Netherlands

I took the night train from Basel to Amsterdam. At a time I thought it would be a good way of saving money and getting more out of the cities; ditch hostels, just push the transportation to the nighttime.

You get virtually no room. You can´t sleep unless you´re really exhausted, and even with the EUrail pass, it was more expensive than a night in a hostel (my most expensive hostel night:$26, train ticket:$36) I think that clarifies things.

Amsterdam is by far the most painful city I have seen. I use the word because you can see the architecture, you know about the museums, you love the canals; but you also see the inordinate amount of grafitti, even on truly historic buildings, every cafe you enter reaks of pot, and the small boxes where prostitutes advertise themselves truly disturbed me.

Luckily, I wasn´t staying in Amsterdam. I was about 40 miles away, in the coastal town of Noordwijk (silent J). This hostel was obviously called the Flying Pigs Beach Hostel (my only interpretation is a drug-induced combination of the Flying Dutchman, Pigs Flying, and Beaches. Maybe). I had one roommate, an English teacher from Korea (which is good because I can´t begin to comprehend Dutch).

I went to beach, NOT expecting a tan, but truly amazed at what I saw. The North Sea, truly ferocious, attacked the sand with a fiery passion. It was dark, mysterious; this explained why it is called the Netherlands. Standing on the beach was like visiting the most remote, dark, forboding place on Earth.

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