Amsterdam, or "I'm never taking the train again"

FRIDAY: I'm sorry sir, we're all out of Volkswagens. Will an Audi A4 be acceptable? Sigh. I suppose. Very good. Here are they keys. Have it back by Monday. Thanks. Now I understand that you have something called an "Autobahn" here in Germany? Uhhh... yes.

Hmm so somehow we got our hands on an Audi for the weekend. And to make things better, we were going to Amsterdam! Well this weekend was starting to look pretty decent! We had to stay late and give presentations at the University on Friday afternoon, but we were done talking by 7pm, and on the Autobahn by 7:30 or so. And contrary to what you may have heard, the Autobahn does in fact have speed limits in some sections. Why, at one point we had to slow all the way down to 140! Our biggest problem was arguing about who got to drive. So, a few hours later we were in Enschede, a university town in the Netherlands where one of our classmates (Kelvin) is working. We arrived around 1am, parked the car, and checked out the campus. We went to a Dutch University party, it was pretty good, but by 3 we were pretty tired. All 5 of us crammed onto Kelvin's floor to sleep.

SATURDAY: Next morning we were up early to go on to Amsterdam. Parking in the city centre is 3 Euro and hour, so instead we parked way out in the suburbs, at Amsterdam's World Cup soccer arena. We went into the city and found our hostel - The Flying Pig - probably one of the best hostels I've been to. Free breakfast, nice rooms, good atmosphere, lots of young backpackers. We headed out to do the Heineken Brewery tour, which wasn't bad; it included a free Heineken glass. We wandered around and saw the old city, canals, and Red Light District. We ate supper, did some more wandering, and then sat down and watched the Holland-Sweden football game. Holland won, but only on penalty shots. The whole city was celebrating. We took another look at the Red Light District, which is a lot different at night, but still very touristy.

SUNDAY: Next day was a little slower paced. Kung's cousin studies in Amsterdam, so we met up with her and she showed us around to some of the smaller sights in Holland. We saw Volendam, a tiny village that used to be on the sea, but is now on a lake because the Dutch dammed it! It was a neat village, and I had some raw Dutch fish, very good. We also saw some Windmills, and sampled about 20 different cheeses for free. It was getting a little late, so Colin and I took off in the Audi back to Wuerzburg (Kung, Billy, and Evan went on to see London and Paris during the week). We decided to take the scenic route back, and stopped in Eindhoven (Netherlands) for dinner. I had one of the best meals I've had in the past 2 months there, and to top it off one of the locals bought us both a drink after he found out we were Canadians. We kept going south, and briefly turned off the highway to go to Belgium (it was only 1km out of the way) just so that Colin could say that he'd been there. The rest of the night was just crusing along the Autobahn until we got into Wuerzburg around 1am.

So, what conclusions can we draw? Driving on the Autobahn in fun. I'm never taking the train again.