who botched it up, nevertheless this was a quite humourous mission and when we left the gallery the ladies were still laughing and one of them said something like: "Ik höb erst bezwefelt", (dass ihr echt seid!^^) I will never forget this :)

Then we went to an antique shop where we found a nice little treasure chest...maybe Franz will buy it for my 30. birthday:D After that we discovered the "Reguliersdwarsstraat":

We took a seat at a nice restaurant with a really polite Tai waitress, who taught us our first dutch words, namely dank u well, tot ziens and doeii and wrote them in our drawing block:) She couldn't guess what a high euphoria about the funny dutch language she evoked:D

While we were eating some "Bitterballen" with the so- called "Pommes Frites"^^, we "stalked" some people with their humourous quirks and helped Sophia, who felt sick at the morning and stayed at the hostel, to find the rest of Mission Amsterdam in da city.

Having prepared for the little wind storm, that was blowing through AD and which was responsible for all the napkins and menues which were flying in the wind, we hit the road, since the others waited for us at 16.00 pm at Leidseplein.

Because they weren't on time we made a little shopping excursion.

Franz found some oldstyle white shoes and I found a cool, checked cap, wow, what a alliteration!:D

But we weren't not persuaded enough and so we left the shop without these things^^.

However I discovered a pretty marvellous bag at H&M and Franz bought a chameleon- like belt ( sorry, maaan:P);-)

Having arrived at Leidseplein for the 2nd time, Mission Amsterdam was complete again.Some of us decided to go busking, that actually means making music AND earning some money.

The thing with the money was quite hard, because the local competition was really inventive. I have to admit, that we hadn't had any chance:D Performers like a brilliant Barcelonean puppet player or a "gheck"( but positive gheck^^) female hippie dog trainer were too extraordinary in contrast to us:D:D:D

But we had a nice encounter with some nurses, who liked our music...okay, at least two of them... in whole Amsterdam:D

One of them was from Lübeck, they live now in Ad and enjoy their life. Unfortunately they affirmed our assumptions concerning the high lease costs. Close to the Grachten appartements cost 1000 euro every month!!It's sheer lunacy!!!

After some further failed attempts to earn some money, we went to Vondelpark and we met some people who weren't unknown to us at all,

namely Yassi and Orestis, quite "fet" wasn't it?^^ We had a picnic, some nice conversations, suffered from sunburn and sunstroke and noticed that Franz forgot his leather jacket at Leidseplein.

Johannes and Franz went back and were looking for the jacket, but it was unfortunately gone, such a pitty:(

Then we went back to Bull dog and met the double bass player with his ill doggi on the way back home..the dog looked quite sad, I think he had to suffer a lot..hmm, poor doggi.

Having arrived at our room, Andi made some strange noises:

First he imitated the sound of a puppy- dog and then he suddenly switched to a pig!It was so funny, and the best was Annes facial expression!!!:D:D:DAfter a while of relaxing we set out for a cheap restaurant. Maren and me were again driven by animal like feelings (maybe Andi aroused this typical state of mind^^) and crossed the zebra crossing like a funny kangaroo with a touch of an Otto Waalkes Imitation:D The car driver , who had to stop because of the red traffic light were quite amused..you can imagine..hehe^^.

Well, we landed in an Italian restaurant, called "Mariah". The personal was really impolite, except of the smiling cook, and didn't appreciate our tryings to speak some dutch..hmm..and my british accent, which is omnipresent in my mind, was also rather unsuitable in this area..hehe^^.Although they forgot some reservations, I enjoyed the witty group of people sitting around my desk and..yeah..partly the food.

Actually we planned to explore night life in Amsterhamster, but we hadn't had much luck..At "Bourbon Street Blues " was full house and the majority didn't feel like going there. Only Möriam and Johannes went there..then we went to Paradiso, a concert hall as well as dance club.

Candy Dulfer, a famous Saxophon player, was going to play there and I inquired myself about the upcoming concert..unfortunately it was quite expensive for some poor ex- pupils like us..hmm.Since the danceclub was also really crowded and expensive, we decided to got to an Irish Pub for a while.

Franz and me finished the day by going "grachten", lingering through the idyllic city by passing the railing with the sticker, you know?:P

In our room then we had all some witty converstions and were wondering about the staying power of Möriam and Johannes , who weren't at the hostel yet.

Step by step we fell asleep..the next day could come!:)

Dinsdag 21.04.2009

The dawn was breaking, the birds were twittering while the flowers slowly spread out their petals. Actually WE couldn't see that but I guess this kind of feeling was originated in our enthusiasm of exploring the city on our first day in AmsterHamster. Our pretty and spacious room was filled hesitantly with the first vital signs namely with nice methods of torture executed by Maren who started an insidious attack on "Antje" with a vicious hair dryer.

