There And Back Again (533 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.44 on 12 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <deisangua.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-01-26 13:45:20 EST
For those of you who hoped I was gone completely, I have bad news. For the past couple of weeks I've been in Holland and Germany, and now I am back. For the rest of you who simply don't care, I thought I'd share with Uber the important things I learned while on vacation. Okay, maybe they're not that important, but whatever. It was my first trip across the pond.
In no particular order:
- It is easy to get out of the U.S.A. Getting back in can be like running a gauntlet.
- The Nicotine Patch: Don't Go On An International Flight Without It. If you smoke, that is.
- The Euro looks more like play money than I thought it would.
- Holland only has about half the traffic the U.S. has, and some cars are half the size (literally). Then again, the roads are half as wide as well.
- There's some wickedly cool architecture in Europe.
- I can't figure out Celsius. Converting kilometers to miles, dollars to Euros, etc, was not much of a problem. But I have no clue what the temperature was. Somewhere between 35 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe. Maybe. Not too bad, anyhow, and much better than I heard the Northeast was.
- Plenty of people live on boats. 90% of the boats I saw going to down the canals had a single car on the back, which seemed slightly surreal to me.
- Bikes are everywhere. They have multi-tiered parking lots for bikes, like slightly smaller versions of downtown parking garages for cars.
- Dutch is an odd language. I had a problem pronouncing some of the simpler words, and many Dutch words are well over 20 letters long, raising that difficulty to an statistical impossibility. Some words are close to English, but spelled and spoken differently, to the point that I often didn't even recognize that they were similar at first. I could only tell you about a quarter of the places I went, because I couldn't pronounce the rest. Thankfully, they teach English in school, and almost everyone speaks some.
- It is generally more expensive to buy really common products like food and alcoholic beverages. Once you calculate it over to the U.S. Dollars, you'll find that the costs tend to be about 1.5 times the amount of the same thing in the U.S. Especially the drinks, which are sometimes so small that your first instinct may be to slaughter the bartender.
- The exception to the price difference above are the joints, which run about half the cost of the illegal U.S. product. You can order them as easily as you'd order a coffee, and most come equipped with filters and a small plastic carrying tube. How nice is that?
- A regular German club can obsolete any need for a strip club. And on a related matter, there's plenty of nuances in Europe that show how truly laughable the American attitude towards sexuality is.
- The Red Light District in Amsterdam isn't all that, unless you're really into whores for some reason. It's not that impressive, though somewhat stunning for about 2.4 seconds. Then go find yourself a bar or club elsewhere.
- The symbol for the city of Amsterdam includes three prominently displayed X's running down the center.
- I'm not used to fascinating people just by being American. It's an odd feeling.
- European style tends to do more with less.
- The biggest U.S. export is our culture. I have a suspicion that Lego and Mars Bar own small parts of Holland, and for some reason Michael Jackson is still listened to with some regularity. I don't know how many times I heard Billie Jean, but it was starting to freak me out a little.
- In the Netherlands, all roads lead to Heineken.
Holland and Germany were both very cool, and definitely worth the trip.
User Reviews
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2004-01-27 08:00:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Note : In Europe Heineken is the shit beer people drink if they can't get Stella Artois or Kronebourg.
Submitted by UberWeiss (user info) at 2004-01-27 07:43:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Yur...I think it's pretty much accepted that America does it bigger, better and badder - but when I think of Europe, I think Finesse.
Nice write-up, I'd recommend to you my travel-agent any day :)
UW
Submitted by Deisangua (user info) at 2004-01-27 07:24:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Sorry to disappoint, Loki, but no...though you might like to hear that many were more than ready to slam the Bush Administration. Not all, but most. And for some reason, it was usually presumed that because I was American I backed Bush. There is a marked difference between how they view the President and how they view individual Americans, though.
Submitted by Quartermain (user info) at 2004-01-26 16:49:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
**The Euro looks more like play money than I thought it would.**
I remember hearing some story(probably apocryphal)about some guy in Ireland buying drinks with Monopoly money back when they first shifted to using Euros.
**I'm not used to fascinating people just by being American.**
When I lived down in southern VA., some people were the same way about me being Canadian. You're right, though, it is a little weird.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-26 15:02:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Any international incidents to report?
Submitted by Deisangua (user info) at 2004-01-26 15:00:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks, Spike...missed you too.
I'm still about half and half on the "glad to be back" thing, though. It was a blast.
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-01-26 14:49:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
sounds like a neat place.
Submitted by Insanethemind (user info) at 2004-01-26 14:40:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Holland is great.
Submitted by SpikeGoddess (user info) at 2004-01-26 14:32:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for coming back!
I missed you!
SpikeGoddess
Submitted by antluvdog (user info) at 2004-01-26 14:29:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
- In the Netherlands, all roads lead to Heineken.
I want to go there.
Submitted by Deisangua (user info) at 2004-01-26 14:11:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Those three sentences weren't intended to be directly related. Though I didn't know about the Legos being a Danish invention. Thanks, Trivia Boy.
Submitted by Adereterial (user info) at 2004-01-26 14:08:50 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Idiot...
Lego is a Danish invention.
Neither Mars or Michael Jackson constitute culture, unless you count culture to be things harmful to small children's health.