Saturday's journey

i cant help but emphasize that i love some of the buildings here. this is the front of the building that you may notice in the iamstrdam photos below. it has a huge mural of rembrant, holland's local hero of sorts. i dont know if this is officially his museam or, but i know he has this huge mansion in his honor down the street frm there.

amsterdam has decided to bran itself, with their own logo and all. its call "iamsterdam" (before you know it, we will refer to ourselves as "iself" as we live our "ilife" and drink from "icups". and then there is a picture of me, "i amleodam".

i dont know if it is always like this, but everywhere ive gone lately ther have been people playing with a soccer ball. while world cup fever has definitely set in here in holland (the team is 2-0) there are some cool things to see the average man do. these guys for example were playing hacki sack, but with a soccer ball, passing back and forth hitting it in the most creative ways and not letting the ball touch the ground. it hought it was nice....

you might think i took this in central park. there is a huge walkway, people walking around, nice trees and grass, and some skater doing stupid driks with little yellow cones. however this isnt central park, but amsterdam's very own Vondelpark (their equivalent). this guy was terrible, he kept hitting cones...

here are some nice looking townhomes that i think georgia could use, even nY, although they are somewhat similar to places you might find in the village.

one thing i like about amsterdam is that they do their best to satisfy their youth. in several places, i have found a random halfpipe or bowl (no not smoking objects, but ramps used to skate on). here is one where some 13 year old kid was hammering away on his skateboard.

a saturday morning walk, with just a few pics

there are only just a few pictures this time....

i dont think this car would ever be street legal in america. imagine getting hit by a bicycle in this thing... youre dead. wow

here is a buddhist temple. i dropped 50 cents in and got a little piece of paper finely rolled up. it was my fortune. what was nice about it was that it had a poem. i would have written it down but i lost the damn thing.

so i went for a stroll through the red light district today. i have to say it was rather amusing, and pictures are absolutely not allowed, so this is all you guys are gonna get unless i muster up the courage to take something better. there were some girls that were nasty, and some girls that belong in vogue. as you walk by, they have these little closet sized rooms and they beckon you to come. young or old, white black asian latino, fat or skinny, they come any way you want them. crazy thing about the district is that kids were walking around with their parents, holding hands. it is a tourist attraction these days.

i found myself in the midst of a second rally, this one to "legalize nature" and to "educate, not criminate" the us of marijuana and other soft drugs. of course, if you saw the crowd that was supporting this thing, i am willing to bet you that 80% of them were addicted to crack and high school dropouts.

the bastards who own this place should be shot. how DARE they make one of the greatest treasures in gaming history their logo. i am going to send this picture to Nintendo demanding justice, in the name of Link.

i building caught my eye as i was walking by. it may have been a church at some point but now it is someone's house.

throughout Amsterdam there are a lot of clock towers. then again, there may just be 2 and i keep taking pictures of them (most likely case). as i was exploring today, i saw this tower again and from a great little spot on a canal bridge, and decided to snap another photo.

More pics from Amsterdam

here is amsterdams monument to WWII in dam square. there is a carving of a man being cruicified in the center. irconic, that they sent 800,000 jews to concentration camps.

here we have a nice set of houses. amsterdam, unlike rotterdam 2 hours away, was spared an encounter with Germany's blitzkrieg. thus, much of its historic landmarks and buildings remain unscathed.

here is a beautiful view of a canal in the Jordan district, a nice area close to the anne frank house museam.

this street is called damrock. it leads up to the central station and is the center of amsterdam's tourist district. everything along this street for the most part is overpriced and cheap, sorta like time square.

here is a great little houseboat with a nice library. i would say the ratio of library to living space is at least 2 -3. very admirable...


i thought the name of this place was funy. there are a lot of chinese people in amsterdam and here is a rather large establishment called "the chin restaurant".

for your information, no...i have not smoked at any of the smoke shops and dont intend to. not that i need to smoke there to get high as anyone walking past the street where they are all located gets stoned off of the second hand floatin in the air. i took a pic nonetheless.


in this picture,a bout 100-200 people are marching in protest of the current leader, some guy named drekker, who is launching an initiative to build sky scrapers (no taller than approx 30 floors) to satisify the gross space shortage the city is plagued by.

