Tag: Netherlands

Volume 2, Day 34

It was finally time to move on and I packed up quickly and quietly in the morning. By chance, C had an appointment in Rotterdam so we planned to go together in the morning. I didn’t have a particular schedule, but having only one night in Rotterdam and a fairly early bus the next morning, I needed to get there early enough to drop off luggage and explore for the day. I had even specifically booked the hostel closest to the central train station for minimal carrying of luggage. While the easiest way have been to take Leiden Centraal to Rotterdam Centraal, we took a different route that involved three transfers. I don’t know. It was confusing, but there is an app that helps with all the schedules in the Netherlands. The key advantage of going with C together is that I could hold onto the OV card until the last minute, saving me 1 euro in fees for a one time use card. Ultimately, it didn’t really matter.

Rotterdam Centraal is an artistic architectural centerpiece, though come to think of it, most of the train stations I have seen are quite interesting. In the Netherlands, they go for very modern designs and Rotterdam is rife with architectural experimentation. I headed the one block over to my hostel, which happened to be at the entrance of Chinatown and literally owned by the “Chinatown” restaurant next door. The hostel staff were exceptionally friendly and as I was dropping off my stuff, I found out that the one museum I wanted to visit was closed. Its a real shame, especially considering it is considered one of Europe’s finest. While the building is being renovated the masterpieces are all out on loan to dozens of other museums, so I may have already seen some of the works without realizing it. In any case, the woman running the reception counter pulled out a small tourist map of the city and marked a bunch of places that would be interesting to see. Rotterdam is pretty big (the second largest city in the Netherlands) and the various cool districts are sometimes a bit spread out, so without some specific targets in mind, the typical wander blindly strategy is less than optimal.

I headed out to the east through a commercial zone to find the Markthalle, which is a giant hanger with a painted ceiling and a food court. On the way, I noticed a Decathalon and decided to pop in for a minute to have a look. So, the trekking backpacks for sale in Decathalon are much more reasonably priced than the name brand ones sold in specialty shops. I don’t like the idea of putting all that weight on my shoulders, but if the suitcase continues to disintegrate, its a good fallback. I agreed to spend the day thinking about whether or not I want to switch over and return before it closed at 7pm if so. Of course, I also happened to pass a reasonably priced luggage shop and the weekly market had several people also selling luggage. So, Rotterdam is already presenting me with tons of options to replace my suitcase. Ultimately, I bought some more superglue and some tape because it is better for the environment to do my best to repair the suitcase instead of just throwing it away.

The weekly market was impressive, firstly for being on a weekday rather than the weekend and secondly in terms of its scope. I stopped twice to buy food from stalls, a giant stroopwaffle and something called a loempia, which was basically a spring roll. It was a stall selling exactly two items, bought fried and as far as I could tell the only difference was in the shape. As there was also a fairly long line, it was exactly the kind of thing I stop to try. It was fine.

The Markthalle was really cool, but as I looked at the prices of the typical food counters, I was glad I had already sated my hunger because it was a little pricey. Something interesting I noticed is that Rotterdam seems to be having some sort of ethnic utopia where Muslim women are grilling bratwurst, Dutch people are stir-frying in woks, and Chinese people are selling cheeses. Everything is mixed and matched as if it didn’t really matter. Rotterdam is a very international city and I immediately took a liking to it.

There is some very famous architecture also near the Markthalle that I wandered over to take a quick picture of. I headed over to the water afterwards, finding myself at the Maritime Museum. Though I really enjoyed the maritime museums I visited in Japan, I had no desire to pay the ticket to go inside Rotterdam’s. Luckily all the best stuff (I can only assume) is outside and open to the public. A long stretch of the harbor was punctuated by various shipping equipment from various stages in history, not just a collection of old boats in the water, but cranes, train cars, lighthouses and the like.

It was a fairly long and uneventful walk over to the museum quarter where I briefly entertained the idea of visiting the modern art museum. I walked through the park connecting all the museums and returned to the hostel where I made a cup of coffee and worked until it was time to check in. When my energy dipped in the afternoon, I took a quick nap and went down to the lounge to have another coffee and read a book for a bit before heading out again to explore more of the town. While downstairs, I got to chatting with a girl from Hong Kong, who was working (volunteering?) at the hostel and had already lived some years in the Netherlands after originally coming to study art. We shared some views on language and differences between Europe and China. It was a good talk, but I needed to not just hang around all day.

