The night I spent with a prostitute...

There are 2 things people go to Amsterdam for;

1) Bike riding along the canals

2) the red light district, and

3) to have a ‘coffee’ at a ‘coffee’ house.

Some on the best spots to do number 3 is in number 2 and if you do want to do number 1 its probably best to avoid doing it after number 3 and avoid doing number 1 in number 2 because it’s just so crowded.

I recently managed to pop up to Amsterdam for a quick weekend away from Luxembourg, not only to have a go at #’s 1-3 but to notch up country #33. Upon arriving I quickly decide to ditch #1 after seeing how crazy the locals are and how hazardous the tourist riders are! After settling into my hostel I walked outside to be treated to a few window displays – seems I was staying right on the edge of the Red Light District. Sweet!

I opted for the 2hr walking tour of the RLD to get acclimated with the city straight away and it was perfect. Our tour guide was 18yr old Tina, the crudest 18yr old I have ever met, perfect for the job. One person was complaining that she was a bit too rude but really if you cannot handle a few sex jokes then you probably should shy away from the Red Light District altogether!! We walked past the oldest bar in Amsterdam, ‘In the Monkey’, named so because of the years when sailors would pay off their tabs with monkeys they had procured on their pirate journeys. We spotted some blue flags and rainbow flags, generally found opposite taped/boarded up buildings that are in fact hard core mens gay S&M clubs.

Apparently UK men account for over 50% of the RLD’s income – quite a substantial amount really!! How it all works is the girls each rent a window in 8 hr time blocks ranging from €60 to €200 depending on location, amenities and the girls ‘stature’. There are alleys with only Scandinavian girls/Latin girls/Russian girls and so forth. A standard ‘suck and f*&@’costs around €20 and lasts 15 minutes not a second longer. Want her to smile? Pay more. Want her to say your name? Pay more. Want her to pretend to be in to it? Pay a lot more. The same ‘service’ from a lady on the Highrollers Street will cost you at least double and you’ll be lucky to walk past an open window, those girls tend to be booked up. Photos are generally not accepted and the girls are known to pretty hard arse about it, cameras have been known to be broken. ..

When the light outside the window is on it means the window is open for business and if the curtain is closed it means come back in 15 minutes. Apparently a few years ago they had an experiment to see if men would be as popular. 4 men rented windows to see if women would hire their services. Unfortunately because of the press attention it was shut down after 30 minutes. However 10 women did get their business done in that time, well done ladies.

Right in the middle of the RLD there is a stunning church, because even hookers are religious. Right? It was originally built so the sailors could repent after a wicked night, or even confess the day before if they were leaving early in the morning. There is also a Christian Hostel right in the centre. Brilliant! Just up the road there is also a fantastic condomerie right down the road, very innovative stuff!

All in all I have to admit I did not once feel unsafe – even walking home at night after a few too many ‘coffees’, I honestly felt safer than I ever did in London. Although I don’t think that even the police could save me from a cranky prostitute.

Speaking of prostitutes, after the RLD tour I decided to go to Resin Cafe just up from my hostel and have a few ‘coffees’. I was at the bar sitting next to a girl and we got to chatting, she was lovely, has a kid, is a local and was kind enough to give me some tips on what to do while in Amsterdam. An hour and a half later when we were talking about work I asked her what she does for a living and she said she worked in the area so I thought nothing more of it! Took me a coffee or two more to realise that she is a famous window worker! Haha so funny, she was hilarious and so genuinely kind, would never have picked her for a hooker! Not bad for the first night in town...

For breakfast the next day I went to another coffee house that sells splifs with your breakfast, only in Amsterdam! I met the most hilarious Kiwi woman, she was so bubbly and happy, and her accent had me in stitches! I met up with her later in the day for a beer, love!

After breakfast I decided to go for another tour, but this time it was the 3hr walking tour. Unfortunately this time round it was shit, the guide sucked and was not at all funny or interesting... I still absorbed some info but she didn’t leave me inspired! No tip for you! We did however get to try some yummmmmmmy Edam cheese and we saw some pretty interesting statues...

I quickly discovered that Amsterdam itself is actually a bike city. As in there are more bikes than people in the city at any one time. Every 6 months the council goes through the city and removes bikes that have been unused for x amount of time and there are bike parking centres all over the place. The Dutch are awesome!

The thinnest house

I also went on a boat trip around the Canals which was much much better! The boat driver was hilarious and spoke about 5 languages, was really informative without being boring and even let me have a drive of the boat! Look out!!

I checked out a great little restaurant just up from the Anne Frank house for dinner and had delicious Pea and Ham soup, a Dutch specialty apparently, not normally a fan but it was pretty tasty!

