One of the coolest things about Amsterdam's central station is the fact that they have a public piano there where they ENCOURAGE people to show off their skills.
So of course, I did.
Yeah sure they cheered after I finished, but the next piece I absolutely BLEW IT. I forgot the notes midway through and I messed up everywhere and it was terrible and the crowd left and I walked away in shameful defeat.
Oh well.
So today, we travel over to Germany via their bullet train. I brought along a journal on my way there and since I had no internet connection nor an outlet to charge my laptop with, I decided to flaunt my artistic skills by drawing the people I see on the train.
First up, the guy sitting in front of me, who marched onto the train, slumped onto his chair, and immediately passed out.
Is it creepy that I'm taking pictures of people
without consent? Yeah. Do I care? No.
Apparently, instead of that gentleman, I drew John Cena.
The burgers were Megan's idea.
I also found this man who told me he and his family was from South Africa before promptly falling asleep.
Literally, the conversation was "Hello, I'm from
South Africa! Zzzzzzzzzzz..."
I think I'm prouder of this one than my John Cena drawing.
There's an interesting theory that the more acclaimed you are as an artist or a writer, the easier it is for you to get away with calling something "art."
Case in point: we visited the Huis Marseilles (the museum of photography) in Amsterdam and I had no idea what one of the exhibits was.
"Sure."
The exhibit supposedly centered around Brazilian favelas being composited on top of picture of the Amazon forest. That was it. Boom, find it at your local art gallery, pass go, collect your 200 dollars.
I mean I guess.
Seriously, it looks like an assignment I had to do in kindergarten where I had to cut and paste pictures to describe my personality that my teacher told me to redo because I taped a picture of Kate Upton on it.
Where's my art gallery, huh?
They had another installation that I really liked though. They were old pictures from newspapers that has anonymous photographers because back in the early days of journalism, giving credit to photographers wasn't commonplace. So even though some of these pictures were fantastic, we'll never know who took them. Take a look at some of my favorites.
Me and Samantha, circa 1929.
A lawyer covering his face to protect his identity
when defending an infamous client.
Hitler wearing lederhosen.
What do I rate it? Nein out of ten! HAAAAAAH!
Joby found one of his ancestors too.
Godspeed, little guy.
This one actually had a very interesting story, so I took a picture of the plaque.
Here's a picture of two explorers who managed to capture two natives and a gorilla on a trip. For some strange reason, when I see that gorilla's face, I am reminded of our very own shirtless Mikey.
"I regret nothing!"
"NOTHING!"
And lastly, here are African women and their lip plates.
Looks like my mom when she yells at me.
Today was a pretty chill day though. Our last day in Amsterdam, and we didn't really have anywhere to go, so we just walked aimlessly until we stumbled onto something, kind of like blind wingless seagulls.
We tried bitterballs though. They're apparently a Dutch traditional treat, and no, despite their name, they aren't just an occupational hazard for prostitutes in the red light district.
Although they certainly look like they are.
They're fried veal balls filled with gravy. And they taste... Okay. I didn't particularly like them, and I certainly wouldn't try them again, but I didn't hate them either. Ehh.
RFotD: In hindsight, I actually would eat those bitterballs again, they have a very interesting taste.
I don't know if I've told you this already, but Amsterdam has a FANTASTIC public transport system. They have tap to scan subway cards (made of paper too!), a monitor with the list of stops on all their buses and trolleys, and they have BEAUTIFUL train stations. I got a few very pretty shots of their main hub, Central Station. Take a look.
It's like you're my mirror (woah), my mirror starin back at me...
Megan was quite impressed by the size of this woman.
Today was the first time we visited the station since we had to take the ferry today. Most other times, we just took the bus or the trolley, but today, we decided to be adventurous. We completely ignored my mom's pleas that "there were sharks in the water" and that "she gets seasick really easily" and that "there are still bloodstains on that boat" and hopped on to the fairy to this place.
The world's shittiest prosthetic eye.
...Yet you can still see that Joby likes it. Hehhehehehhehehe....
This is the Eye. And despite looking nothing like an eyeball, it's very appropriately named because it also goes by another name: The Netherlands National Museum of Film.
There were a few cool exhibits. I think my favorite was this Splatoon Simulator on the wall.
There was also this cool room that had a 360 degree view of each individual frame in a film reel. It reminded me of that room in the second Matrix movie where Neo talked to Colonel Sanders.
My father, however, is neither of those people.
