On to Holland to see friends

On to Holland to see friends

Langedijk, Holland, Europe

I had a horrible night’s sleep in Hamburg. Between the other guys coming in the dorm at random times during the night, and me constantly waking up to make sure someone wasn’t stealing my stuff, I probably got about an hour of sleep. Finally at 6:30am I decided to just get up and get out of the room. As I was getting ready, another guy came into the room at like 7am. It must have been a good night to party in Hamburg.

I checked out of the hostel and asked if I could lock my bags in a luggage store room. The girl said there’s a room, but they never lock it. It’s easier to just let people go in whenever they want, she said. Well since this completely contradicts the idea of having a secure room for luggage, I didn’t feel too comfortable when I left my bags in there and went walking around the city.

I checked out a couple of areas, the Rathaus and Jungfernsteig which were really nice. There were only a couple of problems this morning. There was a really think fog covering the whole city, so much that you could only really see a couple hundred meters and then buildings just disappeared. Also, today was a holiday in Germany, so everything was closed. I mean everything. Even Starbucks and McDonalds were closed. You never see that.

So with everything closed and feeling uncomfortable about leaving my bags, I went back to my hostel a couple hours later. It’s a shame because I don’t think I really got to see Hamburg, but I didn’t have a great experience there. I’ll just have to go back someday to try again. I hung out at my hostel until it was time to run the gauntlet of drunken hobos to get to my bus.

I got my Eurolines bus to Amsterdam and it was completely full. I was sat next to a very large woman who boarded the bus after me and just kind of took over both seats. She was bumping me constantly, emptying her bag out onto my tray and hers, she kept talking to herself, it was all very annoying and just not what I needed at that point. Luckily I had my tablet and a bunch of tv episodes to watch so I sat back and tried to ignore her, which was nearly impossible. She kept asking me random questions even though she could see I was watching something. “What city is that?” “What time will we get to Rotterdam?” (Even though I wasn’t even going to Rotterdam!) “Does the driver have food we can buy?” I DON’T KNOW, LEAVE ME ALONE!!

After the somewhat painful 6.5 hour journey I arrived to Amsterdam Amstel where I had to get a train to Centraal and then out to the airport, Schipol. I asked a couple of people for directions and everyone was incredibly friendly. Unfortunately some of them were wrong and pointed me in the wrong direction, but at least they were nice about it.

I was so happy to arrive at Schipol and Jacquelien and her mom Dineke waiting for me. After these last couple of days it was exactly what I needed. So we drove from Schipol to their little town of Langedijk, which was about 40 minutes away. It was so nice of them to pick me up. I can’t even thank them enough. We arrived at Jacquelien’s house where I met her dad, Jack, and her boyfriend, Tim. Everyone was really friendly and Jacquelien even made me dinner. I can’t even remember the last time I had a home cooked meal, and it was excellent!

I am pretty tired from last night’s shenanigans, so Jacquelien has shown me to my own guest room where I know I won’t be bothered by drunks coming in at all hours of the morning and night. I am so excited about sleeping here tonight!

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