And for desert it was off to test the famous Bull Dog cafe coffee. The Bull Dog cafes are a chain of coffee/joint houses with quite an extensive menu. The space cake is pretty good and effective as is their ‘coffee’ menu. I spent the night blogging and chatting to another local I met at the bar and the two guys working the bar. They shouted us a few coffees and the three of them showed me to the best waffle house in town after dinner... FUN!

I was lucky enough to find quite a few shops that sold travel patches, much to my delight as I have been missing about 15 badges from my collection. So exciting!! My bags are now covered and I only have one or two spots left before I need to move on to the next bag! SWEEEET

All up Amsterdam was an absolute blast, the clogs, the smokes, the cheese, the whores, the waffles, the bikes. Definitely a memorable trip!!!

Just to be sure...

After days of indulging in Christmas goodies Amy and I hopped on an overnight bus to Prague, my favourite city in the world.

I don’t really need to go in to the specific with Prague because we all know I bloody love it there (4^th visit in 4years.. not bad). In all the times I have been there every experience has been different and has introduced me to som cracker people that I am still in contact with now. The beer factory and the Aussie bar have been HUGE parts of my love of Prague, oh and of course SIR TOBYS!!

I was so keen to introduce Amy to my favourite city but we only had a day and night and a few stop overs while going back and forth to Vienna and Cesky Krumlov and Bratislava. I do have to admit that this visit was very different to the other times. A lot more cultural than the other times!! Mostly what I love about Prague is the how great it is to just walk around and see what you stumble across. I have done a few museums and the castle once but other than that I am normally there for the fun not for the culture!! This time round we scrammed a whole lot of culture AND fun in. A good combination.

After the success of the Berlin NEW WORLD 3hr tour we decided to hit that up again and it was brilliant, again. The guide was a local which is always a plus and he had degrees in politics, history and drama... Pretty much a hilarious knowledge filled guide! He told us all about the floods of ’92, defenestration (when one dislikes a politician and throws them out a window, LIKE!), communism in Prague and the Velvet revolution.

It was such a fantastic tour and nice to actually get a bit of history in for once! We also checked out the awesome Lennon wall, a wall on the west side of the city that is covered in graffiti and art promoting music and peace. So beautiful.

It was post Christmas and the Christmas markets were still going so we were really lucky, Prague is beautiful enough but at Christmas it is a magical wonderland! It is also a feast of yummy foods, Langos (my favourite), Cinnamon Roll, mulled wine, Bratwurst and so on. YUMMM

When we first got there I withdrew 500kn and had no idea what is amounted to.. haha I was so tired it didn’t occur to me to check the balance until the next day!! Luckily it as not much in AUS $$.. Phew!

In Prague I started to experience Ski Envy. Seeing all the ads for ski gear and skiing holidays and seeing all the people in their ski pants was making me seriously jealous. Damn knee!! L

All in all Prague was brilliant, as per usual, and we had a great time. Hopefully I managed to get Amy to love it half as much as I do!!

the other side of Slovakia...

Last stop on our EPIC Christmas and New Year extravaganza was Bratislava, Slovakia. To be very honest the only reason we went there was because it was the cheapest and easiest place to get home from for both Amy and I but I am so glad we actually did!

Our hostel, A1 Hostel, was cute. Only two rooms, 8 bed dorm and a double room and that’s about it! A really new place and the manager was clearly soooo tired as he had been working so hard, poor thing!

The town is pretty quiet in winter and therefore and bit dodgy and creepy at night time but I imagine its actually quite safe normally. It was cute to see the town still speckled in snow!

The hostel manager recommended that we go to a local restaurant that was Amazing! I Slovak pub – best Slovak feed in town. We tried the local beer which was pretty tasty, and we really liked the funny menu – some of the translations were a bit dodgy!

I think Bratislava is quite a popular weekend destination with the Brits, there are so many pubs and bars and a fantastic assortment of coffee shops for such a small city. My kind of place.

I quite liked the sculptures. Throughout the town there are three men placed in different spots ‘minding their own business’.

The Photographer

The Watcher

The Frenchman

Other than these three men and the Castle there is not a lot else to see in Bratislava. But the castle does have an amazing view of the whole city, oh and the great windmill farms too!!

Once we said our goodbyes it was time for Amy and I to get back to our realities – Amy back to work in London and me back to Mulhouse to repack and head up to Luxembourg where I would be working for a bit.