We happened to be there at the perfect time though, since right before we were about to leave, a Dutch filmmaker named Johannes Guille approached us. He said he needed Asian extras for a few short films he was filming later that day and wanted us to be in it and we FLIPPED. So here's the films we were in:
Yeah, I don't know about the plot either.
Later, we went to Dam Square. We weren't exactly sure what was here, but it was on our "must see locations" list on the free map we got at the airport, so it must be worth it, right?
Yeah it was basically a tourist trap. But it was a funny tourist trap. Their gift shops here had some very interesting items for sale.
Those actually aren't salt and pepper shakers, they're the severed penises of people with kidney stones.
Someone call Nevin!
"Oh, so that's why the maid did that when I rang the service bell..."
They had some really funny street performers doing some breakdancing/stunting on the middle of the street. We caught them towards the end of their grand finale, where they were gonna do a flip over four strangers, so I only have a little footage of them, unfortunately.
Actually, I lied, They weren't gonna flip over four strangers. They flipped over three strangers, randomly picked from the crowd of people watching them, and then they picked ME. And when they picked me, they got a pretty big laugh out of the crowd because they said they would be searching for the "strongest man in the crowd" and they said "Give it up for Jackie Chan!" when I walked into the circle.
My mom said she got some footage of them flipping over me, but when I checked her phone, I found out she was on TIME LAPSE MODE. So the entire 4 minute buildup the street performers gave ended up being condensed into 15 seconds of a suuuuper fast flipbook. Sorry guys :(
They were REALLY funny people. They had a bunch of synchronized shouts whenever people donated and whenever they emphasized the "danger" of the stunt they were performing. And they hit on girls FREQUENTLY, it was really funny.
Okay, HIGHLIGHT OF TODAY. We took a COUNTRYSIDE TOUR.
First place we went to were the DUTCH WINDMILLS
This view really blew me away AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHA.
And yes, we got to climb the windmill.
They originally constructed the windmills to drain the water in the Netherlands, but they were made obsolete when they built steam-powered pumps. So now, a lot of them just make peanut oil. And they make it by grinding up peanuts with these big ol' grinding stones.
The painted thing on the right, I mean. Not the guy with the GoPro. He doesn't lift.
The view from the top was also very cool.
Magnificent.
The only downside was that it smelled like animal poop everywhere, but honestly with how beautiful those windmills were, I think it's worth making some of my other less important senses suffer.
Next up, the tour took us to a really cute fishing village. They had a cheese factory and it smelled AMAZING in there. And they had stacks of cheese wheels on a bunch of shelves that look like they were straight out of Mickey Mouse's wet dreams.
This wheel was not real.
But these were. And they smelled amazing.
Stacks on stacks.
After a little presentation about how the cheese was made, they let us sample all of their cheeses and they were DELICIOUS. Some of them tasted like the traditional cheeses that we Americans like on our spaghetti and our burgers. But other ones had a really unique taste to them. One of them had herbs in it that made it taste "taco-like" (that's my best description for the taste, because it honestly tasted like a taco), one of them was a year old and tasted SUUUPER strong, but my favorite was this white cheese (I think it's called gouta but I'm not sure) that kind of melts in your mouth with a savory, flavorful taste. It's hard to describe because I've never had anything like it, but it was so good that we bought a tiny little wheel of it to take home to America.
Afterwards, we had a LOT of time to eat and look around the fishing village. I discovered a very cute pastry shop that was selling traditional Dutch pancakes, so I gave it a shot.
Yumyumyumyumyumyum!
Delicioso!
Here's some other pretty shots of the fishing village I got.
Which one's the real Michael???
Then, we took a ferry across the bay to a place where they made CLOGS. Clogs as in the Dutch shoes, not the things that happen when the ball of hair in my shower falls down the drain.
They also had a cute little sign.
We didn't buy any wooden shoes, but we did see how they're made. And they make a LOT of them.
Shoes.
Oh my god.
Joby is clogging the clogs!
They're not particularly comfortable, but damn are they stylish.
With these shoes, I shall make my way downtown.
After the tour, we ended the day with a little visit to the red light district.
And Megan was with us. When did I realize this was a bad idea? Right around the time we walked through the first hallway.
"So... they don't call it the red light district just because of their bulbs..?"
See those red lights right over there? Yeah. That's a peepshow area. And while we didn't see any nudity (thank GOD), we did see women in their underwear tapping at the glass to try and get the attention of passerbys. And they FREAKED Megan out because they weren't just tapping. They were slamming their hands against the glass.