When I went back out, I saw the ultra hip “Witte” district on my circuitous way to Erasmus bridge. I crossed the bridge to an island which most notable was the launching spot of trans-Atlantic cruise ships (i.e. Holland America Line) and cross a small bridge to another island where some old warehouses have been renovated into a fashionable foodie forum. If I lived in Rotterdam, I would probably enjoy going there for some craft beers and whatever artisanal bites are available, but it had no appeal for me right now. I also found the view of the harbor/city skyline to be completely unremarkable despite how much is remarked upon it. I was pretty beat by that point, so I headed back to the hostel, grabbed a tote bag and went to a grocery store to pick up a salad. I also bought some hummus and a baguette.

I ate back in the hostel while some middle aged Chinese women were cooking their separate noodle dinners. I didn’t let on that I spoke Chinese, and neither of them were eager to be sociable. Even when their two other friends came down, there was nearly silence as each person just looked at her own phone. I was somewhat mesmerized by the TV which was playing Rotterdam travel videos (muted with subtitles). It was weird to see fairly slickly produced (even by Instagram standards) videos showing off how cool the city is. I’ll admit Rotterdam is pretty cool, but my eyes nearly fell out of my head I was rolling them so hard. The two guys who are I guess professional travel vloggers and Instagram influencers really annoyed me.

After cleaning up my dinner mess, I laid out on the couch and finished “Player Piano.” The hostel unfortunately did not have a library for a book swap, so I’ll just have to carry it with me a little longer. I wasn’t drinking and though the hostel was comfortable, I was a bit bored. I headed upstairs quite early to shower and play on my computer until it was time to sleep.

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Payback for train tickets and bike rental	30
Cookie and orange juice	4.1
Glue and tape	2.5
Stroopwafel	1.5
Loempoa	2.9
Hostel	167 RMB
Dinner (Aldi)	5
Total:	525.8 RMB (USD 76.53)

Running Total: 12427.7 RMB (USD 1808.93)
Daily Average: 365.5 RMB (USD 53.20)

Volume 2, Day 33

After a fairly chill weekend (in which I guess I did some “touristy” stuff), it was time to start gearing back up to travel around. C had a mega long class on Monday and would be out all day, so I was left to my own devices. It was suggested that I catch a train east to see the medieval town of Utrecht. I didn’t really trust myself not to be lazy if I stuck around Leiden, so I decided to do that. I still had a leisurely morning reading and only headed over to the train station at 10 am. Luckily for me, there was a much closer train station on the east/west line which I could walk to in about five minutes (as opposed to 20).

Station might be a bit of a misnomer as it was much more of a single platform with no roof or control gates. One had to be careful to “check in” to the train by tapping the OV card against a reader. I pondered for a while if it was possible to “forget” or if there was an honor system in place. Well, the Dutch are either untrusting or untrustworthy because the train conductor vigilantly checked every person who stepped onto the train.

It was a fairly long journey to Utrecht, and I worked vigorously on my computer during the ride. The trains in the Netherlands have Wi-Fi, which is nice, but of the quality one would expect for a moving train.

I pulled into Utrecht’s massive central station and I had no idea what my plan was. Though I have a collection of travel guides, I don’t have one specifically for the Netherlands and the regional section in a Europe-wide book only covers Amsterdam, The Hague, etc. There was a tourist information desk at the station, but after a brief pause, I decided I didn’t really care to inquire as to what there was to do. It was Monday anyways, so all the museums would be closed. I would just wander around the old town and see what I stumbled across.

Based on my walking around, it appears the highlights of Utrecht include its canals, which are “deep” compared to the other canals one sees in the Netherlands. The water is below street level, so on the main canals there are stairs down to the water level embankments which host restaurants and cafes. The other highlight is the cathedral (also called Dom in Dutch, though obviously Protestant). The tower was scaffolded up for renovation and I didn’t want to 15 euros to go up. It seems the cathedral was either damaged or unfinished because the tower was separate from the main body of the church. I stuck my head inside the massive church, but it was completely stripped of any decoration or ornamentation. How boring. A third highlight would be that Utrecht is the birthplace of “Miffi,” a Hello Kitty like bunny figure. Even if the museum wasn’t closed, I would have still passed.

The sky was mostly cloudy. Though the sun broke through at times, it also looked like it could rain at any moment. I’m really surprised at the chilliness of the weather. Since Hamburg, the highs have barely gotten into the 20s (under 70 Fahrenheit).