Day 3 - work and then some....

so i started my day this morning at 7am, shaved with just soap and water (forgot to bring shaving cream) and then hopped into the shower (which felt amazing). i rushed onto a bus to take me to central station. bus cost me 1.60 euro ($2) one way (though it is technically unlimited in that you can ride the same bus as much as you want within an hour).

i arrived at central station (see above) and bought my ticket on the metro, round trip (4.50 euro, $6).the trains are interesting. they are not as large as ny subways but are often riddled with colorful graffiti.

i took the train straight to biljmer, where the old ING headquarters is located. now this company is rather amazing. they are one of the most well loved companies in amsterdam and go well out of their way to support the arts. they have the largest art collection in the country and their buildings always make a statement. here is a pic of it from the outside, they call it the ING sand castle:

inside, this amazing facade incorporates an assortment of various shapes. in fact, when it was built some 20+ years ago, it was designed for the purpose of NOT using standard rectangular rooms in order to make a more harmonious atmosphere. it definitely worked because anywhere you go, the place is beautiful. there are dozens of lounges, paintings all over the walls, sculptures, plants, you name it... in order to give all work sectors windows, they built these courtyards inside the building, each of them is unique.

during my lunch break i went for a walk outside and saw another beautiful piece of sculpture that i thought had a lot of class.



this next picture is of my desk at ING. work went very well today. oh yea, thre i am...

i went to my second restaurant today. the woman i am living with has provided with me with very limited access to her refrigerator (i can only fit a drink) so until the kid whose room i will take moves out, i dont get one. i have some groceries but i am obviously limited. this dinner was actually pretty good and it cost me 17 euro ($21). i had beef medium rare in a cognac sauce, with potatoes.

here is christianity's mark on central amsterdam. it was a nice place and another picture of my favorite tower, the south tower....

aite,till tomorrow...

Day 2 - the neighborhood

Here is the map of amsterdam with the important spots mentioned thus far, and a little red rectangle indicating the neighborhood in which i took the photos

this is the seaportmuseam that i mentioned is across the street from my place. the dutch,as most of you probably dont know, were some of the, and continue to be, the greatest sailors in history. they controlled exclusively many of the trade routes to china back in the day.

this place is called nemo. supposedly it is some sort of amusement park for kids. when the weather is nice, people crowd on top and sun bathe. it looks like a piece of an old tanker ship.

as i mentioned in the last post, amsterdam is full of these man made canals. here is a pretty nice picture of one right next to my place. the tower off into the distance is called the south tower. west of it lies the RLD.

now i am a fan of architecture. amsterdam has some beautiful buildings, and then some weird one. this one i thought was particularly interesting because the walls were riddled with carvings of faces... (keep in mind you can click on pick for a closeup)

here is a beautiful street i walked down. it seems like every block you turn has places that look like this. that probably explains the housing shortage Amsterdam is facing. in fact, there is a 15 year waiting list to live inside central amsterdam (to be provided housing via the government program, you can always buy your way in).

when i decided to take this picture, the black cat was facing me. as i reached into my bag to whip out the camera, she turned her back to me. do you think she knew she was about to be violated by a bright flash by some tourist?















this i thought was pretty cool. so the housing shortage i mentioned above has caused people to resort to desperate measures. which include living in their cars and on boats along the canals. i wouldnt mind cruising europe in one of these.


here is a boat going through one of the hundreds of bridges all over amsterdam. i think they have tollmen to collect money to do this. i like the little mini crane

here is a closeup of the south tower which i thought looked nice. next to it is an interesting picture of people using a pulley device to lower a desk. supposedly, every house in amsterdam back in the day was required to have one of these hooks near their roof (take a closer look). so as you walk down neighborhoods, you can still see that most houses have them. i guess the idea was so that people could easily carry furniture up and down, but i dont see why they would make a law of it...

here is a picture of me at a chinese restaurant. it was my first meal in amsterdam (yes, i know, but i had to go with something i could trust... so i had dim sum). and this was my first meal. it cost me 14 euros (like 18 dollars) and it was more than enough for me to have leftovers...

thats it for day two, which was yesterday. i have more photos of today, whih i may or may not post tonight.... holla