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uitlaatzone

Saturday, September 08, 2001 10:33 AM
hi all everyone! well we are in the netherlands (rotterdam at the moment) and thought we'd send a quick update about how we got here. i'll summarize the highlights of the last few days in england (which were mostly walking around and paperwork to get patrick's passports reissued):

-a night of rain underneath a tree in salisbury
-swimming in the fountain in front of buckingham palace during the changing of the guard
-finding a bus pass and selling it to someone for three pounds
-finding a great spot to sleep right outside our swim/shower spot on the serpentine river, underneath some thorny bushes.
-a great bus ride with our knees crunched by these guys ahead of us, going through the chunnel which we couldn't see a thing,
-arriving in amstel station in amsterdam and the bus driver not saying anything but kicking us into the street and leaving, so we had to figure out where to go and what to do -getting to the red light district and trying to find our hostel
-finding our hostel (which is really great--it's called the shelter, it's a christian youth hostel and really is a shelter from what's right outside of it)
-walking around and seeing a bit of amsterdam (canals, exterior of the rijksmuseum, dam square, royal palaces) the next morning, then playing games at the hostel (pool, stratego, cards, etc.) and talking to other hostellers
-eating free soup at the hostel
-we applied to be cleaners at the hostel, to work 4 hours a day for free room and 3 meals a day, but they didn't need us until next week, so we came to rotterdam for a few days.
-walked around rotterdam and saw a lot of the art and architecture in the streets
-saw a wwii museum about the bombing of rotterdam (in one of the only old buildings to survive that bombing) -rented a little hut for the night (maybe 60 sq. feet) because of sporadic rains--we didn't want to get rained on while we slept.
-today we saw the natuurmuseum and some more of the architecture (like the cube houses, the library, etc.) [since most of the buildings in rotterdam were destroyed in the war, there's a lot of new buildings, and they are kind of experimental, very unique.]
-we foiled an attempted robbery (we were looking at the menu of a restaurant which was in the window, and these two guys came by and were pretending to look at the menu, and pretending to admire this motorized scooter beside us, then they'd crank the steering until it made a cracking sound, so we just stopped looking at the menu and started looking at them pretty blatantly, watching every move they made, and it was impossible to disguise what they were doing, so they sauntered away. we sat down in the restaurant and happened to get this table right by the corner where that scooter was, and about 2 minutes after we left the corner by the menu, these guys were back fiddling with the scooter. patrick was going to knock on the window to let them know we were still there, but one of them saw us before patrick knocked, and he kind of leaned over and whispered to the other guy, and they casually got up and walked away again.)
-we found a place to store our packs for free but they had to be picked up by 6, and we were in the restaurant at 5:30 not having ordered yet, so pat ran back with both keys and came back with one pack on the front, one on the back (i had to keep our table). as soon as he stepped under the overhang a torrential downpour erupted. it's funny to watch everyone duck for cover.
-we had a "club sandwich rotterdam" and like a lot of things here, it was very unique--a lot of unexpected ingredients, but it tasted quite good. unfortunately not quite as filling as we had hoped, but i guess there's more to good cuisine than volume.
-now we just have to figure out what to do tonight! we have to be back in amsterdam by wednesday or so, to hopefully get the cleaning position (if they haven't given it to someone else by then...) hope all is well with you!

tot ziens laryn and patrick