Amster...what?

In January this year I was fortunate to visit a good friend in, what I like to call the most amazing city in the world; Amsterdam. Yes it is everything you heard about it and yet so much more. Yes, you smell the marijuana walking past some coffee shops, yes, you can find the girls in their redlight windows and yes, and you see people with their retrospective lifestyles. BUT..I have to say, if that is all you found in Amsterdam, you missed a great lot of it!

To me Amsterdam is like playing a compilation album, on every track you take there is something new to be found. Always something new mixed with a little bit of the old or visa versa. Then to me, there is also the advantage of understanding the language, since my mother tongue is Afrikaans. This opens up a completely new world, which I could not find in any other European city. An experience of being home, except this home is completely different from the one I am used to.

I think as a tourist the best way to see the city is by foot. While there, Sophie (the good friend) and I did about a 100km on foot. Walking just everywhere and visiting what ever was on my whish list. Highlights were the Rijksmuseum, a Sunday concert in Het Conzertgebou and going by boat on the channels or gragte as they call it. Anne Frank museum was an absolute disappointment, but the story of her and the families live, as well as those of all the rest of the Jews, still is heart touching. Therefore I cannot remove it from the to do list. However, I would suggest that you first watch the movie Freedom Writers just to create some sort of sentiment for the whole story in you mind.

Well, that is the short, this and that of Amsterdam, hope you will get a chance to visit it someday

Madrid, Tappas and Jamon

While I did my internship in Germany, I made friends with a girl who, like me loves to travel. When ended up spending Christmas together and then decided to do a trip together in the new-year. She loves Spain, so we decided on Madrid. First of all I should tell you that I had an extremely limited budget, so this had to be as cheap as possible…thank goodness for Raynair! (This is an airline to remember, whenever you decide to do some traveling in Europe, go visit the at www.raynair.com)

After really little planning I booked a ticket for 11€ to Dublin, here I met up with my new friend Lorena (she studies at DCU). From Dublin we caught a plane to Madrid for 20€. Madrid has a million youth hostels, but we decided on Cat’s hostel. Not a bad choice, except that we should have booked at least two weeks in advance, since this is one of the most popular hostels in town. You sleep and eat breakfast, with 24h Internet and towels included at about 14€….really cheap.

Madrid is a city, with all a city has to offer, lost of great shopping, museums, restaurants and nightlife. We tried to fit a little of all of this into our three day break away. We arrived just in time for all their winter sales and bought things at places such a Zara, Berskha and others for anything from 3€ and up. The Spaniards definitely understand the term sale or rabat as they call it

As far as food goes, you definitely have to try out tappas and jamon (you pronounce it gggamon). Tappas is equivalent to being social. Small quantities of food is ordered and shared among friends over wine or whatever you like to drink. You have to eat tappas Spanish style and make it a dinner, which of coarse have to start at 23:00! For a treat to enjoy all day any time, you can try a crossant with jamon. Jamon is something between, ham, pastrami and biltong. Well, that is my experience of it at least, but absolutely delicious!

There is so much more about Madrid to tell…but that have to wait for a another post.