After a loop around town, my stomach was starting to growl, so when I returned to the most bustling section I grabbed a slice of a bread pizza from a popular streetside establishment. I specifically ate just a bite because I was thinking about some sort of pastry or ice cream later on. I found a cafe in the student area near the university and sat there for a while reading and working on my computer. The third time they came around asking if I wanted “something to drink” (what a difference the word “else” can make), I got the hint and cleared out. Mind you, when I entered the cafe there were only two customers and both of them were working on laptops. Since I only had a (watery) chai latte at the cafe, I could still get a “proper” dessert. After careful research of the dozens of ice cream shops around, I picked one and enjoyed a cone of chocolate and pistachio.

After a bit more aimless rambling, I noticed it was time to head back to the train station (where there was only one train to Leiden every half hour). I needed to load more money on the OV card and had spent the day paying for everything with paper money in order to amass a collection of coins. I plugged enough coins into the machine to bring the card balance up to 20 so I could get on the train.

C was home from class by the time I got back. We were both pretty exhausted and at a loss for what to do. When C suggested we go out for dinner, I reminded her that we had leftovers in the fridge. Boredom more than hunger prompted us to reheat/refresh the food for dinner. After we finished eating, C got a message from her boyfriend that he was coming over. Whoops, we could have waited for him and done something different with the available food.

Instead of a puzzle, the quiet evening at home involved Legos. A puzzle would have been easier because at least all the right pieces are together in one box, unlike Legos in which a dozen sets are divided at random into a handful of plastic containers. Its been 20 years since I really played with Legos, but other than triggering happy memories, it was more like a chore to spend minutes at a time rooting around for a particular piece.

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Pizza	2
Chai Latte	3.5
Ice cream (2 scoops)	2.5
OV topup (roundtrip = 19.6)	7.2
Beer	2.2
Total:	17.4 EUR (135.7 RMB) (USD 19.71)

Running Total: 11901.9 RMB (USD 1728.81)
Daily Average: 360.7 RMB (USD 52.39)

Volume 2, Day 31

It was a pretty low key weekend overall, so this should hopefully be pretty short as I don’t need to go into all the details repeating myself on daily rituals.

C didn’t get back until around noon on Saturday and I had spent the morning on my normal activities. Though I had tried a few lessons of Dutch in Duolingo, there is no point in learning that particular language (sorry!) and I have started reviewing bit of French. I’m surprised by how intuitive the language feels. I haven’t really studied French before, but I guess there is enough French used in culture that it is hard to not absorb a little throughout the course of an education.

It was a cloudy gray day with intermittent rainfall. C and I walked into town, briefly passing the weekend market, where she picked up some nuts. She took me to some hill, which is where Leiden the town began before we settled into a coffee shop attached to the public library. The library or cafe closed at 5pm, and the weather was in between a drizzle and a light rain. We didn’t have umbrellas, but walked briskly through the market to get a fresh stroopwaffle, which is an amazing food item. We huddled under a canopy eating the thin wafer-caramel sandwiches. The drizzle stopped and we hurried back home afterwards.

There was supposed to be some sort of circus and fireworks out in “the dunes” and that was the original plan, except the weather seemed to make it less than ideal to bike out there. So by means of a backup plan, C cooked up a pasta dinner and we did a 1000 piece puzzle. That took the whole evening.

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Stroopwaffel	3 EUR
Total:	23.4 RMB (USD 3.4)

Running Total: 11614.5 RMB (USD 1686.72)
Daily Average: 374.7 RMB (USD 54.41)

Volume 2, Day 30

My original plan was to spend 2-3 nights in Leiden and then continue moving southwards, but I’m such a good guest that it takes more than a couple days to wear out my welcome. It was suggested to me that I use Leiden as a base to take day trips to neighboring cities. Specifically, given the proximity of The Hague to Leiden, it is a reasonable day trip that doesn’t require too much time or money in transportation.

After a couple cups of coffee and some toast in the morning, I packed a day bag and biked over to the train station. In order to get to the Hague and back, I’d need to put money on the OV card which left me with much the same difficulty as buying a train ticket from scratch, i.e. the OV card service machines wanted me to use what I can only assume was a Dutch bank card to transfer funds over. That really kind of defeats the purpose of a transport card. There was a human staffed service desk and I was able to load 10 euros using cash, but I had to pay a 50 cents surcharge. I’m not sure if that extra fee is a penalty for using cash or for speaking to a human. Either way, I’m pretty fcking fed up with Dutch finances.

