Oh to be young and free..

I was planning on taking a few days to reflect on my trip before I blogged about it, but when I looked at the extraordinary amount of stuff I have to do this week before my friends come visit me, I realized that this needs to get done sooner rather than later. Another option was to just start homework right now and do this later. That was just a fleeting thought, homework isn't happening tonight. So without further ado, I present the craziest weeks I ever have or ever will experience.

Part I - Amsterdam

OK, maybe a little bit more ado...  I am annoyed with myself for the absurd amount of cliche-ness I'm about to drop right here, but I believe life is 1% what happens and 99% how you react to it. Luckily it isn't the other way around, or my life would be a whole lot different right now. As awesome as Amsterdam was, it did not go well. In fact, shit started going array from the moment I arrived. I had a wonderful night train ride in, as I was roomed with an old Aussie guy who bought me beer all night, but the downward slide started the next day. From accidentally choosing a hostel 45 minutes out of the city to being homeless for a night to having to stay an extra night because the train from Amsterdam to Paris was booked one day, our trip could have more smoothly. The worst part was probably having to move hostels every single day. Never being able to settle in one spot is pretty terrible actually. The city of Amsterdam itself was awesome though. Anyone who thinks it is just about weed is completely ignorant, there are so many cool things to do in the city. It is incredibly beautiful. I could sit on a bench on a canal forever and not be bored. I was there for five nights and I still didn't feel like I had enough time to do everything I wanted to. A lot of this had to do with the fact the first three days were loaded with stress and figuring out places to sleep, but there is so much more to the city than sex and drugs, and the negative connotations associated with the city actually make me upset. That being said, those are two prominent components, and this is exemplified in the (in)famous red light district. Let me start off by saying that place makes me really quite uncomfortable. I mean it is definitely an awesome experience to see something to incredibly outlandish, but more than an hour walking around got to be real weird. You can't walk for more than five minutes without some clown offering you just about every drug in the spectrum, and you can't walk for more than twenty seconds without some girl dressed in lingerie behind tapping on the glass trying to get your money. Both are entertaining for awhile, but unless you are going there with the intentions of utilizing the variety of services offered in this Mecca of sin, it isn't a place to just hang out. It is one of the best places in the world to people watch, though. It is really funny how easy it is to tell who is there as a tourist and who is there for indulgence. In fact, let's play a game. Guess what the people described are at the Amsterdam Red Light District for!! Here we go.

1. A group of five 20-something girls linking arms and laughing (answer: NOT buying drugs or whores)
2. Four middle aged Asian men dressed in fly ass suits (answer: Buying drugs and whores)
3. Old couple with an appalled look on their face the whole time (answer: regretting their choice of vacation spots)
4. A lone dude inspecting every girl in the window closely (answer: hand selecting his dream girl)
5. Dude on the corner in a hood, smoking a joint (answer: entrepreneur of sorts)

How did you do? Anything less than five for five is an F. But anyway, as you can tell it is a great place to people watch. So in summary, the Dutch are who we thought they were, and Amsterdam was no let down. The amount of stress that Ryan and I endured during this vacation was through the roof. It would have been wonderful to be able to experience such an awesome city given better circumstances, but when put through such times, you really learn a lot about yourself and your travel partner. For example, I learned Ryan Schmidtman should never have a map in his hands, along with other things (mostly good, relax Ryan).


So while Amsterdam was unreal, five nights there was plenty of time, and I was ready to move on to Paris.

Part II - Paris


How was that for a flawless segway? OK fine, it was terrible. But anyway, I took a train to Paris because it was only supposed to be three hours, which definitely makes it worth it to not have to get on a plane. I hate flying. My legs don't fit in seats. There is always a god damn baby crying. I never feel good on the decent. A train is a much better alternative, especially for such a short trip. Plus, this way I got to get off the train for 10 seconds in Brussels so I can say I've been there, and no I don't count that as cheating.

We were on the train, about half way through, and I saw these two big bald dudes in all black with a German shepherd walking towards me. Obviously this made me uncomfortable. I turn around, and there were two more big dudes walking from the other direction. It's pretty obvious at this point that some shit's about to go down, and being that we were coming from Amsterdam, it's a safe bet that it's a drug bust. They started talking to the African woman behind me. She was a big, loud woman decked out in traditional African attire, not your typical smuggler. They brought her out and talked to her between the cars for awhile. I just tuned back into my Hardcore History podcast and forgot about the whole thing until five minutes later I hear screaming from behind me. This lady is swinging away, and I was fortunate enough to see these dudes give her a solid body slam and handcuff her. When we got to the next station, they take her off the train, and I saw a dude walking off the train with a big cardboard box covered in packaging tape that was opened up just enough to see that the box was filled with bags of white powder. This confused me because I don't know why anyone would need to smuggle artificial sweetener. I know Europe is hardcore about junk foods, but damn, it seemed a little excessive to me. Poor lady.

