Rich and Strange Aeons

Nice weather again. Sunny and even less cold. Transferred to a hotel. Still have to get to the airport tomorrow: €15 50 minute shuttle, €40 20 minute taxi, or cheap 30+ minute public transit (tram transferring to train).

Got directed to a tailor, who was willing to patch my jeans in a couple hours for €12. Whee! Found a street market and strolled down it, mostly looking at foods. In fact, I realized I basically glaze over anything else. I might buy food, I'm not buying clothes or jewelry, so they barely even register... Anyway, lots of stands selling raw food, but not many street food ones, and I didn't want to start lunch with a waffle. So in a cafe/bar/sandwich shop in a nearby building. Steak tartar in a bun for €4. Just raw beef with some vegetables and cold butter, not like the spicey juicy stuff I can make. Oh well, it's token real food, now I can get street waffles anf fresh OJ.

Which, btw, is sinasapplesap. Apple juice is applesap.

There's a place selling fries in a waffle cone. I want to say "American food, you're doing it wrong!"

Just bought a wild boar sausage, "dry, so ready to eat". I'll save it for the plane.

Chicken wings. Birdshit on backpack. Thought about strawberries, which looked nice and red, but white flesh beneath the leaves and can October be a good bet? Fresh OJ good, not ecstatic. Waffle with both dark -- well, I asked for dark, it looked somewhat milky on the waffle -- and white chocolate, pretty good. Served with moist towelette.

There's a restaurant called Thai Deum. I'm trying to figure out if it's a bilingual pun somehow.

Oh hey, it's after 7 already. I'll pass on vague laundry plans. I LOVE SKYPE. It's like my old Bigzoo calling #s, only better because I can use it from abroad. I just gave my storage places more money by phone, then called S in Chile and shocked her because usually only G talks English on the local line, everyone else uses some US gateway. But it hardly matters for me.

Still haven't used the video mode of it.

Whoah, Bton is back up to the 80s?

Hey, German rail strikes tomorrow. Flying to Spain seems like a serendipitous choice.

I see Boston is geekiest in the winter/spring, spaced out rather regularly. Arisia, Boskone, Vericon, Anime Boston; one a month starting in mid January. Vericon used to be early January but the Harvard school year changed or something. If I want to stay somewhere foreign for a while then settle in Boston and seek out my tribes, going to Chile soon then Boston in January seems like a forced move.

And you know, I've been ignoring it, but the exchange rate is horrible for travelling. Pound is the pound but $1.40 per euro is ouch.

Dinner in a Suriname-Chinese restaurant, ordering roast pork with ketjap sauce, and trying to ignore CSI with Dutch subtitles. Oh god this is a lot of food for €8... Or I've been eating at expensive restaurants.

Good food though.

Oh god. 9 flight. Boarding closes at 8:30. I figured arrive 7:30. But the concierge recommends a 6:50 taxi, getting there in 20-30 minutes. So for me, getting up at 5:45... Tomorrow will suck. Maybe an airport hotel wouldn't have been a bad idea -- but then, my jeans probably wouldn't be fixed.

Well, little random discoveries from exploration always make me feel better. Yesterday I'd walked down to the botanic gardens and zoo, but it was too late to be worth paying. €18 for the zoo, what's with expensive European zoos? Trammed around some more, had ok Indonesian food -- right, started the day with a burger. Waitress didn't know what kind of cheese they used, and said no tap water, but brought some anyway when I didn't order anything else.

Indonesian was in Muntplein shopping area, which seemed to close early, and where's a Starbucks when you want one? I just wanted a cafe, coffee and bathroom and warm seating with no expectations. I finally resorted to McDonalds which turned out to be charging 50 cents for the toilet. Bookstores didn't seem to have toilets either, though I walked around rather than ask.

Anyway. Today's really windy but it's not so bad bundled up and with the sun out. I decided to walk the area, such as it is. Further down the lane is a couple more houses, then farms and canals, the end. The other way seems private-industrial. Up the main road toward Edam is a few more houses, looking less ramshackle than my lane, a hotel, and a cheese and clog factory.

No, really. They sell cheeses, mostly varieties of Edam and Gouda -- I left with stinging nettle Gouda -- and wooden shoes. I got a personal tour of the works. Not much to the cheese, but the clogs were interesting. Start with wet willlow wood, and shape; got shown a bit of hand technique, then the machines that work from a model. Tried some on too, though it didn't really appeal. Painted varieties included ones pretending to be real shoes with X for laces, Friesian shoes painted with flowers and such, and specially carved wedding shoes for hitting your spouse with.