The train to the Hague took a little while because I got on a sprinter rather than an intercity train (the sprinter stops all all intermediary stations). Also, in terms of starting the day in a bad mood, the Leiden Centraal platforms were so long that they are split into A and B, which created a bit of confusion since several trains were supposed to be heading in the same direction from the same platform, but they are all running late. At some point several minutes after the train should have arrived, I noticed that all the people near me started running up the platform to the train stopped there and I followed the crowd to catch that train.

I made it to the Hague eventually, and was overwhelmed by its large and shop-filled train station. There was construction immediately outside the station, but the center was just a block away. The Hague is a good size and ideal for tourists with tons of narrow streets full of shops and cafes spilling out into any available plaza. I had one prinicple target to see in the Hague, namely the Mauritshuis–a palace turned into a museum. If I had the time and temperament to see a second museum, I would track down the MC Escher Museum.

I didn’t head straight to either museum, instead opting to wander some of the central streets, and since it was nearly lunch hour, to track down the “Chinatown” to see if I could find something cheap and delicious to eat first. Though the Chinatown had gates, there wasn’t much of a real draw to it apart from a handful of dimsum restaurants. However, I found a cluster of fast food restaurants around the corner from Chinatown and just south of the main commercial drag. Though I looked long and hard at one Chinese fast food joint and a pizza/doner shop that called itself Los Angeles street food, I ended up getting roasted chicken, an Indonesian curry and rice for an affordable price. The herring sandwich (a local specialty didn’t even tempt me slightly).

While I was eating, it occurred to me that The Hague also means “The Hague,” i.e. those UN bodies for dealing out justice on war criminals or settling international disputes. So I looked up the International Court of Justice on Google Maps. It was a bit out of the center, but the walk was scenic, passing through a semi-enclose shopping mall (dubbed the “Passageway”), past parks, and palaces to reach the Peace Palace. I wouldn’t be able to join a tour, but I appreciated getting a look at it and taking a quick pass through the visitor center. Afterwards, I turned around and headed towards Binenhof, which is the seat of the Netherlands government and in the heart of the center of town.

The Mauritshuis was on the far end of the lake, and though it was a bit pricey, I was almost relieved to find that the museum collection was reasonably small. There was a special exhibit on Rembrandt collecting pieces known to be by the master, those suspected to be fakes, and those thought to be by his students. Oh, and most important, this is the home of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. It’s nice, but I’m still not particularly interested in ever watching the movie.

The Mauristshuis ticket included admission to the Galerij Prins Willem V, so I cut through the Binenhof (hof in Dutch as in German means a courtyard) to visit the single room gallery containing over 100 paintings stacked floor to ceiling. If I had really wanted to get a tour inside the government buildings, the ProDemo tourist office next door would have been able to handle that. I had read you have to book in advance, but I passed by a group of tourists on their way over. It’s clear that The Hague is the real capital of the Netherlands although Amsterdam is nominally the capital. It was put to me that the rest of the Netherlands goes along with the fiction so as not to hurt the feelings of Amsterdam. I think its more that so many foreigners and tourists just assume Amsterdam is the capital, that the Dutch are too polite to be constantly correcting everyone and thus just went along with it.

It was warm and I had seen my fair share of mobile gelato vendors. I haven’t splurged on ice cream since Germany, and it is good to know that Holland shares the same love of sweets. I was seriously contemplating something cold, sweet, and/or caffeinated, but I wanted to check the movie times in the IMAX first.

Since Spider-Man: Far From Home had a 4-July release in Europe, the long wait was finally over. My plan was to watch it in Leiden in the evening, but since The Hague had an IMAX, I figured it might be worth splurging a little. My timing was basically perfect. There was a showing in 30 minutes, so I headed up the escalators to buy a ticket. I need to check how much I paid for Avengers: End Game in Japan, but wow it was expensive, especially as I had to buy 3D glasses. It was a real IMAX though with an enormous screen, and I satisfied my craving for sweet with an (overpriced) icee at the concession stand. As for the movie itself, there weren’t any real surprises. It was fun and enjoyable, but ultimately probably going to be forgettable. Still, I hope they make another four or five Spider-Man movies.