Yeah, we turned around and left after that. With a last name like Evangelista, it's kinda implied that we won't be living that sort of life anytime soon.
RFotD: Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, the internet in Germany was too slow for me to post anything, but I have a BUNCH of entries coming your way!
I think there are more people crawling around this I Amsterdam sign than there are people that actually live in Amsterdam.
I have no idea how that guy got on top of the letter I.
Joby seems to be enjoying himself though.
Seriously, I wish I could get a better shot of the entire sign, but these damn tourists are literally CRAWLING ALL OVER IT.
I did take a series of pictures that gets most of the sign in it though. And from those pictures, I tried to stitch together a panorama on Photoshop, check it out.
(PANORAMA I AMSTERDAM SIGN)
They also have these ADORABLE statues on display near the big I AmATourist sign.
It's Cinnamoroll!
They're called Miffy statues, and apparently they're super popular in Amsterdam. Think kind of like Hello Kitty, except cuter and not prone to being collected by large, neckbearded men. But apparently, Amsterdam has a pretty respectable collection of them, check them out.
How many times can you find my mom? I'll give you a hint, she's in every frame.
We also planned to Gogh to a museum today. The Van Gogh museum, that is. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
ANYWAY, yeah, so we visited National Semi-Earless Persons Club in Amsterdam, and it was BEAUTIFUL (I couldn't take pictures though). I mean I'm not even that much of an art person myself, but I'm really glad we went to that museum. It's one thing to look at prints or online pictures of the work Van Gogh did, but it's another to see them in person. Online, you don't see the thickness of the paint on the canvas, nor do you see it next to the other paintings that Van Gogh intended you to see them with. And this places beats out other art museums with boring old paintings from umpteenth century classical artists obsessed with realism. Van Gogh's art has a bit of abstractness in it, not too abstract that it looks like a toddler could make it with fingerprint, but abstract enough with its colors and forms that it makes even the most boring scenes look beautiful.
Yeah, I like his art. And so did Joby.
Yeah, I got a few weird glances from people from taking these pictures.
No, I did not give a single unit of fornication.
Afterwards, we went into the Anne Frank museum (again, no pictures allowed) which was the actual place she lived and hid in during the Holocaust.
For most of the tour, I felt very neutral about the museum. Sure, it was cool to see in person the places Anne Frank described in her diary, and it made me realize that their life was RIDICULOUSLY hard because of the tiny spaces they had, made even tinier because they had to share it with eight people. But I think the most impactful thing for me was seeing the log book of the people that died in the Holocaust. Anne Frank's name was there, on the page that was on display, but there was another Anne Frank right below her too. And then under her, more people with the Frank last name. And then in the dictionary-sized book, countless more names of people who died in the Holocaust.
It's strange, that we have an Anne Frank museum, but where are the museums for the other millions of people that died during the Holocaust? Where are the published diaries and memorials for them? The movie they showed at the end of the tour captured it incredibly. Anne Frank's story is tragic, of course. But it's only one story of millions.
On a MUCH lighter note, we ended the day with dinner at a delicious place called "Crystal Steakhouse and Pizzeria" and it was GREAT. I tried something new and ordered shawarma with kebab and curried rice and it was AMAZING.
I can see why Tony Stark wanted to try this so badly.
And then the highlight of the day? This shop that let you build your own CUSTOM MAGNUM ICE CREAM.
Finally, something with pleasure hours in Amsterdam that don't involve marijuana or nudity.
Inside the shop. I wouldn't be surprised if heaven looked sort of like this.
The artisans making a masterpiece that would make even Michelangelo jealous.
I ordered white chocolate with popping candy, white chocolate curls, and dried dijn berries or something like that, topped with a chocolate drizzle and it was BEAUTIFUL.
If you look carefully, you'll see a few wet spots on the ice cream tray. Those are from the tears of joy I cried when I saw this.
Imagine it: sweet white chocolate with a slight tang from the dijn berries. With every bite, a mix of vanilla ice cream, white and milk chocolate, and berries, all accompanied with an explosion of popping candy.
It was like ecstacy in your mouth. Except without the horrible drug-like side effects.
RFotD: I have a theory that if I just stand in the middle of Amsterdam's Red Light District for long enough, I'll inhale enough marijuana fumes from the pavement to get a secondhand high.
