Tag 18 & 19 (Amsterdam Tag 4 & 5)

We went back to the Flower market area and sat for some coffee which turned out to be absurdly expensive. We went after this to look around at shops and I actually got a shirt/sweatshirt. We went to Vondelpark and sat around for a while until it started to rain. We heard some music coming from the distance so we slowly wandered towards it. We found it coming from this open, free stage place inside the far end of Vondelpark. The band playing was called 'K-Oz Collective' (pronounced like 'Chaos'), a Dutch band that had an ecclectic sound of funk, hip hop, rock, and some rap - their sound was a lot like early Incubus. They had an old drummer and guitarist but other than that they had a really young singer with red hair, a bassist playing a stand up bass, a person playing keyboards, and a DJ scratching - they were pretty darn good. Also there were two somewhat drunk locals who were in the front row dancing around and it was extremely entertaining to watch.

K-Oz Collective

K-Oz Collective with two dancin' fools

Knocked over tree in the park

Path in the park

Contrary to what one might expect, this is a church and Jesus is in the middle of the hexagram

We went to a bar that was recommended by the book called Chocolate something-or-other. We had to walk through a ridiculously dirty part of town that looked like a tornado had gone through it - I think, in reality, a Farmer's Market had happened earlier.

A stork rummaging through all the left over food

A huge rainbow that we saw as we were walking back

That night we went back to the Cafe on the water and had some dinner - I had some nice hot lasagne and Ashley got this big thing of tomato soup and bread with hummus. It was quite nice and extremely inexpensive compared to other places and taking into account how nice the restaurant was. We sat by the water for a while and then went back to the hostle to rest. Ashley's friends had mentioned earlier that they were going to see the band Justice so we looked up where it was playing and thought about going there to see if there were tickets or just to listen from outside but decided against it for multiple reasons - mostly because it was extremely far away and we didn't even know how good the band was. I was satisfied from our earlier musical experience in Vondelpark.

We passed out for our last night in the Aivenau Youth Hostel and woke up around 9AM the next day. We pretty much went straight to the train station and hopped on a train to Utrecht Centraal, a train station somewhat south of Amsterdam but still in Niederlande. Ashley said that we weren't technically allowed to take the train we just took (though luckily no one had checked our tickets during the short trip) and we found out that we had reservations on German ICE trains, which were the only ones we were allowed to take... except they were leaving in 7 hours. So we took this time to explore the city of Utrecht. We followed a spire in the distanced to an old church which was having a service inside - it started to let out about 5 minutes after we got there and a big organ started to play. We wandered around the edge of the church and found a small little garden place, and tried to read the latin on this Solar globe outside the church (it said something like "Let the Sun of Justice shine on all." Apparently they are not shy about their solar symbolism). 

We went down a few roads and went into a few shops but went back to the train station about 3 hours before we needed to leave. We had put our bags into a locker in the train station but couldnt get the locker open when we got back so I had to get help. The guy told me that we did it wrong and the locker had opened and someone brought our bags to the ticket counter. It was a 20-minute ordeal but we got our bags left and didn't have to pay for another locker's worth (4 euro). I tried to give the guy who helped me an Euro but he refused saying he couldn't take tips. I lowered my hand below the desk and asked "even in private?" and he said yes and went on his way without my American tip. We got some ice cream during our wait but eventually our train came. We read on the way back and saw Tracy at one of the stations. After a long traveling day, we got back into Göttingen around 930PM and stopped for some Subway sandwiches. So ends our Amsterdamian excursion.