Amsterdam, Netherlands
(part 3)
May 22nd, 2010
Today, I had my first taste of the sad part of backpacking, but I’ll get to that in due time… for it was another completely random, memorable day. After the Anne Frank museum, Sissel, Michaela and I just kicked it and took a night off from the insanity of the Amsterdam. We watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the movie room and it was nice to be sober for a night. After the movie, I made my way into my dorm room, and found that 12 of the 14 beds were empty and it was silent. Finally, a quiet night to get some good sleep! Boy was I mistaken… Around 3 am, an entire rugby team checked in and took over our room. These Spanish lunatics were screaming, hanging out the window, jumping off their bunks, and worst off all, keeping me from sleeping! It was highly annoying, but knowing quite a few ruggers myself, I understood the excitement.
At breakfast today, I met the captain of the team, who was incredibly friendly. He apologized for the team’s antics and invited me to their tournament. He reminded me of my rugby captain: deliberate, quiet, polite, but you could tell the guy would rather be drinking than controlling ten other lunatics. He gave me directions to the tournament and headed out. Since my Canadian friends had left yesterday morning, I had pretty much only been hanging out with my Finnish friends Sissel and Michaela. So, when I saw them at breakfast, I invited them to the tourney.
The afternoon was great. We saw some fantastic 7’s play from dozens of teams from Europe, South America, and Africa. But the Finns had a plane to catch, so we headed back to the hostel around 5 pm. They had to catch the shuttle at the Central Station, and I had to make a reservation for my train tomorrow, so I followed with. We said our goodbyes outside the station and that was that… I was alone in Amsterdam again.
It’s very hard because I know I will have this exact experience countless times during this journey. I made two friends, who had I met in the states, I would have easily called friends for life. I guess backpacking makes you have relationships that escalate so quickly, that you learn so much about these people, and you feel so close to them so soon. But these feelings are fleeting, because they embarked on their train and they were gone… Who knows if I will ever see them again? The chances of me making it to Helsinki anytime soon are pretty slim with my PhD program. And so as I said my goodbyes and walked back to my hostel, I was struck with profoundly sad emotions. I finally had a feeling of normalcy in this city with friends who I could spend time with, but then they left and I’m solo again. I know I am only four days into a 70-day trip, and I’m going to make so many friends it will make my head spin. But this is the first experience of the backpacker’s heartbreak. I met lots of people here in the Flying Pig Hostel, and they are all now my Facebook friends, which is nice. But they weren’t “friends”. The Finns taught me so much about Europe and their culture, and they were the exact type of people I set out to meet on this trip. So even though I have 65 more days of pure insanity in front of me, I sit in my hostel bed disheartened knowing I made two great friends in three short days that I may never see again. In a sense, it’s very romantic. In years to come, when I look back at this trip and think of my time in Amsterdam, it won’t be the hookers cat-calling us from their windows, the pot shops, or the copious amounts of partying at the bars. It will be my two Finnish friends, and the indescribable moments we shared in a foreign land. While I’m sad to say goodbye, I’m excited to make so many more friends on this odyssey that I set out on alone.
So, since I never let an emo moment put me down, I am going to post this blog, and head out on a pub crawl through the Red Light district. I’m sure I will make awesome friends tonight. But I leave tomorrow at 8 am for Bruges, so I will likely never see them again. Such is the way of a solo backpacker…….
-Batty
PS — turns out this is how the night started… and everything thereafter was quite the blur. Thanks Cammy haha
