After briefly relating some of our independent adventures to one another, we ambled on toward the main entrance of Amsterdam Centraal station. It’s such a shame my shades are so unstylish, as the sun had finally decided to make a guest appearance that day. After my eyes adjusted to this strange phenomenon called sunshine, I took in all the hustle and bustle of tourists clambering onto the cable cars. Since neither of us understood Dutch and there were no ticket dispensers visible, we hopped on a car without a ticket, much to the dismay of my conscience, and headed off to our hostel. Leah forewarned me about the conditions of the place we were going to stay. I entered with low expectations.

It’s definitely in one’s best interest to always have low expectations. If I could describe the hostel in two words, I think I would use the words “shanty” and “drab”. But at least they didn’t pretend to be something they were not. Posters were plastered all over the walls, proclaiming it as the worst hostel ever. The graphics showed a healthy looking guest at check-in and a guest with mouth sores at check-out. As an advertising student, I thought this was an interesting marketing strategy, but as a guest in the hostel, I found it rather unsettling. I didn’t touch many door handles that day.

So we set off for the city, thinking we would have a busy day full of museum tours. We were wrong. Touring Amsterdam on a Saturday is far less than ideal. Our first disappointment was the Rijksmuseum, which houses famous Dutch paintings by the likes of Vermeer and Rembrandt. The line was out the door and around the corner. Pass. So then we went to the Van Gogh museum, which was quite an ugly building for such a fine artist. Again, the line was out the door and down the block. Pass.

The next item on the agenda was the Heineken Brewery. Yes, please. On the way to the brewery, we stopped in a park to take some cheesy pictures. Adjacent to a large pool of water were huge block letters that spelled out IAMSTERDAM. We posed. It was hard to get a solid picture because quite a few people wanted snapshots with every.single.letter. One girl even went so far as to jump up after the letter “M” to make herself look like an exclamation mark. The brewery was more than we wanted to spend to see how beer is made, so we perused the gift shop and then strolled along the canals for a while.

The Anne Frank House was at the top of my to-do list, so when we saw yet another line stretching around the corner, I was very disappointed. We took several pictures next to a rather insignificant plaque on the house. But then Leah convinced me that we should actually go inside. She had already been once before, so I felt guilty for her having to pay for a second visit, but I was excited nonetheless. This ended up being one of the highlights of the entire European trip. I had read Anne’s diary in junior high, and here I was, standing right where she had penned it. Her room still had the movie star pictures she had pasted onto the walls sixty-five years ago. The entire experience was very personal, interactive, and haunting. I stood in the rooms wondering how eight people could be contained in such conditions without going mad. I wanted to buy a copy of her diary in the gift shop, but my budget had already been pushed to its limits. I regret it now.

We decided to check out the infamous Red Light District, because, who were we kidding, that was bound to be amusing. On the way there, however, we saw something fly past the skyline. As we approached, we discovered we had happened upon a true carnival. This carnival was far beyond any I had ever seen in the United States. The rides were extreme. I am a thrillseeker, but even I was slightly terrified at the idea of getting on one of the rides, which spun and inverted riders at 4Gs. The cotton candy concession stand was ridiculous; they served a fluff of cotton candy so large that I was compelled to take out my camera and capture it. I was so happy to be in this momentary escape from adulthood. We stood there for a few minutes literally gaping at all the sights and sounds. Eventually, we snapped to our senses and carried on to the Red Light District.

The Red Light District was everything one could expect, so I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty details. I was less than impressed with the girls in the window displays, not that I was hoping to be impressed by them. I saw some odd things in the windows of the kink shops, but I’m not about to describe them. So after we had walked the streets for a while, we decided to get some much needed dinner. We went to McDonalds, so cultured. I ended up getting an Oreo McFlurry though, and that was a nice little indulgence.

Since internet was only available after 10pm in our hostel, we rushed at the chance to get back and connect to the real world. We spent an hour or so in the downstairs bar of the hostel and then retired to our room, where our American roommates had left drug paraphernalia scattered around here and there. At least it was legal.

We got on a train to go back home at 10:15am. The first two hours were pleasant, but then we spent seven hours sitting on the steps of the train door, next to the water closet, because we had changed our travel times and didn’t have reservations. We didn’t think the German trains would be that crowded. It was miserable. But we rolled into Odense at 10:30pm and it was quite a relief. My pseudo-home never felt so good.