Klompen, as the Dutch call them, are still worn by fishermen and farmers and such. Waterproof from below and pretty solid armor. And, she didn't say, perhaps easier to wash shit and mud off.

Hse gave me a tourist map of Volendam and Edam, and I kept walking to Volendam. Ouch, a half-hour that got wearing. And I noted at some point that the bike lane along the main road had disappeared: I guess my side road was the way to go after all. Lots of cows and sheep and some swans; I realized that the really ubiquitous canals probably serve in lieu of fences for separating livestock: fencing I saw was mostly just a gate blocking off a small land bridge. I wonder if the canals are fresh or saltwater.

Finally made it, found my way to the shore and a wooden platform that I realized was bobbing with the waves, and thence to town center and harbour tourist trap.

Volendam has US style street signs! So happy. Blue not green, but still.

Had some minestrone and lasagna at a place a bit off the boardwalk. Decent. Bubbling hot lasagna. No tap water, RAGE. How can you be a socialist utopia if people can't get a free drink of clean water? No water fountains, remember! (Well, not that I've seen enough public place in Holland to judge that.)

Bus back to my howling wasteland, 6 minutes. Apparently I couldn't pronounce "De Zedde" such that my driver could understand it, I had to point at a list.

Moved from the hotel, which was stopgap due to schedule messup, to the Airbnb place originally asked for. Had been described as somewhat rural and rustic village not too far out. More like 6 or so houses in the middle or green flatness, 25 minutes by bus. My amsterdam pass doesn't work on those buses, I need another 4€ each way. The buses run "6x an hour" which is actually 3 overlapping 30 minute buses, not one bus running every 10 minutes. Nearest food is in Edam, supposedly 5 minutes away by bus but I wouldn't know since two buses raced by without stopping. I'm currently going back to Amsterdam for the evening since I know it and have maps, though I don't know of a good supermarket downtown. Though I'm already rather tempted to look into cancellation and just go somewhere else.

Finally got a SIM card, Vodafone. Comes with data though I can't tell the rates. Signal is very weak where I'm staying.

The two bus drivers I've talked to on this line have had poor English, which I realize is an irrational complaint.

Naturally, my eee/Ubuntu doesn't like the wifi encryption, and this time there's no ethernet jack so I've had to revert to old USB boot.

Hans had recommended Dutch fried food. This would require my having seen a Dutch restaurant. I have not. Everything is some other type of restaurant, or generic pizza/burger place... Ok, no longer true; I passed a hotel restaurant with a short but explicitly Dutch menu. The items did not particularly appeal... I asked a guy on the street, and he could think of one place, reachable by "avoid being eaten by a grue" directions.

So I'm at an all you can eat Japanese restaurant, though it might not be worth it, compared to my happy memories of Vancouver. Can order 5 items at once, many being singlel pieces of nigiri. And they don't serve tap water, which morally offends me, though I didn't think to just walk out at that point. Fast serving of my order, though, except for the gyoza. Nigiri are half the usual width. Miso was the most interesting I've had ina while, tofu and seaweed and green onion. Bloomington had better gyoza. Decent salmon. Worst red snapper ever. I now realize that what I wanted was yellowtail, and I got confused between that (which isn't on the menu) and the always bland snapper, but it was still, well, different than any other snapper. Chewier and more opaque. Wasn't a mistaken piece of octopus, in case you wonder. Bunch of tempura, including novel fish tempura. Cold soba noodles. Tuna salad, which from the picture I'd though would be seared tuna but was actually more like canned tuna. Fish balls, which are okay but not very exciting.

Jack's having hallucinations outside of Paris. Quicksilver just got weird.

They're irritatingly inconsistent. Order one thing, and you get a little piece of sushi. Order another, and you get a plate of beef or bowl full of noodles and things.

Earlier I'd stopped into the Victoria Hotel, which turned out to be an experience itself: the entrance is an automatic revolving... thing, like a glass door but missing a partition, so it's more like a secret bookcase... Anyway, I went in to ask about proper supermarkets downtown, figuring there must be some. It's physically inobvious, only the store name announcing its presence. I think it's in a converted hotel story itself. Anyway, went there after dinner; it's right by the bus station so as convenient a market as I'd find in Edam, barring the travel time. Hardly any bread though, though I did get a couple more crappy Dutch croissants (the last batch was crunchier than usual, especially the next morning). Some muesli was cheap, €1/kg, so I figured I could have that and milk for a while. I asked, and kaerne milk is sour milk. Buttermilk? Reminds me of the sour milk I inadvertently got in London, though it didn't say so. I got volle instead -- whole, obviously.

