The bus was at 9 am and would get us to Amsterdam at 1 pm. That meant 4 golden hours of great sleep! When I had the strength, I would pull the curtains on the window aside and take a quick picture.
There were no Swiss Alps but Dutch countryside is no less in comparison. Large farms dotted with windmills (both old and modern) and pretty flowers lining the roads were enough of a motivation to wake me up an hour before we got to Amsterdam. Coming into Amsterdam I felt very excited: this would be a trip I would never forget! Dikshant (a friend who lives in Amsterdam, wow) was there to pick us up at the bus station. We head to his place and shower/change. Now a rational person would go right to sleep (remember we hadn't slept the night before and the night before that I had left for the train at 3:30 am), but we weren't rational people and we weren't in a rational place. We head straight out.
Central Amsterdam is a very pretty place (I think I say this about all European cities). We walk around taking pictures. We eat a Dutch specialty: french fries with mayonnaise on top! We take a canal tour: a 1 hour ride on a boat through Amsterdam's maze of canals (made hilarious by a bunch of drunk out of their minds Brits shouting comments on everything the tour guide said).Finally it is nighttime and there is only one thing you can do when it's nighttime in Amsterdam: The red light district. The place everyone visiting Amsterdam 'visits'. Let me attempt to describe it in a PG-13 manner.
The red light district has been confined by law to a roughly rectangular area. Through the middle, along the longer side of the rectangle, runs a canal, either sides of which contain "Rooms" (explained later). The streets intersecting either sides of the canal (i.e. the streets parallel to the shorter side of the rectangle) are very narrow and also contain "Rooms" on both sides.
When you walk along the streets, to either side are glass doors with 'ladies of the night' inside. Behind these 'ladies' are curtains leading to another room with a bed. These are the "Rooms". Most of these 'ladies' wear enticing clothes and make seductive gestures to beguile you into coming in. The 'transactions' are done in a very businesslike manner, with a flat rate and a 'heavy bouncer' for people that attempt to cheat. Photography of the "Rooms" is not allowed and thus you are left with only this.
We walk around till midnight and then call it a day. It is the most culturally astonishing place I have visited so far. If you're a little tipsy and your friends give you a push, you might end up in one of those rooms. Doesn't look like a big deal at all when you are there. And the 'ladies' will be sure to smile and shake your hand as you say goodbye. Our heads dropping with fatigue, we sleep on the last tram out to Dikshant's place. Slept long till the next day and since we'd seen most of Amsterdam, decided to head out to another city nearby : Hague (Den Haag).
Hague is famous for its beach and what better way to relax off out fatigue than a day at the beach? Hague is also a pretty town, not busy and crowded like Amsterdam, but a quiet, homely city. Evening time we head back to Amsterdam, have dinner there, and go back to the alluring red lights. Some of the bouncers there spoke a bit of Hindi and we had a few laughs when one of them yelled out "Mr. Singh, Mr. Gupta, Mr. Patel, Jaldi, jaldi! Jaldi ayo"Well that was it. We came back late again and had to catch an early morning train back to Zurich. Had a 3 hour stopover at Brussels where one of the friends departed for Spain and the remaining two of us took a train back to Zurich. I slept the whole train ride back (again!), had frozen pizza for dinner, and went to bed. Next morning I woke up feeling like the weekend was just one long dream.
Stay tuned for more of my Euro-Adventures. Next stop (hopefully): France!
p.s. For lots more pictures (of Amsterdam, Brussels and other places), be sure to check out http://picasaweb.google.co.in/sahni.h
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