That's right, I've torn myself away from the evil seductive place known as Herrang. I should probably upload photos. But, oh well. Not today.
Instead, the tales of my first day in Amsterdam come your way.

Oddly enough, although I couldn't sleep very well at all on the long flights between Australia and the States and then between the States and Copenhagen, I seem to be unable to keep my eyes open on the short flights between Copenhagen and Stockholm and Stockholm and Amsterdam. Bizarre. Maybe I'm getting used to flying. Who knows. Maybe it's the fact that I'd been getting 4-5 hrs sleep the nights before those flights... could be anything, really...

Anyway, basically, I arrived in Amsterdam last night, drowsy and completely out of it, having just snoozed for a good hour and a half on the plane. Although I'd briefly done a search for accommodation the day before, and called a few places, I couldn't make a booking for a dorm bed, and had to wing it when I arrived. This was a Bad Idea (TM). Arriving in Amsterdam on a Friday evening at the end of July with beautiful balmy weather without accommodation booked isn't wise, it seems. The place is absolutely crawling with backpackers. In fact the first thought i had as I stepped out of the Centraal Station was Wow, there's a lot of backpackers. And, to follow on from that thought, most youth hostels were completely full and had No Vacancy signs outside. At 7 pm. This, as you might imagine, is not what I wanted to see. Single hotel rooms were just as scarce.
After an hour or so of searching and poking my head into hotel reservation offices to be told they had nothing, I started wondering if I'd be sleeping in the street that night. But eventually I came across one that said yes, they did have a vacancy in a 3 night minimum place. Suited me fine, and it was the last available bed. It seems persistence pays off eventually.

It's funny how perceived room facility quality is all entirely relative. A few months ago, sharing a room with 5 other girls and not having a private bathroom would have been quite a shock to the system. Last night, after having spent the previous fortnight at Herrang, having only 6 people in my room seemed like a luxury. Sheets on the bed, even. Bliss. And the best thing? A hot shower with a door with a lock. Priceless. Herrang does not have hot showers. The closest you can get is warm, and even that is only around 4 or 5 am. Most of the time they're cold, or possibly lukewarm. So, as you might imagine, it was a damn nice experience having a truly hot shower. :)

After this, I was ready to hit the town, to see what Amsterdam has to offer.

My youth hostel isn't quite in the official Red Light district, but that doesn't mean much, it seems. Walking outside means you see sex shops all over the place, peep shows within a few minutes of the hostel and cafes with curious odours wafting out on most street corners. And there's not much choice in the matter. Ladies dressed in only their underwear sit enticingly in windows, hoping to snag a catch. It's just everywhere. Like bikes, so too are the sex shops. Almost one per person, it seems.

Or at least that's my first impression.

Anyway, excuse me for the moment while I go off to see the world-famous sex museum. :)

0 Comments

It's raining outside as I write this, and that just encourages the mosquitoes and froggies to come out of hiding. I like the cute little froggies as they hop across the road, but I could really do without the millions of blood-sucking mini-vultures zooming around constantly.

Another couple of dance-filled days have passed and I've officially crossed over into swing-dance-obsessed freak territory. The other night I stayed up social dancing till 9 am, and only got off the dance floor to have a shower, breakfast and go to my class which started at 10 am.

By the end of 4 hours of classes that day, though, I was walking around like a swing-dazed vegetable. I caught a few hours of sleep and then headed out to the social dance floor once more.

That's just what it's like here, though. You alternate between swing dancing, sleeping and eating with the occasional shower thrown in as well.

Walking into Herrang is one of the weirdest experiences ever. Time stands still as you enter this swing-dance bubble of existence where music is playing constantly from one building or another and people are frequently seen dancing in the streets. I've done it myself. It's actually a lot like living in a musical, except that the clothes are pretty contemporary. People describe Herrang as the Mecca for swing dancers, and it's so true. The world's best come and dance and it's damn cool.

Not surprisingly, people get addicted to this place and don't want to leave. I've personally extended my stay from one week to just under two. And it would have been longer if the camp kept going and i had more time. But at this stage while I'm willing to cut out a couple extra days in Stockholm, I not willing to cut out Amsterdam altogether. As such, a week from today, I will be in Amsterdam, hopefully with many more tales to share.

0 Comments

It looks like I'll be posting some of my tales a little out of order...

Ironically, at the place where internet access was free and I had plenty of time (the youth hostel after the contiki tour), blogger was being absolute shit and wouldn't work at all. So I couldn't update despite all my promises to do so. I have uploaded some photos which are just waiting to be blogged about, so it's only a matter of time.

Currently I'm at Herrang Dance Camp and I've just finished 4 hours of classes. This has left me in a pleasantly exhilarated, but exhausted state and all I want is a shower and to collapse in bed before the nighttime activities are to begin.

God, I love this place. I've been here for 3 days and this is the first time I've even thought of checking my email. And even so, it's only to check if there's anything important out there for me because i have a few hours up my sleeve. As many of you, I'm usually completely addicted to IM and email, checking it at least once daily. Here, I don't care. There's more swing dance than you can poke a stick at and every way you turn are people from various countries. Australia, England, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia, Poland, China, Singapore... the list goes on and on.

You get up in the morning, have a nice filling breakfast, then go to a class with someone of the likes of Steven Mitchell and Virginie, or Frankie Manning... then you potter around for lunch, chatting with random people from your classes. Then you go to another couple classes and do it all over again at dinner. Then there's the meeting at 9 where several hundred people cram into a smallish hall, and we get entertained for an hour by various funny people and videos. Social dancing starts after the meeting and goes on till the wee hours of the morning. What more could you want?