After the movie, I headed over to Den Haag Centraal to catch the train over to Leiden. Taking an IC train this time, I realized that it takes less than 15 minutes to reach Leiden. I grabbed my rental bike from the parking lot and was about to head home when I spotted an Aldi. I stopped and bought stuff to make dinner. Today was actually C’s boyfriend’s birthday so she was going to be busy with that. It would have been better if there was a big birthday party, but having the house to myself for a night was a decent consolation prize.

I was surprised to find C still home when I got back. The cheesecake she made for the birthday was taking up space in the fridge, but cracked open a beer and package of pretzel sticks to relax with a book after a long day out. I threw a pizza in the oven before she headed out to meet him for ramen. I’m not quite sure how I spent the evening. I ate and watched a youtube video or two and by 10 o’clock I was ready to fall asleep.

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OV Top up (Train ticket = 7.4)	10.5
Spicy Chicken	6
Mauritshuis	15.5
IMAX ticket (incl 1.5 glasses)	17
Slurpee “Large”	4
Aldi groceries	13.3
Total:	66.3 EUR (517.1 RMB) (USD 75.17)

Running Total: 11591.1 RMB (USD 1684.85)
Daily Average: 386.4 RMB (USD 56.16)

Volume 2, Day 29

For the next couple of days, I was planning to visit a friend, C, in Leiden. Leiden is a small canal town to the southwest of Amsterdam and birthplace of one Rembrandt van Rijn. The town is charming and quaint and also completely dominated by the university there. Leiden first appeared on my radar when I started my PhD oh so many years ago and a friend forwarded me a job posting (for a PhD candidate) at the Max Plank Institute of Psycholinguistics, which is based in the University of Leiden. Reading the description of the ideal candidate as if I was looking at myself in a mirror, I began building a fantasy of doing a post-doc in Europe as a way of transitioning back to the West from my career in China. Needless to say, that is not a path I am taking. That is mostly because the institute turned towards research directions that I am less suited for and is not looking for postdocs. Nonetheless, a significant part of the reason of these European travels is to satisfy this itch that has been building in me the past six years and to have a glimpse at a life I may have had in an alternate dimension.

I met C, a native of Leiden, when she was teaching Dutch as a foreign language in Shanghai. Her immense love of her hometown also fueled my curiosity as to how great can the town really be. So, when I knew I was headed to Europe, I arranged to visit.

So, in the morning, I was in no particular hurry to move on to the next town nor did I have any compelling reason to hang around killing time. I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, packed up, bid farewell to my roommate and headed over to the train station to go to Leiden, which is small enough to not be covered by Flixbus. That is somewhat unfortunate because the trains in the Netherlands, though efficient and green, are both a litle pricey and infuriating.

The train ticketing machines only accept coins and credit cards. I luckily had a pocketful of coins, but not quite enough to scrape together the 9.8 euro ticket price. Why they can’t accept a 10 or 20 euro note when the train tickets cost 10-20 euros is some sort of Dutch logic. I found a kiosk and bought a packet of M&Ms in order to get enough change to buy the ticket. Now, the ticket also has a 1 euro surcharge because … reasons? The Netherlands has a nationwide public transportation card system–dubbed OV–but is literally the worst system I have ever experienced. If you want a “permanent” card, you have to pay 15 euros for it. Those 15 euros are not a deposit, but a fee. And the card expires after 5 years. And if you don’t register your name (so that the government can track you), you don’t get any possible discount on transportation. Single use tickets cost 1 euro on top of the full fare. Again, that euro isn’t a deposit, you can’t turn in the card for recycling even though the fee is because they system is based on RF chips.

When I plopped down in the train for the half hour ride to Leiden, I started to relax until the conductor came by and wanted to fine me 50 euros for sitting in the first class section on a second class ticket. They look the same and having never ridden these trains before, I didn’t know to look for the tiny little “1” or “2” marking the separate sections.

C was waiting for me at the train station when I arrived. She lent me a spare OV card and topped it up to 20 Euros, which at first seemed like a nice thing until she explained that you must maintain a balance of 20 Euros, otherwise the card doesn’t work. Goodness grief, they just keep inventing new ways to screw people over, don’t they? Anyways, she rented a public bike (which should cost something like 4 euros a day and is a bargain compared to the 15 euros a day that hostels like to charge) and after a lot of fiddling with my luggage, we walked the bikes over to her flat on the other side of town.