Besides that my trip went smoothly into Paris. My friends were waiting for me at the train station and escorted me to the hostel safely. What wonderful friends I have, huh? Overall I wasn't a huge fan of Paris though. The sites and touristy stuff is cool, but the city itself I didn't find to be anything special. We went to the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Versailles, and all those obvious destinations and had fun, but the French suck a lot. That is, of course, unless you speak their language. But I'm an arrogant, monolingual American asshole, so I don't speak your Frenchy language, Pierre! Maybe I will have more respect for your country when Germany doesn't take over your whole country in five days. Boom.

On to Barca before I say anything that will make a Frenchman fart in my general direction or taunt me a second time.

Part III - Barcalona


Ahhhh, sunny Barcelona, where it only rains 25 days a year. What a wonderful change up this will be from cold, rainy Denmark. Well, luckily for Catalonians, there will only be 22 days of rain left after I left their city. Beaches and clubs are normally a lot more fun when it doesn't rain. And who would have thunk it would have been warmer in Amsterdam than Barcelona? Screw you, Weather, I didn't deserve this.

Actually the worst part about Barca wasn't the rain. That title goes to the pick pockets. One of my travel partners got her shit jacked by some sneaky, soulless bastard. That really put quite the damper on the vacation. The city of Barcelona is actually really beautiful when it's nice out though. We were able to fit a Camp Nou tour in our short trip, so I was content.

Believe it or not, there are probably more drug dealers and prostitutes in Barcelona than in Amsterdam, only here they are so much more annoying. In a three block walk, you will be talked to by at least five drug dealers and at least three prostitutes, that's a conservative estimate. It's kind of unfair for me to judge Barcelona based on this one experience considering how wrong everything went. I will have to be back again before I slap a real negative review on such a wonderful (allegedly) place.



Part IV - Prague

In life, there are little lessons that you pick up casually throughout you're journey. They seem lots like common sense retrospectively. Disregarding hindsight, if you have never encountered such an experience before you wouldn't have ever needed to even think of it at a common sense level. It is in this that experience makes you wiser. Most of the time these things don't really have consequences, like if you had never been to a beach or pool before you might forget a towel. Oh well, you're friends probably have one, and if not, evaporation will be your friend. But, sometimes they get a little dangerous, like when you take a day trip to a tiny undeveloped Czech town with no cash and assume they take cards or have ATMs, with not enough to even buy a trip back. There are some things that are best to learn the hard way, but this is one of those things that it would be nice to just be told instead of exposed to. I mean it all worked out fine, as there happened to be one ATM in some random corner of the town that took about 20+ minutes of walking to stumble across, but I wouldn't be an honest man if I said I wasn't pretty nervous.

Besides this, literally the entire stay went smooth as Ryan Schmidtman's skin after he spends three hours getting ready to go to a bar. We had a wonderful place to stay with wonderful hosts (shout out to Sioux Falls), ate wonderful food, and the city itself is wonderful. Prague is absolutely my favorite city I have ever been in my entire life. I have lots and lots of pictures somewhere on someone's camera that I would love to post, but the amount of uncertainty in the beginning of this sentence disallows that. So unless you have ever been there (or know how to use Google Image), you are gonna have to take my word for it.

There were so many great activities we undertook during our stay, such as the Prague Castle, a giant hill over looking the city, a club in an old church, the Communism museum, etc, but there was one place that really stood out for me. It stood out more as an awesome business model that could never exist in America, especially not a big city, but was such a cool concept that it would be an fun experiment for a business man with some spare cash. The joint was called Big Lebowski's, which would normally be enough for me to give it a try even without the stellar recommendations. It's this tiny, off the beaten path hookah bar. This small little establishment serves food, has a full bar, and hookah in any flavor you could think of. There's tables as well as cushions to sit on, and it's always playing relaxing, not-shitty-club-music. Ryan and I went here to indulge in some hookah and throw a few back, but what I wasn't expecting was that this bar is name-your-own-price. The entire model is based off trusting in people's good faith. I asked the guy on the way out if 100 krone would cover us, and he replied with "Uh yeah sure, I mean we don't even know what you ordered." How cool is that? Could imagine this working in a big metropolitan in America? Hell no. It could in a smaller town I believe, but I think this would be an awesome project for someone with some spare change to throw around. I have no idea if this exists anywhere in the States, but if it doesn't, I will be opening something like this in ten years when I am a multi-millionaire, retired thirty year old who needs a hobby. OK, I will be more realistic, make it twenty years. But either way, this needs to be implemented. Immediately. 


I guess that was my trip summary. The only thing left to mention is the 10 hour layover in a Warsaw airport over night, but I don't need to delve deeper into that since it's pretty clear that that was absolutely terrible without me having to bitch and moan about it for a paragraph. I cut out a lot of details to avoid writing a novella, but there were lots of other notable events. Maybe I will come back and write about them later. In fact, I should write about the concentration camp later... Oh, better idea! I'll just force Ryan to write about it in the comment section. I hope he doesn't let me down. Here are some neat tunes. Enjoy!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu2gxZDquzA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XD4EjeXe1A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEN9ZcrN76k