I was looking forward to getting back but I was not at all prepared for the ridiculous bus trip home. First of all there was an absolute shit fight with the buses and they had booked too many people and there were not enough seats. Then the dude sitting in front of me had a crazy afro that meant I couldn’t see the TV and every time I thought I had a spot where I could see her would move his head. Annoying! They played Avatar on the TV and it was so loud even with the IPod on I couldn’t drown out the noise. Then to top it all off on the last leg of the trip there was a group of horrendous children sitting in the three seats in front of me, screaming and kicking and yelling and farting, all while their mum had a little nap. Stupid cow

Needless to say it was great to get back to the comfort of Mulhouse! Very memorable trip!!

the HILLLS are alive, with the Sound of MUUUUSIIIIIC!

There was a time when I’d think of Austria I’d think of Schnitzels, I’d think of apfelstrudel, I’d think of singing ‘the hills are alive with the sound of muuuuuuuuuuusic’, I’d think of Vienna cream coffee.

Now when I think of Austria I still think of coffee and strudels, schnitzels and orphans. But now I also think of Hangrr, I think of ice spikes and ferris wheels, photo bombs and opera.

We had timed our Vienna stop to coincide with a few friends, it was perfect for us to add a few people to our crew for a few days and really lovely for me to meet a new bunch of people, the Canon Crew as we grew to be known as (5 or more Canon camera owners – represent!!). It was also exciting for Phil to get some new friends. Kiwi, Lambert and Lambchops – together they had a pretty sweet all expenses paid friend fest – Lucky Bastards.

On the first night we met up we went to a cute Austrian (NOT Australian) restaurant that the rest of the Canon Crew had been to and loved the night before. Because we were 8 we had to wait 1½hrs for a table, only to arrive and see that they had 3 separate tables for us, not a good start. The waiter was really pissed that we reset the tables and it led to what would have been a horrible dining experience had it not been for the great company! The food was good, although had we believed our impatient dick of a waiter, we all ate deer, because that’s all he told us was on the menu. Even though 3 of the items were Pork, 3 were Deer and 3 were Venison. TWAT. He then hovered over each of us waiting to take our plates away the second he could, even when we weren’t finished. When we asked if we could please see the dessert menu he flatly told us NO and that if we really wanted to we could go ask the chef ourselves. F*&$ing WHAT?!!!! Let me just say that if we had been in an English speaking restaurant that measly self righteous prick would have been ripped to shreds and left begging for his job back by the time I was done with him and his boss.

The next day, after another night of blog inducing behaviour at the hostel, we met up again to have breakfast at Café Sperl – a beautiful typical Austrian cafe filled with Strudel, coffee, delish omelettes, old school chandeliers and funky decor. On this particular day it was a breezy -13, the Canon team were pretty cool, in both senses of the world. On that cool morning I noticed a few things;

• There is an Asian restaurant every 100m

• Austria is the 2^nd most liveable city in the world
• That Vienna is also spelt Wiener.. hehehe

• The constant feeling that I was in Germany

• Spending time with the Kiwis was making me NZ sick and it made me want to go home and watch a few episodes of Flight of the Conchords – Fou do Fa Fa!!

• There are huge metal spikes every 5 metres to crack the cruel winter ice

• The Austrians LOVE rock climbing

• When someone gets Hangrrr in a group of 8 act fast

• Vienna is home to the world’s oldest Ferris wheel.

• Vienna is an incredibly beautiful city at night time.

While in Vienna I started to have RESET problems my brain was so muddled up from my bilingual Christmas, speaking Bahasa Malay is Malaysia and trying out my German I was totally loosing it. I was structuring sentences completely wrong, conjugating horribly and using the odd French word in an English sentence. These moments of confusion quickly became RESET moments as I would have loved to have been able to reset my brain! I’m still having reset moments over 4 weeks later!!!

The Canon Crew decided to check out a show at the State Opera. Seats are normally a minimum 30-50 Euro and hard to organise 8 seats together. We decided to go for the 3 euro option I had heard about. Standing room only on the very top balcony, totally obstructed view. But hey, it was only 3 euro, so who cares.
I splurged and got myself some fancy binoculars but still wasn’t a huge fan as I found it hard to listen to the opera let alone follow the plot line when it is in a totally foreign language – fortunately someone pointed out about ½ way through that each person had a subtitle screen in front of them! All the same I fell asleep at one point but is was an awesome experience all the same!!

That night after saying our goodbyes Amy and I stumbled on a fantastic bar on our way home and decided to head in for a cheeky shot of Apple Schnapps which quickly turned into a wee sampling of their extremely fine cocktail menu.. Perfect ending to a perfect few days!

... and it was MINUS 18!