This was followed by some really ominous talkies of Andi and Johannes in the shared shower : "It's alright that you are showing your feminine side" and "I don't care about guys wearing women's clothes". Anyway the time had come...to breakfast. Unsurprisingly this ran obliquely just like everything we did and which made our trip so unconventional:) Apart from people using cream instead of milk for their cereals a squashed cup arrested attention or let's say it scared some people to death.

After having breakfast we decided to go to the so called "Anne frank huis" which was a great and portentious experience for all of us especially to see the conditions in which Anne and her family had to live for about 2 years because of nazi persecution. But unfortunately we didn't manage to write a guest entry which resulted from our missing spontaneous creativity, a state which is certainly nearly extinct of corse.:) But before getting in it was quite "litzig" to see how Julia and Maren cunningly planned to pass off as 16-years-old-teenies to get a discount on the entrance ticket. The "lady in black" seemed also to be quite amused about our attempt to rephrase "one adult please" always into different expressions (another one /one more..).

After this light-bulb-moments which contains the exploration of the "world of cheese",we wanted to make a trip ON the Grachten but first we thought we had to find a cheeper way to get this tour. So we spread the whole centre of Amsterdam (this might be a bit exaggerated but we were filled with enthusiasm and combative spirit:).
and tried to persuade 8 other people to come with us because that would help to enforce our endeavor. But finally we failed...but then again we found a boat directly next to the info centre which offered us a cruise for only 7, 50 euro. It lead us to all the highlights of Amsterdamean architecture and gave us an insight into the beautiful city.

In the evening we fan out to hunt down our shiftless bay..basically chinese food in a restaurant:P Despite of our search for nourishments it was quite a surprise that Julia was so much driven by animallike feelings that she began to perform the "The chicken dance" after Miriam gave a song to Alanis' Ironic. Both fit perfectly, don't they...indeed:P
But before eating the restaurant witnessed witty commercial scenes were acted out by Carolin, Julia an Maren which hyped authentically the merits of the products namely Cola and Persil:)

Destination Hardrock cafe but as usual for a group of corse (that's no irony really:P) we didn't manage to have a common afternoon. Franz and Julia were lost but to make a virtue out of necessity it gave us the chance to explore some other parts of the city or to have friendly talkies with doormans who showed us the right way:) Finally we got to the cafe and got rewarded by a special performance from "Madonna II" who friendly invited us with the words "not just looking , sitting down and buying sth."..."I'm a Virgin" became a sparkling show of elegance and daintiness:)

But the day wasn't over by that time..neij neij neij:P crisis meeting at the Grachten accompanied by an enormous emotionality which can just be characterized by the beauteous expression "Vom Regen zum Stausee" which finally resulted in a shaman's dance. This was also the date of formation of the "4 Commandments" which shape the golden way of freedom and succes. A really unforgettable night, believe me:)

Maandag 20.04.2009

After a long but really witty and creative journey by train, where we played cards, drew cereal and fruit bars, read the "NEON"- article about "Gruppenkoller"or continued the discussion of the complexity of round figures in contrast to angled shapes, we finally arrived at the nice train station in Amsterdam.

At once Sophia , who already arrived on Sunday, welcomed as and marshalled us to our hostel.
As soon as I got to know the city in the first few minutes, I was aware of having a great time in this beautiful and outstanding capital.

At about 2 ó clock we found the Bulldog Hostel- OUR hostel in the centre of ad and due to this fact in the redlight district:D

We met first "weed costumers" in the hall, the so- called "stoned Americans" ,..but the extraordinary ordour was still strange to our noses...yet;)

At the reception we were greeted by a nice " fet "and "gheck" woman in equal measure, who was confronted with the" sophia problem" and the unmanageable big amount of money which she could only count in dutch and which was therefore quite interesting to listen at (->fiffzehn:D).

Of course we solved all the problems and went to our room after being scrutinized by the nice goldfishes in the hall named "bulldoggifishlis":D.

The following comment of Johannes expresses well the situation in our room:"A sardine exactly feels like that!"^^At first Julia was undetermined about the spreading of the room but then everything was managed.

After a little "sit- down" we decided to go outside and enjoy the city and the marvellous weather.Here you can see some pictures in front of the bull dog on our first day.:)

Okay, at once we were confronted with some controversial "features" of Amsterdam..unfortunately..in a showcase and in front of some "special shops" we discovered some woman in leopard figured dresses..hmhh...and maybe every third shop was a coffeeshop..they are really omnipresent^^.

After this incident the next quite shocking one followed:

We unsuspecting people were walking on the street when suddenly a man with an axe intended to kill me!!!Aaarrrgghhhh!!!!

So, you can imagine, that this attack wasn't a real attempt to send me to heaven..it was just a strange man , who wanted to woo some tourists for his "horror dungeon"...well, he failed:D

Then we began to take our first professional "bicycle pics"..here is a gorgeous exemplar..okay I see "2"(-->insider^^).

