13

It's 4:30AM (Amsterdam time). As I write, I am suffering from a good deal of fatigue. I haven't slept fully in several days, and am trying to get used to the new system. The flight ended up being very good. The next movie shown was the Out of Towners, which was entertaining in some spots, but overall not very good. KLM served breakfast and kept us pretty well saturated. I didn't sleep more than an hour or so during the trip.

We have arrived, it's about 7:30AM. Oskar doesn't arrive from England until after 5PM. Rather than wait around the airport all that time, Robert and I decided to hop on a train to downtown Amsterdam, it was 10 geldon (or about 5 bucks) round trip, and was a nice smooth ride with plenty of scenery.

When we got to downtown we walked and walked, which in the end must have amounted to many or more several miles, literally. We crossed many canals and had an Amstel Bier for both of us.

Art

Robert

Not only did I see many funny looking cars and many people on bikes, but I did notice that a great American presence was evident here. Most everyone seemed to know at least some English, and English was used alongside Dutch in many places, namely the airport.

My feet were very tired toward the end (including myself) but we decided to see if we could check out this red light district I'd heard so much about. We searched for the latter part of the visit, and got lost, misdirected, and even left the downtown area at one point, so much walking. We finally made it back near the trainstation and happened upon it. Many windows with women in underwear and lingerie soliciting for things I can probably imagine, but sorry, everyone did have their clothes on, at least during my stint. So, we hopped back onto the train to the airport, waited an hour-half for Oskar to arrive. We got the rental car with me listed as a second driver (guess I get to learn how to use a stick).

The room that we tried to get in Amsterdam was a no-go, but since Robert and I had seen plenty of the city, we (3) decided to go straight to Aachen (where Gabi, a friend of Oskar's dad lived). We stopped a little outside the city to make change for the phone call (since we would be early). The shop we went to had no one that understood English, but we managed it (see picture). So, the boys called ahead to let their friend(s) know, and got some wine and flowers to bring to the home. Now we are on the road to Aachen (pronounced Ah-hen?), and this is the present tense for the 13th that I have written so far. I think the trip to Aachen is 2 hours.

The famous "Red Light" district

The scenery in Holland is flat, with lots of water here and there, and an occasional windmill. What I thought was a midget cow turned out to be sheep, guess I don't see sheep much. It's cool outside, probably in the 60's.

14 (around midnight or later)