She had some lesson plans to do and I always have work I need to be doing,(Honestly, how many days behind am I at this point?) so we biked over to the more commercial part of town and hung out in a cafe for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, neither of us got much work done because we kept talking.

I had originally suggested she invite some friends over for the evening to have a minor Fourth of July celebration, but her friends had all come over the day before for a little party. Nevertheless, I offered to cook something up and after a visit to a supermarket, I made fresh guacamole and fajitas. C is vegetarian so I put fake chicken in the fajitas. As I was cooking, I realized that the cashier at the grocery store has short changed me.

So, apparantly, the Netherlands does not accept 1 or 2 cent Euro coins. That explains why I noticed the cashiers rounding up every time I was buying something, but this time I had the exact 7 cents that was displayed on the cash register. Between the refusal to accept said money and scrounging up different coins, the cashier “forgot” to give me a 2 euro coin in change. C suggested that because everyone uses cards for everything in the Netherlands that cashiers no longer know how to count or handle money. Like history’s greatest trading people and inventors of the modern stock market could forget how to use money.

After dinner, C and I went on a very minor pub crawl, hitting two bars and walking around a bit of town in the process. The good thing about the Netherlands is that the bars are very heavily tilted towards the Belgian beers, so one doesn’t necessarily have to go to Belgium to enjoy them.

Despite all the inconveniences throughout the day, it was good to be visiting a friend and I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks.

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M&Ms	1.25
Train ticket	9.9
Groceries	20.05
Beer	9.7
Total:	40.9 EUR (319 RMB) (USD 46.37)

Running Total: 11074 RMB (USD 1609.55)
Daily Average: 381.9 RMB (USD 55.50)

Volume 2, Day 28

There is a lot to do in Amsterdam, certainly enough to fill a week. However, as a budget traveler with no interest in learning Dutch, I’m a bit allergic to the higher prices than Germany. The hostel was pretty nice, but 50% more than the higher end of places I had stayed in so far. At least it included breakfast. Of course, breakfast didn’t begin service until 8am, so I had to wait around for a while before I could eat.

After a fairly substantial meal of cereal, toast, and cappuccinos, I was ready for a full day tour of Amsterdam. If I was only going to spend one day in the “capital” of the Netherlands, I had a lot of ground to cover. I considered investing in a 1 day transit card (especially as I was a solid 4-5 km from the city center), but I ran into a little problem of being able to pay for said card. Since 2018, Amsterdam has gone completely cashless on its public transport. How it can be legal for a (presumably) government-operated service to so blatantly exclude tourists, immigrants, and the poor is beyond me. Though I have adjusted to buying Flixbus tickets online with my credit card (and to the best of my knowledge am incurring no additional fees), I really don’t want to start making these daily micropayments in their cashless society. Also, it is unclear whether they actually work with foreign cards or if I have to have a European bank issued card.

So, I decided to rack up my steps for the day and go about on foot. I haven’t been walking nearly enough so one long day wouldn’t kill me. Honestly, the walk to the Rijksmuseum took close to an hour, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. I got to see typical Dutch houses, cross canals, and cut through both Erasmus Park and Vondelpark (which is recommended as a top sight in the city). There was no line to buy tickets at the massive Rijksmuseum and I was able to pay cash (though I could tell they would have rather I had purchased it online). After a quick bathroom break and visit to the cloakroom to drop my backpack, I plunged into the first gallery of medieval and Renaissance art. When I bought the ticket, the sales clerk specifically pointed out that it granted full day access (meaning I could come in and out), so, considering that it was already 11am, I adjusted my viewing strategy to build in a lunch break. Essentially, I passed through the religious art and artifacts rather quickly then cut over to the “special exhibits,” which featured ship models, swords, guns, porcelain, textiles, and other miscellaneous items. After that, I skipped the first floor to follow the chronology through the 17th century.

Overall, the Rijksmuseum is very impressive. I suppose it qualifies as an art museum, but it did a good job of sneaking history lessons into everything. For example, one side room was concerned about the Ottoman Empire through the lense of relations with Dutch traders. Over a series of paintings and portraits, the signs told a multipart story of the Dutch ambassador visiting the court, the structure of the Ottoman court, an uprising, its suppression, and the succession to the next sultan. Everything in the museum was oriented around its role in Dutch history, and often organized thematically in terms of “Dutch naval power,” “domestic life,” or various colonies where the paintings or wall clocks or furniture pieces or silverware were selected to tell the story. Though I am still quite jumbled in the chronology of Dutch history, I feel gleaned quite a lot of history throughout the day.

