Part 3 of my bumper blog update sees me going to the Netherlands for a weekend trip kindly organised by the Well'Come team at ESC Rennes. For only 90€ we had return travel (11 hour coach journeys! We travelled through the night, most of us sleeping until Rob would wake us up) and stayed at a hostel for the weekend (and I doubt that many hostels are as nice as this one!) and what a weekend it was!
Okay where to start? Well the city itself - what a beautiful place! If you've been there you'll know what I'm talking about. Venice takes all the credit for having the canals through the city, but Amsterdam is an unsung hero in that department! The streets were unlike anything I had ever seen. The buildings were very tall terraced buildings of different dark colours but with large windows and a unique elegance. The waterways in the middle of the streets were home to some citizens who lived in barges, as well as playing host to a lovely boat trip, which we went on to see more of the city.
It is clearly a very tourist city - with many attractions, museums, coffee shops, restaurants and bars. As we wandered the streets that saturday morning, my eyes scanned the area, taking in the city. How amazing it was to be here! It had been over 2 years since I had started to make friends with people from all over the world, and not once, even then, had I been somewhere new. So far I had only seen France (repeatedly), Italy, Spain, and of course England and Wales - not even Scotland! Yet I don't feel like a British citizen anymore, but a global citizen. Learning about other countries and cultures has been an amazing experience for me, and I really really want to see more of the world. So to be here, in the first new country I had visited in years, meant a lot to me, so I was taking it all in.
Suddenly, as my eyes scanned the buildings near me, a mannequin in a shop window moved - scaring the crap out of me! I then realised it wasn't a mannequin, but a soliciting prostitute. I had thought they only came out at night! But I guess there was a big market at this time, what with morning glory and all that.....
We walked down more streets and more hookers were visible, scantily clad and strutting their stuff. Now I had never seen a hooker before (at least I don't think I have - any woman I've met could be one, but they don't tend to disclose that information), and they were different from what the media, films, and TV had portrayed them to be. They weren't all fat, overly made up, heavily smoking lowlife that one can't help but pity - but normal women, seemingly mostly in their 20s, just in their underwear at the windows. And dare I say this, but some of them were actually attractive - a few even looked like models! I was aghast! It seems hookers in Amsterdam are actually quite respectable, because they bring a lot of money to the country through sex tourism. But don't worry kids, none of us reached in our pocket for any fifty notes if you know what I mean... We didn't even go to a sex show! I know, boring eh?
And now you're thinking - what about the other thing? The other thing people can do in Amsterdam that is illegal elsewhere. Yep - speak Dutch. I only knew one phrase - dank u wel, meaning thank you. So I made sure to use that whenever I could, because I strongly believe I should at least make a bit of an effort in foreign countries rather than expect them to all know English - I mean of course we did expect them to know English, and Dutch people speak it really well, but at least I thanked them for it!
Oh you mean the other thing? Well now we all know that drugs are bad, okay kids? You don't do them. So I went to a coffee shop just to take a look. I had heard the stories of what weed could do to you. I had heard many stories of how people get freaked out in the middle of the day being in a city they don't know, trying to find a way back home to get some sleep, while their heads burst with creativity, thinking strange and scary things, and the constant need to throw up. This was what they call 'greening out', and I didn't want that to happen to me. I had heard that people also get paranoid, that they think their friends want to kill them or for example, that the taxi driver is going to lock the doors, kidnap them, and take them to his sex dungeon. So abstinence was better - I could still enjoy the city and its amazing culture when sober.
One of the highlights of the trip was the Anne Frank house. For four years I had studied the Nazi regime and had learned about the atrocities committed towards the Jews, but I had never actually been to any location where these acts had happened. It's a lot more real when you're there and can actually see the Secret Annex where Anne Frank and her family lived. Yes, it had been refurbished into a museum exhibition, but the building was still the same. We could still go through the secret entrance to the Annex that had been concealed by a bookcase. We could still see how tiny the rooms were, actual pages from the diary, the marks on the wall Otto Frank had made to show how his daughters grew over the 2 years they stayed there, the photos on the wall of Anne Frank's room and other personal touches that made the whole thing so real.
But the most upsetting part came at the end, where there was a large photo of Otto Frank revisiting the Annex in the 1960s, years later. Old and alone, the expression on his face said way more than five textbooks ever could. 6 million Jews. For children studying history in the UK it is merely a statistic. However, the hundreds of tourists that day alone who were looking at the photo of Otto Frank, and that expression on his face, were mourning the murder of one person’s family – stories like this must have happened countless times during the War, and it was this that helped me realize how serious and horrible the Holocaust really was. It was a real eye-opener, obviously not the most enjoyable thing to visit in Amsterdam, but I recommend everyone who visits that city see the Anne Frank house for the educational experience.
So that was Amsterdam: the city of sex, drugs and a Hard Rock café that Rob was so obsessed with finding so he could buy a T-shirt (not very rock n roll, but that’s about the closest thing I have, so it’ll have to do alright?!) It was a fantastic city with so much to do and see, and I’d love to go there again to check out what I missed out on this time.
Back In France
Okay so that’s basically it – November has been summarized for you in these three big blog posts (to think I was originally going to put this in one!) There’s nothing much else to report, apart from that I used my blog to get me 80% in an essay in French Culture, as I needed to talk about how much my stay at Rennes has been a cultural experience. Now I have reported already about some cultural experiences, repeating how lucky I am to have such a multicultural friendship group, the food I’ve tasted, places I’ve been to etc. So to answer this question, I merely had to go to this blog and take excerpts. Nice to see this blog is coming in handy – it’s not just for fun!!!
The only other thing that I guess I could report is my bad timing at parties, including an open bar last week in the midst of my stressful project week, as well as a tour of la Rue de la Soif the Saturday before. La Rue de la Soif is the nickname of Rue St Michel, where they have many ‘cheap’ student bars within close proximity. Well, I say student, but it seems to also accommodate punk-haired, black-clad weirdos who litter the street with their piss, let their dogs run wild and give me a chance to use most British people’s favourite French line: Je ne comprends pas. But anyway drinks there are at least affordable – you can get ‘pints’ there (500ml, not 568. Stupid metric system) for €3,50 (didn’t beat the £2.50 PINT of Carlsberg I had at Robbins Well last Friday though!), and after downing a few nice strong Belgian beers, the party was on!
The high prices for drinks doesn’t faze me too much though – they’re still cheaper in the supermarkets (bought 30 25cl bottles of 33 Export for under a fiver!) and I have CAF money – money that has been refunded by the French government to go towards my rent. Clearly this helps with my drinking, with my thirst. So I hereby coin a new term – it’s le CAF pour la Soif. Let’s see if that takes off!
For now, life is pretty good. The shit phase is over, along with classes. Only exams remain this semester, and I have a lovely new MacBook to help me prepare for them. I've also got the interview with Unilever for their marketing department! So chuffed, because I pulled an all-nighter two weeks ago in order to submit my application on time (while Itzel and Jaana shared a bottle of vodka behind me...) Only bad thing is the imminent departure of a fair few friends of mine, and Rennes won’t be the same without them next term – they’ll be sorely missed!
Whew, that didn’t half take forever! There’s November for you! Now let’s see what December brings….
Rant over
Ollie
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