So, Amsterdam was cool. It is very much a tourist city, with everything kind of set out for you. The coffeeshops, the Red Light district, the museums, and the rest feels like it's for the Dutch people. I suppose that's why I never met anyone there who stays for longer than a couple of days. You come to see what's up, and head on out.

The Red Light district seems so boring once you actually see it. That's sex, right there, plain and simple. You pay, you get. I didn't see any place advertising anything too strange or anything, I guess sex works basically the same everywhere. I did go to a so called "Live Sex Show", that was rather sad and made bored (and want my money back!). Seeing people do that without any emotion or feeling, it makes you realize how silly it all seems. Lots of drunk British guys around hooting and hollering. Le sigh.

The coffeeshops were a good time. It is where I met some of the most interesting and open people there. Most of the people in the hostel seemed very standoff-ish, and didn't really want to talk to me. Then again, it was mostly Americans who never stray from their little group of people, and think that yes, doing your own routine in a different country is traveling. I met a lot of Europeans from, well, everywhere else but France. They were all very different. The Swedes look utterly perfect with their Arayan good looks, well perhaps not perfect but they have very distinctive features. The intense blue eyes are different for me. The Greek guys all seemed very laid back, and looked, well Greek. Skinny, dark hair, few days of growth, hahaha similar tome actually. The Icelandic people look constantly surprised by everything, and have the strangest accent. And well, the Dutch. Strange folk they are. The language is kinda goofy, and people break out in song every once in awhile, or start yelling to each other for no apparent reason. Friggin weird man.


Saw the Van Gogh museum, it was good to see ol' Vincent's works. As can be expected, he uses colour very well. It also had one of the few known pictures of him up, and he didn't look much like his self portraits. I think he portrayed himself as more morose in his paintings. That is pretty interesting about his epilepsy. Hearing about the psychotic fit which led him to cut off part of his ear, I can kinda imagine it. Sitting in a little house with another artist you aren't getting along with, drinking Absinthe, and you finally break in the midday sun. He probably made a big showy thing about it, threatening the other guy, but in a bit of a dramatic moment he grabs part of his own ear and slices it with the razor. He must've had some recognition of what he was doing, otherwise he'd have cut the whole thing off! If anything, that dude really like the pastural pictures, so many pictures of farms.

Reading Godel's Proof right now. If anyone wants an nice introduction to the proof and how it works, namely the Godel numbering of formulas, this is a good book to use. I'm quite impressed with how he did do it, and how he did relate logic to arithmetic. It's very ingenious, and the impact he had on mathematics and science is tremendous. The ramifications are still being felt, especially in computer science and computability. I'm a big fan, and it's only 125 pages, so someone please read it. And not you Steve, as you should damn well know it by now.

The food in the Netherlands? Very average. On my train ride out, guess what the traditional Dutch meal was? Raw fish. Yup, no rice or anything, just slabs of it, slimy stuff too. I had a single bite and grabbed a baguette from the server. I did have a decent Argentinian steak while I was there, but they didn't put anything on it. No salt and pepper, or any other seasoning, and medium rare meant blue rare. However, as you can see, the pastries and desserts there were quite delcious. Oh well I guess, time to start planning the next destination.







Here I am, getting chubby. Dammit.