After completing about half the museum and only taking a cursory glance in the Hall of Masters (where the most famous paintings, e.g. The Nightwatch, are on display), I took a lunch break and walked two blocks to find an Aldi, where I bought a salad. I took the salad back to the museum area which is arranged somewhat like the National Mall in D.C. with a central lawn surrounded by all the museums. Unlike Germany, the salad did not include a little plastic fork. That wouldn’t be a problem if I hadn’t misplaced my chopsticks, but I ate my Morocco-inspired couscous salad with my fingers next to the Van Gogh Museum. Heading back into the Rijksmuseum, I passed the street carts selling lunch and gave myself a big pat on the back for saving money while being healthier.

I spent a couple more hours in the Rijksmuseum, working my way through the first floor, which covers 18th and 19th century art (including a handful of Van Gogh’s and other Impressionist paintings) before going up the the third floor that includes a smaller selection of 20th century works. Because the museum has a road passing through it, the floors aren’t always directly connected. For example, after doing half the first floor, one has to go up to the second floor to reach the other half. Ditto with the third floor. The stairs really add up, but it gave me a chance to pass through the Hall of Masters a few more times and take in more paintings in detail with each pass.

When I finished with the museum, I was craving an afternoon pick me up, so I headed over to a little cafe that I had caught me eye (or more accurately my nose) on the way to the Aldi. It was a charming little place and the apple cake, with caramelization around the bottom crust was absolutely delightful. I read the first two chapters of “Player Piano” (Vonnegut’s first novel) and was amazed by the prescience of the fully automated dystopic future he describes.

I also wanted to visit the Anne Frank house/museum, but decided to take the scenic route through the city core, where the canals are more concentrated and the old houses are almost all shops. I saw a “coffee shop” and stopped to read the long list of rules posted to its door. Of course, I had no interest in going inside. If I was inclined, I’d rather wait to visit an American retail store. Overall, the walk through town was wonderful, despite being very commercial and touristy.

When I reached the Anne Frank house (which is conveniently open until 9 pm), I found that it inconveniently only sells tickets online, released daily in the morning and selling out each day like a Rolling Stones concert. There wasn’t even a house to see as the building was simply a mass of steel and glass. Dozens of people with computer printouts milled about outside the museum waiting for the 15 minute entry window. Oh well. Maybe next time. Though, given the rising fascism in the US, I really don’t have the strength to deal with any Holocaust stuff and not suffer a complete emotional breakdown.

My next plan was to seek a local craft beer brewery and I walked twenty minutes to the closest location. On the door, a sign read “No cash, PIN only” and I cursed under my breath. This is getting rather frustrating. I walked back to the old town, hoping to seek out one of the famous “brown cafes,” which are basically just old fashioned pubs. I passed several that were way too crowded for my taste and ended up passing through the red light district on the way to Central.

It was way too early for anything to be happening in the Red Light District, but given that the sun sets after 10pm, I wonder when the sex workers start their shift. There were certainly tour groups and families wandering around and I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that it is a tourist destination. Chinatown was right next to the red light district, and is only noticeable through a cluster of restaurants and shops with Chinese written on them.

I found the bar I was looking for (one recommended by the Lonely Planet) and it was to my surprise not overrun by tourists. It is a unique place with a wooden structure (as opposed to the typically brick houses) and full of monkey themed kitsch. I sat at the bar for a couple hours, slowly trying a couple different Belgian style beers.

I headed back to the hostel afterwards and with my bladder slowly filling up, the last couple of blocks felt rather longish. I had a long internal debate as to whether I should stop for something to eat (such as a Doner shop) or grab something from a supermarket (but eat with what utensils), and ultimately I just headed straight back to the hostel so I could relieve myself. I decided to skip dinner and chill up in the room. I watched maybe 15 minutes of a movie before I was falling asleep.

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Rijksmuseum	20 EUR
Salad	4
Coffee & Apple Pie	7.5
3 beers (Aepjen bier, Gulpener Lentebock, Korenwolf)	12.6
Total:	44.1 EUR (344 RMB) (USD 49.9)

Running Total: 10755 RMB (USD 1560.12)
Daily Average: 384.1 RMB (USD 55.72)