Amsterdam - Die Stadt of Debauchery, Sin, und Kinder

Amsterdam.... 'nuff said.

Imagine walking down a small cobblestone road and seeing all of the following within 25 seconds: 17th century Dutch buildings, prostitutes in windows, fatty blunts being smoked on the sidewalk, and an endless river of tourists with their kids, passing by all of the debauchery and sin without a care. You can only understand this strange paradox by seeing it for yourself.

There are 12 of us going on this journey. We barely make our train, despite leaving "too early". A flurry of Euros was thrown at me, and with only a few minutes to make sure our semi-English speaking ticket agent had his 573 euros. We had no seat reservations, so we spent the next 2 hours playing musical chairs. Lesson learned about European trains - Reservations Rule. We all felt the great anticipation on the ride there.

Upon exiting the train, we're immediately hit by the tourist tsunami. This might as well be Disneyland. The river of people never ceases to flow. It goes on as far as the eyes can see. At least it makes us, the students, less conspicuous when we need to grab some pictures. Nothing can quite explain smoking ganja in front of a 400 year old church, you simply must do it.

Unfortunately, the fun gets cut short. Moses, one of our compatriots, doesn't pay attention how many bong rips he's taking in the first "Coffee Cafe" we hit. He had apparently also taken some kind of muscle-growth stimulant. The resulting cocktail in his blood knocked him flat on his ass, which left the rest of us shit out of luck taking care of him. Last thing I need on my conscious is leaving some classmate behind in Amsterdam. After some drunk Brits (one in a dress, male) and random pukings, we brought a policeman over to check him out (he insisted he was going to die a horrible death and that we should leave him behind). The policeman was quite cordial, making a point to repeat himself often and shake his fist with intensity. His solution to THC overdose - OJ. Orange juice and sugar water. Only in Amsterdam...

That little incident ended up costing too many hours, and after some more smoking, some of us started playing with the idea of staying there all night long (for all the cheap hotels were full). I sadly did not stay, opting instead to spare my wallet (and quite possibly my life), for the last train out of Amsterdam .... 6:30pm. Lame. Tomorrow will decide the fate of the five that stayed behind.

The train ride back was similarily close (got on with 1 minute to spare).... bad track record for being on time so far. Again, overbooked train, no reservations from buying last minute, and we land in the smoking section (for a seat is better than no seat). The silence of the smokers section is shattered by a group of 15 middle-aged women dressed in orange shirts, leis, white pants, and oversized white hats. But the kicker is that they drunkenly roared in German.