Things I learned in Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Berlin, so far.

I’ve learned a few things over the past few days of traveling.

1. Make sure the car number on the train matches your ticket, not just the bed number. We almost tried to kick a guy out of his bed on our way to Berlin because we had the wrong train car. Oops! My bad, luckily he wasn’t in the bed when we came to claim it.

2. Take atleast one taxi ride in every city you are in. We’ve been walking it or using the subway. Last night coming back from dinner we decided to get a cab. It was a wonderful ride past lit up statues of gigantic sizes and a history I’ve only read about. You also get a good feel for the city as well being the passenger in a taxi…Is it crazy like Shanghai or calm like Berlin?

3.Losing my iPhone is an exercise of panic, self denial and more denial that it is really gone. I still haven’t given up yet and hope it will be found in The Netherlands.

4. You have to be high or blind to have sex with one of the girls in Amsterdam’s red light district. They stand in the windows like Rocky Horror Picture Show mannequin.

5. Cobblestones and rolling suitcases suck. I’m going back to the backpack, I just need to figure out how not feel like a packmule when carrying my DSLR camera and laptop. Yeah I know pack less.

6. Buy the boots in Amsterdam/Haarlem. Luxembourg they are too expensive and Berlin doesn’t have the same sense of style.

7. Hanging out at the Berlin Zoo while killing time before checking in is great. As long as you don’t get the girly man drink that is 3% alcohol and green.

8. Shopping with your husband is as much fun as shopping with your boyfriend. Alec and I checked out the KaDeWe (ka-day-vay) store in Berlin. It’s 7 levels owned by one company. And there are sections dedicated to one thing. Kim there is a whole big section on cheese. You would have loved it. I walked around in it twice inhaling all the aroma of cheese and milk.

9. Some countries have interesting traditions. Spendings Saturdays in an air conditioned mall is an American one. Eating raw herring is one from the Netherlands.
Penny, a friend I met in Gabon, met at us the train station to take us on a drive to the beach and to have our time with new herring. Raw herring actually, and honestly it wasn’t half bad, especially between two pieces of bread with raw onions and pickels. How’s that for a honeymoon kiss with that breath! (there are pictures but they are on the other camera… I swear!)

10. I realized we often live in a world of two dimensions and limited understanding about time travel. Amsterdam is another city with canals and old architecture. The layered dimensions of the buildings, one infront of the other, others back behind, is a real treat in our seemingly two dimension world of “this high and this wide”. Standing on a street and looking up and seeing this depth is just a treat for the eyes. And when it sinks in on how old something can really be, it’s mind blowing. It didn’t really sink in until we got to Berlin. yeah it’s an old city that has “recently” been rebuilt due to the war.

11. It’s less tiring knowing what language you can butcher while visiting a country. Luxembourg proved difficult to know what language I should try to butcher. Should it be French, German or their traditional language of Letzebuergesch? Eventually I just apologized with sputtering English and asked for something off the menu by pointing.

12. Reading a book that has a storyline that takes place in the 80’s to early 2000 in Afghanistan can mess up your sense of time and place while on vacation. I’m currently reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hossenini. He wrote “The Kite Runner”. Such a good, I can’t put it down!

I would like to leave you with two final pictures.