Amsterdammmmmm

So last I left off I was about to head to Amsterdam. I will admit that I am a wee bit behind, seeing as I have been to Amsterdam, and also Copenhagen, and am now starting the last two weeks of camp! Crazy, time has literally flown bye!

The train to Amsterdam was filled with excitement. Leah and I couldn’t even sleep on the train. Which was extremely crappy and crowded might I add, but somehow Leah and I ended up with a seat but no one else we traveled with did for at least an hour! Leah and I spent a good amount of time playing with Photobooth on my pad, which was quite entertaining but I doubt that the people around us thought so! They mostly just stared at us, which is quite common here. At one point our train just stopped for about 45 minutes and we had no idea what was going on. Thankfully a sweet old German woman who only spoke a bit of English told us that there were mechanical issues. So that being said, we missed our connecting train and were pretty worried about making it to Amsterdam because we were meeting some of our friends who are living in Paderborn. Luckily we were all around people who were heading to the same spot, so we pretty much just followed them and ended up getting there just fine. Our hotel was about 3km from the train station which isn’t really that bad, but at 1230 at night it’s a bit confusing. Although, we did finally find it! But the issue then arose that we were fitting 10 people into our room and at night the front door had to be opened by the receptionist when coming in and leaving the hotel. So Leah and I found a stairwell and prayed that the alarm wouldn’t go off so we could sneak all of the people in. It worked out quite well actually, and no alarms! Our hotel ending up being in the middle of everything the street below our hotel was just filled with vendors and people. So we decided to go out and see what was going on, just to scope things out. Also, it was gay pride weekend so there were very few straight people around! Everyone we met was super nice, but we were pretty tired. Somehow, and I’m not quite sure how I ended up in the bed, I fully expected to be sleeping on the floor. But you know, it was my birthday weekend and I deserved it! The next day some people got up and went to the Anne Frank house, I probably should have but I wanted to sleep! A few of us walked around and then went and found a good spot on the canal for the parade. We asked someone where a good spot was and he said “Anywhere, in two hours you will not recognize this street” Basically, there were going to be a ton of people all around us. And let me tell you there were! It was really fun though. Some people wanted to go back and sleep, and I was not one of those. I figure I will only be in Amsterdam once and I am not about to waste that time sleeping in a hotel room. So I went on an adventure with Griffin, and found a whole other part of the city where the parade was going on but with at least twice as many people at is as the place before. And I made friends with everyone around us, it was a blast and I am so glad that I didn’t go take a nap! After that we got some food and then decided to go out on the town and meet people. It was a lot of fun, and I wore a crown because it was my birthday (or at least close enough). The gay guys loved me and my crown, one guy told me a I was a very pretty princess! It was a lot of fun, the night didn’t end that great but meh, oh well. I passed out, so tired, so little sleep! The next morning was odd, almost everyone just packed up there stuff and left the room and I had no idea what was going on. I was honestly a little bummed it was my birthday and everyone just left to go on a canal tour which is what I had said that I wanted to do the entire weekend. Erika and I eventually ended up meeting up with them, not on purpose, in a little coffee shop down the road. We went on a canal tour, it was really fun and interesting in the beginning but by the end, ever one was so ready for bed, no one could keep their eyes open! After that we pretty much got food and the hopped on a train back to Germany. Where everyone proceeded to pass out for a good amount of the trip!