The last destination of our trip was Amsterdam. Again we didn’t found someone in couchsurfing to host us, but it didn’t matter since Daisuke had kindly agreed to host us if we didn’t find anybody. We arrived Friday in the early evening after a little bit of trouble (i was an hour late because of a missed train, Seisa somehow managed to take a train in the wrong direction and came half an hour after me). Daisuke’s place was not only nice, it was utterly central! The only thing that gave us some bad feeling was that he slept on the ground, so that we could share his bed. We went to some nice indonesian restaurant he knew where we had a great menu, with a lot of different thing to share. Afterwards we went for a small tour, starting from Amsterdam Centraal to Rembrandt plein, through the Damrak.
Later on we went together (! Daisuke surprised me on this one) to Panama, a club who was supposed to have a good “electronic music” party. I was still in a “berlin” kind of mode… which made me believe we were really early there (1:00 am), but Amsterdam actually has more civilized hours, party’s “start” around 22:00 and usually stop around 4:00 or 6:00, a real treat! Anyway du to me not being in a great shape, and Seisa having only sandals, which aren’t that great when the floor is full of broken glass, we left the place a little bit early, even though the party was really nice and the ambience really great.
The next day we slept in again, and left quite late to go to the Kalverstraat, a shopping area of Amsterdam. Even though Seisa didn’t found anything for her (again ^^!), i cracked, the continuous exposure of shops made me buy 3 new pants, which where quite needed (no complains here). After being treated to dinner by Daisuke (we had Miso soup!), we took the train to Den Haag, where we met Qinqin and Tingting (no kidding), Qinqin is a fellow Ph.D. student of Daisuke, Tingting a friend of her. We went to the beach to see some fireworks, who were rumored to take place from 22:00 to 24:00. The fireworks actually stopped at 22:15 and we were underwhelmed to say the least. Anyway we had some good time sitting at the beach and discussing all kinds of topics. We decided to go back to Amsterdam and to put the rest of time in good use by going to some club. We went to Rembrandt plein, where you have a plethora of choices, funnily we had a lot of trouble to find the one we had set our eyes upon: Studio 80, a small door, well hidden between two large venues. A great evening with music from a DJ from Hamburg.
On Sunday, Seisa and I moved out to see a little bit more of the city, we walked to Anne Frank Huis, but the line there was so long that i didn’t wan’t to bother with it. We continued our way south along the canal, stopping somewhere for a coffee. We then hit Leidseplein, went back north from there, saw the flower market, continued till this small bridge on the Amster which name i can’t remember right now. Later in the evening we went with Daisuke to a traditional dutch cuisine restaurant, which was full of japanese, (are they all using the very same guide?). We went back home early, everyone was already focusing on the next part of the trip, going back home for me and going to rome for Seisa. We left Daisuke’s place monday morning at 5:00 for Schipol. At 11:00 i was in Muenster and at 12:00 in my office…
pensées aléatoires 