Amsterdam And Koln, June 22-27

Germany and Amsterdam, June 22-27


The river traffic on the canals.


More boats, canals, and trees.

Bicycles like you wouldn´t believe!

Slightly psychadelic cafe.

Have any of you Molson Canadian beer drinkers seen this idea before? (Are there really any molson canadian beer drinkers??)

Amster. Damn.

Rick´s cafe and lots more bikes.

Greg and Sheila!

Koln, Germany. The gothic Dom cathedral.

I met up with Greg in Germany and went into Trier to meet some of his Volvo coworkers who were celebrating the solstice with capirinhas and traditional Swedish drinking songs. The town of Trier was also bustling with wine bars, beer wagons, and concerts. The next morning came far too early, and we had a 4.5 hour drive to Amsterdam ahead of us to meet Sheila. We walked along random canals, watching the traffic on the water, while avoiding getting side-swiped/front-swiped/back-swiped by all sorts of human-propelled mechanisms… bicycles, bicycles with multiple passengers, cyclists holding umbrellas and cellphones, wheelbarrows with seats, pedals, and loaded with children. We decided to fight back and rent cruiser bikes of our own to terrorize tourists, locals, and traffic alike. Later in the evening, I went for a walk through the red light district to see the general mayhem and watch people. There were heaps of hen parties, stag parties, and friends betting on which one of their buddies would last longer behind the red curtains.

The next few days were spent relaxing back in Germany before I departed for Prague. En route, I spent a day in Koln (Cologne) before jumping on a night train. Koln was dominated by the Dom, a massive gothic cathedral. I twisted up the 509 tight-knit spiral stairs of the cathedral to overlook the city before wandering into the streets filled with tattooed, pierced, and generally more attractive people than I´d seen elsewhere in Germany.