I got up early-ish this morning (8am) to catch the 15-minute long train to Haarlem and walk around the streets that of old city. It was gorgeous. There were roses absolutely everywhere, in front of almost every single home, and the canals were much cleaner than those in Amsterdam. Lily pads floated everywhere. Since it was still early, nothing was open yet and I was the only one walking the streets. With all the flowers, the air was amazingly fresh and just faintly scented.
After about an hour or so, I'd walked through the entire city center that they had to offer, and found myself getting bored. The wind had picked up a little as well, and since it was still cloudy I was also beginning to get a little cold. So I hiked back to the train station and caught a 40-minute train to Delft.
It was later on in the morning and life had picked up aside from myself. Delft, while still chilly, was an interesting city. It's supposedly the birthplace of all the famous blue-and-white ceramic ware, and you could definitely tell the city was proud of that heritage. Everywhere were stores selling "authentic" Delftware, as they called. I ended up grabbing a pesto-mozzarella panini and people-watching for a bit before heading back out, catching an afternoon train back to Amsterdam.
The thing I really appreciate about all these Netherlands cities is how many flowers there are everywhere. The land is so, so green everywhere. The air smells like roses. A lot of it is dirty, and a lot of it gets really, really dirty as people go out to party, but overall the country is blooming with life.
I feel like I've lived here for months now. The days at The Hague seem so long ago, when it was only a week ago. But still, time here moves at treble speed, making each day seem like a week and each week seem like a lifetime -- and at the same time, I hardly ever look at a clock anymore. It's like so much time is going by that it doesn't even matter what time it is specifically, the only thing that matters is making use of the time that is now.
After I got back from Delft, I started uploading more pictures onto my Flickr account. I've gotten a warning, though, that I'm apparently at 80% of my monthly allowance for upload bandwidth. I might ditch Flickr and start uploading my pictures directly to Facebook, which currently has no limit whatsoever minus how many pictures you can have per album.
I was the only girl in my hostel dorm last night. First, there was a guy from northern California who came in, Alex, and we actually had a ridiculously good conversation for like 2 hours. He just graduated from the local party school with a medical management degree and had heard about Boulder's reputation; we ended up talking about energy and electricity and green cars. It also turned out that he had just come to Amsterdam from Berlin so he gave me a few travel tips; his next stop, funny enough, is Athens, so we exchanged email addresses and I plan on asking him in a few days how the city has treated him to see if he has any new travel tips. He also plans on being in Pamplona for the running of the bulls, so we might end up meeting up again.
After that, two other guys came in, both from some college in Vermont. Both of them were high and drunk and friendly Americans. One immediately went to his bunk and crashed; the other sat next to me and we also talked a bit. He turned out to be a mechanical engineer, traveling it up before starting at his new job in Wisconsin. He was much more of a partier than Alex. At about 10:30, I decided to take a quick scroll around the block for some fresh air. The night was still so light, it could have been 7 instead; when I got back, all the guys had gotten up and were getting ready to go out and party it up. I had made it very, very clear from the start that I wasn't here to party and they all promised to try their best to be quiet when they got back.
Today, Alex has moved on and two Mexicans have moved in, one of them being a friendly girl who introduced herself but I can't remember her name at all. The two Vermont guys are taking a nap in preparation for their night tonight, Alex has moved on, and the Mexicans are out doing whatever it is they're going to do. I'm currently contemplating what to eat for dinner and how erly to get up for my morning flight.
...
I'd just finished writing this, around 5:30pm, and had decided to go for a walk around town one last time to catch some sup peer. I made one last hurried rush through the city and ended up stopping beside a man playing his guitar for tips.
His music was almost magical. I didn't watch him as I listened, I watched the streets and the pele passing by, and it seemed as if his music were the soundtrack to the beating motion of it all. It was as if his music were a perfect interpretation of the moment, of the breath of life that flowed through everyone, and it was also as if it had momentarily transported me away from the actual streets to a place where I could watch it all go by.
I stayed there for almost an hour, the setting sun get longer and lower in the sky, the mood of the people becoming that hurried rush of when your day is done and you want to get home, or you want to get food, or you want to get fun. He stopped playing and the magic broke, leaving me just another lounger on the streets of a dirty city filled with people who shared nothing in common aside from their momentary location.
For dinner, I grabbed some middle eastern food and returned to my hostel, intending to end the night by catching up on some readings by Chesterton that I've put off for a good while. My American hostel mates came by, trying to persuade me to hit up the streets with them, but they left without me. The Mexicans showed up at around 9pm, taking a 2 hour nap before going back out, and then returning at 2am and announcing their return by flipping on the lights. One of the Americans got back a little after; the other didn't return until I'd gotten up the next morning for my early flight out.
I'm sitting in the airport of Amsterdam now, waiting for my flight to be assigned a departure gate. Well start boarding here sometime in the next 30 minutes and it's off to country #5 (6, if you cunt Scotland and England as separate!)
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