The 7.50 seems to get me a daypass, so I could at least go back and forth. Possibly even take other lines from this company. There seems to be some integration with my card -- maybe I could put cash on top of the pass and pay for the daypasses that way.

BTW, when I say 25 minute bus ride, I don't mean slow urban, I mean down a highway at speed, with a stop every 5 minutes. There's a TV screen of sorts on the bus, which on the first one was a mix of ads and upcoming stops, on the second one didn't work, and on the third one was just ads. Fortunately a voice announced the upcoming stops.

Sorry for being so negative, but I'm tired and still coughing and moving into surprises like this is stressful.

Oh god that was painful. Got to the station at 11:20. Tried the SNCF ticket machines there; they wouldn't take my card either. "We only take ... Visa ... " Fuckers. My MasterCard debit card didn't work either though that was a desperation move; likely I never activated its debit functionality.

So I stood in line hoping to pay cash. Long, slow, line, with people taking forever. Don't know if I would have made it, but near the end an employee bumped me to an immediate departures line. At least I was prepared: I'd written out what I needed, though she asked anyway, and my name if they cared, which she didn't, and had exact change handy.

After all that, they only announce the platform with 10 minutes to spare. Heh, way faster turnaround than planes. Even my second class seat is pretty comfortable. I'd have to pay for wifi but I can live without. No personal lighting or airjet, but I'm comfortable for now.

I belatedly noticed last night that the hotel I'd gotten has one star on booking.com, with lots of reviews saying "hot, dirty, noisy". Oops. Looked around a bit more and found one further out from the center, much nicer and so much cheaper that paying the one night cancellation fee still come out the same.

We passed an airport on the right, from an odd angle as if the train were tilted to the left, then we leveled out. High speed train needing to bank for turns, and I happened to catch it? Not that I noticed us turning.

My seat is right near the train bar, lots of foot traffic. Bar has various drinks and food. And three college age girls speaking English, sound American. Talking about removing nose hair and ripping eyebrows out and "getting a Brazilian down there", which is inhibiting my desire to go say hi to compatriots. Bar has higher windows, so you can stand and look out.

I've observed more banks and turns now. Also I was wrong -- there is a personal light, way up there, with the control down by the seat tilt.

Brussels after 90 minutes. There hasn't been much landscape -- I'm heading into the Low Countries after all -- but the city seems to have ridges. Also tall narrow houses, like much of San Francisco only more squished and less colorful. Also the isolated drab high-rises that I assume are social housing.

Hmm, I didn't look at the map thoroughly -- it's going to take longer from Brussels to Amsterdam than Paris to Brussels?

---Later---

Went and said high to the girls. Or 30something women from south Chicago who all work in different breweries. We hung out to the end of trip, fun and different for me. Becky, Jill, and Jackie, for my reference.

Afterwards, so annoying. Station wasn't labeled or laid out well: shops didn't have SIM cards; one did but not prepaid with data, so I got told where to go in theory; I bought a map; bought a different, more useful map; finally found transit info and took a number; forty people later I got my 7 day pass and a transit map; I finally found my bus; then I got off at the wrong bus stopand was even walking the wrong way until I flagged down a bicyclist with more clue than my driver; then I had ambiguity about where to get into the hotel and chose the wrong one; then I got to wait for a couple dozen people buying daypasses from the hotel. Couple hours from train to hotel room.

Also, it's raining. Very lightly.

I am aware in "count your blessings" that a bad day for me is "worry and fail to miss my train, then get confused and run late for oh hey, nothing was waiting on me." The women were a happy lot but one had police on a bf who'd chased her around, and another one was worried that one of her underlings had gone from sweet country girl to missing person, probably caught up in drugs and pimping.

Still, I like to vent.

New hotel is nicer and quieter than reviews warned of the first hotel I booked, though definitely further off too; should move soon and see what's nearby or just go downtown.

Nice hotel room. No fridge sadly, or rather there is a fridge but it's a minibar stocked with drinks. I couldn't even empty them to make room for food since it's automated and I'd be charged right away.