So much to recall.

Hello all,

Even though it's only been approximately 4 days since I've posted anything, so much has happened. As you may remember my last post was in the little town of Bruges in the north of Belgium, I really liked it there. After that first post, we met a girl from Australia, named Claudia. She was sad because of unfortunate circumstances leading to a break-up and a no-show boyfriend. She was very upset, and was the only other person in our 8 bed hostel room. That afternoon we went up the Belfort, which is an ancient medieval tower with 366 steps to the top, if you've ever seen the movie 'In Bruge' you'd know what I was talking about (by the by that is a funny movie) So we ended off the evening with much touristy walking looking at all the neat buildings and beautiful canals finishing off with a beer sampling and dinner at our hostel's restaurant.

The next morning we woke up and had a great free breakfast supplied by the hostel and decided to rent bikes and toodle around on those. We rented our bikes and found out that Bruges has the best set up for biking, you pretty much follow routes set out by numbers and you'll eventually get to your destination. Our bike ride was 40km and lead to the Belgian coast on the Baltic sea. It was a balmy 15 degrees, but seeing as we had been biking for a while that didn't seem to matter. We had a wonderful lunch on the beach complete with grapes, salami sandwiches (made with little butter packages we took from that morning's free breakfast) apple juice and granola bars. The food was delicious, except for when the wind blew and everything was covered in nice crunchy sand. mmm. We then cycled back to our hostel where we found Claudia again, still a little upset at her recent change of plans. We invited her out to the pub and she gladly came. That evening we talked about a whole lot of nothing, but it was great. It was nice meeting some one new.

The next morning we left early to set out for Amsterdam, everything went really smoothly and we made it to Amsterdam at about 3:30pm. We had no trouble finding our Christian hostel located literally right next to the red light district. We had no idea where to start in Amsterdam so we only wandered aound and got some food, we didn't stay out too late for obvious reasons..liiiittle sketchy in those parts. There we're so many 'coffee shops' everywhere, and I put those in quotations because by 'coffee shops' I mean 'shops you go into to buy weed and get high'...we didn't visit any of those shops. The next day we went to Anne Frank's house and that was really cool and really eye openning. To imagine what people had to go through to just stay alive. It' totally mind boggling, especially in our comfy society in Canada. After that we went and had lunch in a really random park, and did a whole lot of nothing, mostly consisting of looking for patches and postcards in the streets of Amsterdam. That was our one day in Amsterdam..I wasn't a huge fan of it. I guess we were just in the wrong part. I'm not into prostitutes in windows or 'coffee shops' thanks very much. But I guess it was cool to say I've been there.

So then the next day we hopped on a train headed for the very small town of Hamm, Germany, to visit and stay with Meghan Gartshore. Five hours later we arrived at our destination and cabbed to her very big, very accomidating, and vey nice house. She's an AuPair for this little german boy named JB, and is hosted by this 'zuper' nice couple by the names of Ava and Rainer. They are very good at making sure their guest are comfortable..and comfortable we are. Our laundry is going to be done by the cleaning lady today and the heated toilet seats are a blessing. Well that's where I'm at at the present moment. I should have more time in the next two days for more posts seeing as the internet's free..and the phone...and the food..and the accomidation. So nice...In any case, I'm having a great time so far and I'm safe and happy to be alive.

Until next time.