welke weg naar het station?

well, it's a sunday which means that skyradio is playing all day in my household. it's a beautiful time, when all the horrifying love ballads of the eighties and nineties that i thought i'd escaped having to participate in come back to fill my ears with sweet sweet crooning!
HAVE A NICE DAYYYY~, SKYRADIO HONDERD EEN FM~~
i personally have entered an era of gypsy punk goodness, so i've been binging on gogol bordello. also, i'm ashamed to say i listened to some devendra banhart. because. well. i don't even know, he's a very silly manchild.

no really, you're just the most ridiculous ever. it's okay, devendra.

anyway, yesterday i went to amsterdam with AFS, which was truly amazing. i took pictures, which i will implant into this just as soon as i figure out how. jacque and i took the train there together, and i we almost got completely lost. we weren't sure quite where to switch trains, and we got on and off twice before we finally decided that the train we were on probably wasn't the right one and we should wait. luckily almost immidiately after that jelle appeared out of nowhere and ushered us over to a big group of other AFS kids. crisis averted.
once we got to amsterdam, we split up into little tour groups to walk through the city. we walked through the red light district, which was quite a bit more distressing than we had anticipated. it was quite early in the day so most of the windows were empty, but there were two or three with girls [and transvestites] in them. it wasn't sad, exactly, it just made me feel like choking a little bit.
we continued on through the city, which is actually mostly populated with netherlands gift shops, coffeeshops, and chinese food restaurants. i think amsterdam is like 90% tourists, 10% everyone else. the people in shops speak english as a first instinct.
after wandering through some more busy campy streets, we stopped for lunch. jacque and i went to this pastry/sandwich shoppe and bought matching chicken sandwiches with cheese, mustard, been sprouts?, and probably some other stuff. they were ridiculously delicious. probably because we were freakishly hungry. the thing we've found is that you can hate pretty much everything that is on a sandwich and when you eat it warmed up, it will be all kinds of godly delicious.

what's in this one? pickles, mushrooms and death? SOUNDS DELISH pop that baby in the microwave.

after lunch we took some group pictures and then went on a boat ride through the canals. it was so pretty to see all the cute little buildings. they are all surprisingly structurally unsound, like... a good portion of them looked like the were going to fall over at any moment. it takes a while to notice, but then you're like "waaait... i'm pretty sure windows aren't supposed to do a downward slant. just a hunch."
also, HOUSEBOATS. i love them. they are everywhere. they all have these big windows and sometimes they have little docks attatched to them with a picket fence and lawn chairs. ITS SO CUTE >w<
there was one made out of concrete bricks, too, which was cool. it looked like they'd just taken a house and plopped it on top of a boat.
we decided that we were super jealous of all the people just chilling near the edges of the canals or on their house boats, because those people obviously had it so made.
anyway, after the boat ride we dicked around some more, looked at some more buildings and stuff, you know. we saw a group of street breakdancers, which was legitimately hilarious. then at four, the tour was over and we could go explore and be merry by ourselves. WHICH we did. :D
first, we [all the americans and a german girl named laura] went out for pancakes. i got an applesauce almond and whipped cream pannenkoek, and also i split a tosti with ariel. it was heavenly delicious.
when we were all finished, we left in search of shopping and places to hang out. we were just crossing the street when jenny and i spotted a bagel store right next to where we had been. obviously, we made a mad dash for it, completely ignoring the rules of socially acceptable-ness and also traffic. because um BAGELS. they dont eat bagels here. it *might* have been the most wonderful bagel i've ever eaten.

first bagel in approx half a year, i almost exploded with glee.

after we felt sufficiently bagel'd, we went back to this big square with a bunch of cozy little bars and picked one of them to hang out in. unfortunately, they were kinda lame so we left pretty quickly. i was on a quest for a bar that served grolsch, so we walked around a bit looking for a place. we found one, but it was called "PIRATES". the sign was red with neon sign balloons on it. which has nothing to do with pirates. also, the blinds were drawn. we decided that this was probably not a wise venue choice. after passing a few more sketchy looking bars [apparently only sketchy bars sell grolsch in amsterdam?], we gave up and went to a large loud building called the sports club because they had really good drink deals.
the sports club was actually a really fun place, it was very loud and they were playing really good dance music, so we were all sorta bustin' a move in our chairs lol. i'm sure we looked completely normal. since jenny is 18, she ordered a strawberry margerita which she let us try. it kind of made me never want to drink beer again. upon returning to my heineken i was like URR WHY DOESNT THIS TASTE LIKE A FRUIT SLUSHY I AM DISSAPOINTED :C

this, or bread flavored soda water? it's your choice, don't let me influence you.

but cocktails are are ridiculously expensive, and also we are not allowed to drink them. and y'know, i've grown affectionately fond of beer. its an acquired taste.
after we finished up at the sports club, we decided we wanted ice cream. because who doesnt want ice cream? :D earlier in the day we had anticipated this happening and mentally landmarked the location of amsterdam's ben &jerry's. this was a very good decision on our part, because i'm fairly sure a cookie dough ice cream cone has never tasted so good.. nom nom. after that we were pretty much done so jacque and i left to go catch our train.
to my surprise, we actually managed to navigate home without getting lost or dying. go us! though, we did enlist the help of two brootal hipster twenty-somethings coming from a concert to help us take the right train when we had to switch. we talked to them for a while about bitterballen and drop and they were nice.
in case i haven't told you what drop is yet, it is something that only dutch people like. it's a black chew-y candy that they sell everywhere and everybody loves it. i tried to love it, i really did. they first time i had one, i entered the situation with an open mind. probably because nobody informed me that they are pretty much salty licorice flavored. floris told me to try not to smell them before you eat them, which should have probably tipped me off. our single-serving train hipsters admitted that it's something that you pretty much had to grow up eating to understand it.

yum, i've always wished they would make a candy that tastes like soy sauce.

then we got off the train at borne and walked back to my house. then we ate some bowls of cereal and tea and went to sleep. good night c:
all in all, it was an awesome wonderful happy trip full of goodness and wonderment :D we're gonna go back another time, most definitely.
anyway, next week is a potuck in winterswijk so i need to figure out a traditionally american recipe to bring. :P peanut butter and jelly, anyone?
until next time!