I'm going on an adventure!

Last night I baked granola bars, and this can only mean one thing: I’m going on an adventure. For months I’ve been looking for June 28^th, and now that it’s in sight I am all nervous and fluttery, counting down the mass of my three-day pack in cubic inches, and making list after list after list of to-dos and to-brings which, if history repeats itself, will devolve from a series of note cards and bullet points to a mad “mash all objects in reach into the bag with five minutes to catch the bus” kind of affair.  

This is the plan. On Friday at 4:45 I meet the Boys and Girls club for a weekend camping trip. They needed a female leader, and I am both female and a lover of camping, so I got the job because absolutely no one else volunteered. Then on Monday I leave the kiddos and catch a train to London where I meet my friend William, and so begins the expedition.  I’m just going to go ahead and admit the purpose of this blog entry right now. First, I want people to know why for the next few weeks while I’m not at home I will probably be even worse at responding to emails than my usual lack-luster standard. Second, I plan to use as many Hobbit quotes and chapter titles as possible in this entry and possibly the next for my own entertainment and the delightful challenge of integrating Tolkien into my vacation tales. They’ll be in italics or quotation marks. 

William and I are taking an overnight bus from London to Paris where we will breakfast on crepes and espresso and then somehow maybe try to kind of manage to hitchhike to northeastern Italy or something. Neither of us have experience with this sort of thing, and the lesson planning, backup anticipating, what-if preparing part of me that already has insect repellant and two three kinds of sunscreen packed is like – should I bring a poster and Sharpies so we can write “Take us to Venice, please”?

On one hand, adventures are “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!” And it is a distinct possibility that my friend and I may spend several frustrating days subsisting on McDonald’s and granola bars in rest stops before we (I) decide to shell out for train tickets. Being that I am me, I looked up the inside information on car shares, which I think is a pretty satisfactory middle ground between standard transport and full hitchhiking. Maybe I already downloaded the app and made a profile and scouted possible rides. My name is Abby, and I have problems with self-perceived irresponsibility and the possibility of sleeping in fast food booths. What I like about hitchhiking is that it is entirely unpredictable. That abandon to the unknown shoots stomach-drop thrill through me that I crave and hate at the same time. My biggest fear is that we won’t find a ride. My second biggest fear is that we’ll be abducted Liam Neeson style. And my maybe-realistic expectation is that I’ll probably spend the beginning of next week attempting to review my dissertation sources while contorted to a barely human shape in the back seat of a tiny Citron and cramped between luggage and a large, panting poodle listening to Bob Marley and conspiracy theories while I slowly asphyxiate on second hand smoke and dog hair. All of which makes me want to bathe in hand sanitizer and reminds me that I should pack antihistamine just in case. I’m not allergic to dogs, but I kind of am. 

The end game is that William and I meet up with other friends from the rock climbing society in a little town north of Verona/Venice where we use the home of one of our friends as the base. And then we climb, climb, climb and “mountaineer” over hill and under hill and maybe camp and eat Italian food with our friend’s family and traverse glaciers. I’ve never traversed a glacier before, but I’m not opposed to it at all. Next week’s blog post will probably be a little late and basically just a thousand pictures. Though I insinuate a weekly schedule, we all know this to be a loosely identified “week” consisting of anywhere between four and fourteen days.  

Amsterdam: a concise overview

Reasons why Amsterdam is cool:

Canals, bikes, bridges, WWII museums, ART, waffles, house boats, and waffles

Reasons why Amsterdam is not cool:

Bridge locks, bikes, and mascara prices

We started our Dutch exploration with waffles and ended it at the cute, local bakery. I could write a whole blog about why I love waffles, but stroopwaffles don't have some of the  more vital waffle qualities, like the ability to hold copious amounts of syrup or yogurt in the little squares. Instead, they are more like a sandwich of glorified cookies with melted caramel in between, which is a tasty combination lacking only chocolate drizzle and almond flakes.

We then waddled our waffled selves to the Rijks Museum and witnessed a Madonna and child where the portrayal of infant Jesus had serious muscle definition.

And there were Rembrandts for days! 

And the lovely, ribbon bow sash seems to have been the height of men's fashion. 

And by the fourth floor, I needed to find my favorite exhibit:

The Anne Frank Museum was really cool because it's the actual house where the Frank family hid, but I don't have any pictures. I'd say the Rijks Museum and the Anne Frank house were my favorite two, followed quickly by the Dutch Resistance Museum and quite distantly by the Van Gogh Museum. 

This is a map the German SS commissioned that points to the exact  location of Jewish residents in Amsterdam where each dot represents 10 Dutch Jews. By the end of the war, over 70 percent of Dutch Jews had been murdered. It was cool to hear actual recordings of Christian pastors risking their lives to speak out against the targeting of the Jews. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was Dutch!

This is an artist who has a whole museum dedicated to him, and at the end its three levels, it's a just a really depressing, kind of long testament to his ultimately unsuccessful search for significance in founding his worth on the respect of other artists. I do not recommend unless you really love Van Gogh or sad, sad stories.  

And this is my mom probably procuring a million diseases by drinking out of a public water fountain. 

All in all, Amsterdam was cool, but the drug/prostitution culture takes away from some of the history and art culture. It's a beautiful place to walk around during the day, but it doesn't have the same "strolling European streets at night" charm as Paris because it kind of devolves into a "club culture" that's loud and drunk, and there don't seem to be alternatives to the nightclub life. 

a pirate's life for me

I'm writing this entry on a ferry between Holland and England. This is significant because it indicates both the amazing technological advances of my time and the astounding disregard my mother and I have for efficient travel. We're boat people. 

We floated to Holland four days ago and made friends with the museums guards and waffle salespeople. For two days we train hopped from tiny Dutch city to tiny Dutch city following the feigned insight of the world's worst tour book and whatever wifi we could scrounge. 

Under the guidance of this waste of weight and tree tissue, we hiked to the outskirts of Lisse in search of glory and riches (tulips and bulb gardens). And we found them!... two months too late. I miss you, Rick Steves. 

The last day of May, we took on Delft and Schiedam. If you think you're pronouncing the latter correctly, you're probably wrong. Unless you speak Dutch or German. Then you might be right. The "sch" sound comes straight from the back of your throat, like your uvula is trying to communicate. The taxi driver's brief instruction to the sound resulted in several days of growling attempted Dutch consonant blends. I could brandish my nationality with equal effect by flashing my passport or asking directions to Schiedam. 

Despite our horrid tour book, we did find the Royal Delft factory (their café sandwiches were wonderful!) and the five biggest windmills in the world. I happened to have a loaf of bread in my bag (because who travels without emergency bread?) so while my mother took pictures of the WWII armories and ancient abbeys and cathedral spires, I fed the cutest baby ducks ever I've ever seen in the canals. 

-- This building looked important. --

-- with the Delft cow --

-- holding a windmill in the rain --

-- Feeding ducks is my favorite. --