If it weren't for the contant need to change clothes and fend off mosquitos, I'd want to live here forever. But then, the fact that I've been swing deprived for a month might have something to do with that sentiment.

Some aspects of the camp are a little odd. The showers in the main accommodation are communal. For someone like me from little old Australia, it's quite confronting to wander into the bathroom and be greeted by somebody's breasts. I tend to be a little shy in there, and aim for the times when the least number of people is present. Many of the Europeans appear to have no qualms about it whatsoever, stripping off and wandering over to the shower like they do it with an audience every day and are quite bored of it, really. Apparently there are semi private showers down the road, but you have to pay for them... so it ends up being a fight between my wallet and my inhibitions. So hrm. Who would have thought I'd be missing the likes of a shower with a door? I could handle the toilets in Russia which were holes in the floor, or which involved a bush in the forest, but communal showers seem to piss me off.

Yes, well. That was a bit of a rant, wasn't it?

Aside from that, it's all good... I only have a dozen or so mozzie bites... :) Maybe they should move Herrang to a less mozzie infected region... lake and all!

To all you swing people - aren't you jealous? :)

1 Comments

No Stockholm tales for you just yet. Instead, I'm actually bothering to put some pictures from Copenhagen up. :)

It's amazing how much more of my time in Copenhagen I remembered, flicking through the photos. There's the Little Mermaid, which firstly isn't so little, and is greatly overhyped:



And then there are the stunning streets with more bikeriders than you can poke a stick at:



There is canal after canal, apparently this is one of the Venices of the North (St Petersburg also seems to lay claim to this title for some reason):



Following on from the fact that there are quite so many canals, there are almost as many cruises to go on. These are highly recommended, and apparently come at two prices, both with English descriptions of the scenery. There's the 30 kronor cruise which shows you the highlights of the city in an hour, and then there's the 50 kronor cruise which shows you the highlights of the city in an hour, leaving mildly more frequently and sometimes having a slightly prettier tour guide. Or so I'm told. I went on the 30 kronor one, and she was very pretty.

I also went to the Carlsberg Brewery. 3.50 Euro for entry, and this includes the following beer:



I saw the palace Princess Mary lives in (she was even there as the flag flying over the palace suggested), and even snagged a photo with one of the guards - Scandinavian royal guards aren't like British guards. They may be dressed similarly, but they're allowed to smile and speak and have some sorts of facial expressions rather than the somber and sullen guards of London.
There are at least two towers you can climb to see sights of the city (I went up both, and my legs were thanking me for it the next day), and just near the spiral one there's Christiania.

Christiania is a place where the rogue hippies have run away to, smoking dope and doing whatever they damn well please. Compared to the clean, crisp look of Copenhagen, Christiania is its complete opposite. It's more of a slum, with graffiti everywhere. While trying to enter from a slightly back street, we saw a bunch of cops doing a raid. Apparently this is common practice. Here's a picture I took while wandering through:



I couldn't really get any other photos, because they have No Photography signs up all over the place, and I can tell you now that I didn't want to get onto the wrong side of the locals.

0 Comments

Sheesh. It's like day 24 of my 32 day tour in Scandinavia/Russia and I've barely blogged at all.

In my last entry i did give you a bit of a description of Copenhagen, so I probably won't spend that much more talking about it. Well, maybe a little. You'll get whatever i can squeeze out of my poor little brain in the next half hour before my internet time runs out.

Firstly, i'd just like to extend a thank you to my buddy Adam for linking my way. Cheers, dude!

Right. Copenhagen. The last thing i told you all was about my first day there. On the second day (my tour was meant to start at 6 pm of the day after i arrived in Copenhagen) wandering around the youth hostel I encountered other people from my tour (not surprisingly) and we decided to head off to the city together for some general exploration. This was a really nice idea and the three of us traipsed around the city making jokes and getting to know each other. In the course of our travels, we visited many sights including the palace and as well as going into an erotic museum along the way. The erotic museum was very very funny and i'll post pics if and when i feel like it - there's up in my room on cd for the time being. Don't have time to get them.
The erotic museum was an eyeopening experience. It seemed to have everything from random porn magazine covers through to a 10 by 10 wall of television screens showing porn non-stop. It even had a shock section, with beastiality and really enormous women. Shudder.
For any of you visiting the city of Copenhagen, at least go into the foyer of the erotic museum. it's filled with hundreds of tiny figurines in a million different suggestive positions. It's very cute and interesting. And free to look at. And really funny because you'll often find tourists like me zooming in for macro shots of the most disturbing things like... er... donkeys....

Clearly, the erotic museum made an impact on my little brain that day.

Other highlights from the day included hiring one of the free bikes available around the city. Now, please bear in mind that i had not ridden a bike in at least 6 or 7 years. I was never particularly good at it back then anyway. Also realise that I have never EVER tried doing in general traffic, let alone amongst many other riders.

Add those three facts together and you get me riding along in a very wobbly fashion. :) I was the source of great mirth for my fellow travellers, one of whom had to veer off into a side street because she was laughing so hard when she saw me almost tip over a man on a bike beside/in front of me who was going waaaaaaay too slow. He didn't look very happy when it happened, i can tell you, and although i speak no Danish, i'm sure a few swear words were flung my way.

That evening, we headed back to the youth hostel to meet our tour manager, cook and driver, as well as the rest of the 43 people on my tour.

But since time is running out, I'll tell you all about them and Stockholm tomorrow. :)

0 Comments