After many years of missed opportunities and procrastinating I have finally been to Berlin, and BOY am I glad!! It was where Amy and I were to join forces to start our epic Christmas and New Year adventure and I must admit it didn’t get off to the best start! In true pre Christmas Europe fashion, Europe had been dumped on my about 1.5m of snow and many trains and airports across Europe and the UK had shutdown just days before we were due to depart. I was coming from a part of France that is very used to the snow but Amy was coming from ill-equipped London so we were pretty unsure about what would happen. In the end Amy did have a huge delay but it wasn’t even Snow related, at least she made it!!!

We stayed at the 3 little pigs hostel. Not the best or worst hostel I have ever stayed in but definitely one of the most memorable. Enter Boston Tom, from Boston, clearly in his 30’s this man walked around with a pacifier in his mouth and the most bizarre outfits. One night he came home at about 4am and sat on Amys bed and starting all his crap on her bed, right over her head. Then there was the other American that inspired my (hostel etiquette) blog, the worst snorer I have EVER encountered! Words cannot describe! Oh and la piece de la resistance – me looking my keys in the locker. In almost 6 years of travelling I have never done anything like that! The realisation that I had locked all my stuff away was worsened by the fact that I had to go down to reception in my ‘sexy’ polka dot pyjamas and hope like hell they had a bolt cutter on hand. Thankfully they did, I Imagine most hostels would... Such entertainment!!

Berlin was cold. Not in a ‘yeah, whatever it’s just winter in Europe’ kind of way, more like a ‘I think my skin is going to fall off’ kind of way, -18 to be exact. Not exactly ‘out doorsey’ weather, least of all for two girls who had been bed ridden thanks to a flu/virus up until the day we flew, one of which who is allergic to the cold. The cold also lent to the bizarre dry snow, I’ve never seen it like that before, flaky and NOT slippery which was a god send for the two of us cripples!! Needless to say we threw on extra layers, 3 leggings, 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of gloves, you know the usual.

Berlin is famous for money things, the Berlin wall, Hitler, Communism, Ampelmanchen and Christmas just to name a few. Our first and most frequent stop was the (many) Christmas Markets. It didn’t seem to matter where we were there was always a Christmas market nearby. As far as Christmas markets go they were quite amazing, you could find everything there from hats and legwarmers to mulled wine and German sausages it was more than enough to keep us satisfied. Gorgeous old dumpy German men with their rosy cheeks and bulging bellies singing Christmas carols alongside the adorable little Michelin man styled kiddies being towed around on sleds. There was even a store selling thousands of different sorts of Christmas ornaments, even cheese ones! There was ice-skating and salmon being smoked. We even saw a walking Christmas tree and a flying Santa, and I promise that it’s not the mulled wine talking!! We met up Sarah, a friend of Amys, who is an Aussie/Kiwi living in Berlin. It was really interesting to hear about life in Berlin as an expat – I think she almost convinced Amy to live there!!

In the day light we were pretty keen to take on a free 3 hr walking tour – the guide accepts tips at the end and that’s their only payment so it encourages them to be really energetic and engaging which is brilliant. The weather was slightly warmer that day, at -14, luckily Amy and I had exchanged our Christmas gifts early, thermal socks and a scarf for me and 2 pairs of gloves for Amy so that helped keep us warm, a little.

The tour was fantastic, we started outside the hotel where the late Michael Jackson dangled his baby out the window/Brandenburg Gate East Berlin and walked through to the West. We saw the ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ holocaust memorial – an incredibly thought evoking memorial, very solemn.

We walked through the building that now sits above the bunker where Hitler shot himself. I liked that it is very non-descript, there is one small sign on the far corner of the block which I think is a great example of Germanys humility and ownership when it comes to its involvement in the World Wars. We passed the Berlin Wall and Check Point Charlie, the point where you could legally pass from East to West Germany. The wall itself is much smaller and less imposing than I had imagined, but as our tour guide pointed out during the communist era the wall actually had another wall built behind it and there was barbed wire, hunting dogs and snipers situated up and down both sides of the walls. There are some amazing images and stories of people trying to get across to the West.

This was one of the things that so amazed me about Berlin, Old versus New, East versus West. This city has so much history, most of it shocking. It has been bombed and stormed, split and demolished, glorified and demonised. It saw the rise and fall of the man that would change the world as we knew it. It is now a new city, a city that is working hard to rebuild and work toward the future while remembering, but not glorifying, the past. A city hosting enormous artistic talent, a hub of culture, a city to where photographers, musicians, artists and pretty much everyone else creative flocks to for inspiration.

Oh and most importantly a city that is home to the Ampelmanchen, mustn’t forget him ;)