My two days in Amsterdam were a fascinating experience. It was a pleasant contrast to Herrang in a lot of ways.

For example, after two weeks of listening to pretty much exclusively swing music all day every day, hearing regular mainstream music was brilliant. Well, I was transfixed for about 20 minutes even by the most mundane of MTV music when I first turned it on. It was a random U2 song I don't even like, and Coldplay, amongst other things. But that didn't matter. It wasn't swing, and that was good.

Also, unlike Herrang, where a good proportion of the people there were swedish, and relatively local, I've come to the conclusion that there are hardly any Dutch people in Amsterdam. Every time I looked around, somebody was speaking English, or Polish or French or German - the Dutch were in hiding! Either that, or they must have shipped out for the holidays. Can't blame them, really, what with all the silly tourists wandering around the maze of alleyways and canals.



The only thing that suggests that there might still be some Dutch people around is the presence of bicycles everywhere. Crossing the road, you look left for cars, and you look left for bikes before moving. There's also the fact that every bridge over a canal has a million bikes parked on it. I was quite amused at how inventive people were being at finding new bike parking spots for themselves - I saw one attached to some scaffolding which was over a footpath.



The other visible dutch people must be the ladies in the Red Light District windows, many of whom are apparently men, but, to be honest, I can't usually tell which ones are the men.

But the strangest thing for me was that I got hit on quite so many times while in Amsterdam. Twice in pubs (not surprising, I know), once at the youth hostel, once even in an internet cafe? And I had someone offer me dinner while I walked along the street! I didn't even slow down to talk to this person, he just walked along at my pace and offered to buy me dinner. When I declined, he veered off into a side lane. Absolutely bizarre.
I can't help but wonder if the presence of the Red Light District influences things like that.

I had a fun experience chatting with a Moroccan guy, actually. Funnily enough, he spoke 4 languages, none of which are English. It ended up being a rather broken conversation in French, since mine isn't very good. To tell you the truth, I hadn't realised just how much French I'd forgotten till I tried and failed miserably at putting together a sentence longer than 'I like cats'. Nevertheless, we comminicated using a little French, a lot of gestures and a few animal sounds when necessary. We wandered over to one of those lovely "coffee shops" which doesn't sell coffee and although I didn't have a joint, there was probably enough smoke in the air to stone a small elephant. Consequently, his mooing was pretty damn hilarious at the time.

Sidenote: the coffee shop itself was very intriguing - dim lighting, people splayed out on cushions on the floor, obviously stoned. It was an indian-themed coffee shop, with elephants on the walls and carpets and cushions on the floors, so from a stoned perspective it may have been quite surreal.

Anyway. My French isn't that good, but it's good enough to recognise the phrases mon amour "my love", je t'aime "I love you" and ce material ferait une belle robe de mariage which basically translates to "get the hell out of there because the loony who's spent 2 hours with you is smitten and talking about marriage".
As such, my French was enough to tell me to get out of the situation. Unfortunately, I'd given him my number before he seemed quite so crazy and then had to endure two 10 minute phone calls the next day of him literally begging me to meet up with him one last time. Yeah, right, freak. I don't think I've said 'non' that many times in such a short space of time before.

So yes, it was a fun weekend, and there's nothing quite like feeling that you've mangled someone's impression of what girls from Australia are like.