In the course of the day we had a really nice encounter with an albanian bassplayer. The whole story began in the subsequent way:

Franz was just passing the man and asked:"You gonna play somesting?"

The man answered:"You can play somesthing?"

Franz:"No, but she can!"(and pointed at me)

(However I tried to flee from this situation and continued to walk as if nothing has happend^^but it was hopeless because I was moved back by the others...ahhh^^).

Okay, the man was quiete nice and to do him a little pleasure I decided to play the piece "summertime" on the 100- year old black doublebass and Möriam took the singing part. It was fun and a crowd of people was standing in front of us and listened to our music. One young guy was asking myself whether we just do it for fun or for collecting some money. Of course I answered "just for fun" and he was a fortiori enthusiastic^^.

The "Vondel Park" was our next station or was is the station before?

We sat on some stones an enjoyed the wheather, the nature and the marvellous ambience.

After a little breather in our room , we were looking for the famous streets "Leidswardstraat " and " Oude schans", the streets that constantly accompanied us:)

We finally landed at "Bourbon Street Blues Club", a club that a nice dutch man recommended to us.

The band called "The Mosquitos" was really good!They had a wide a rang on songs especially Southamerican country songs, Samba, Jazz tendencies,rocksongs, boogie and blues.

Sophia had a quite brisk eye contact with the lead singer and was blown away:P^^.But she "cheated" on him having danced with another man...tzzz tzz tz, Sophia, Sophia;-).

The bassplayer was also pretty funny. He tried to appear as a authentic punk- rocker with his "skull" shirt , but actually he seems to be a soft teddy bear..his "uuuhhh"-singin parts were comparable with the highest voices of angels, soo docile!:D:D

Oh, something is missing ..the "flood wave of bear" which distributed on everybody in the near of Johannes who was the activator and "evildoer" of this situation^^.

Then some of us walked home and Franz and Julia decided to go "grachten" and had some frustrating conversations about getting older and older ..oh, and we found a nice white sticker on a railing which will help us to remember this outstanding discussion in 20 years:)

"Marihuana?" was asking a man in the next minutes, but we

refused this shit^^.

To confuse the other latecomers we made the so- called "glider" and so we achieved that especially johannes thought we might be drunk^^.

The day or rather the early ours of the next day "began" with some witty "conversations" between Franz and Maren. Both of them were actually sleeping but then I heard Franz saying:"Ist ja witzig!"and then he continued to talk in hungarian. Immediately after this statement Maren "answered" with an determined "mhm!"

What a day! It was great..wasn't it?;-)

I amsterdam!

Gouden Dag!

Yesterday we arrived at 00.07 pm at the mainstation in Speyer.
It was such a wonderful trip, everybody of us finally 12 people (Sophia managed to stay with us all the time) enjoyed it so much and we had a pretty marvellous time all together!!:)



"Amsterhamster" is great! The "Grachten" like the famous Prinsen- or Herengracht, the nice houses, "Albertheijn" our supermarket, fantastic places like Leidseplein and Königsplein and the Dutch people, who were so helpful and charming made our trip to an unforgettable experience
and I am really grateful having sampled all this:-).



"Amsterhamster" is an outstanding city. I can draw the conclusions that this nice capital is a mixture of Berlin and Mannheim, hehe;-)
Yeah, it is really like that. Let me explain it:
On the one hand side "Amsterhamster" is a great multicultural metropolis. Probably the half of Barcelona's population is living here:D. Apart from that you can find British, German, (South-) American and many Asian folks, it is wonderful and you can feel the so- called "big city life". That is may be also a reason why especially Franz and me talked most of the time either in English or Dutch..:D



On the other side "Amsterhamster" has an unique charm and atmosphere. The capital is not that big but well- aranged and the laid- back "Amsterhamster" spirit is omnipresent- not only because of the weed you know;). The "Amsterhamsters" do not know the word hecticness, they seem to be really satisfied, no wonder this city speaks for itself:) Oh, I cannot stop to swarm about it^^.

"Amsterhamsters" love to go by bike and they decorate their bikes with flowers :) Your first thougt might be: Oh sure, this expresses their coolnes and appeases their aggressiveness. You can say this concerning all the other actions of Dutch people in which they behave really easy-going, but in riding their bike they do not see any fun, it is a mentality, a FRANTIC mentality who makes every biker ignoring poor little pedestrians:D!



In the next days/weeks/months (?) a detailed journal and pictures of our journey will follow.

See you,

kind regards and Tot ziens from "Antje":)

Finally..

Yeah finally we did it! After a long time of scaduling now our trip is safe. Travelling with Deutsche Bahn on the 20th of April and acommodation in Bulldog Hostel Asterdam. Not just the thing that everything works out but there is also a marvellous announcement to make:


Sophia is joining us for 3 days! Isn´t it great. I hope she will be a funny addition to our nice group, but Im pretty sure. So welcome Sophia and see you in Amsterdam:) It just 2 days left and Im already pretty curious.