Arrived back in Tours with Clem to learn that Andrea had booked us a 5 day trip to Istanbul - leaving on Sunday. This news was met with mixed emotions as I was really enjoying my time in France with Clem et al but also was excited to be able to see Istanbul and perhaps get a chance to finally warm up. The weather in Europe - both in France and in Portugal has been brutally cold and I have been freezing since arriving. My body prefers heat. This news meant that I needed to get organized if I was going to have a chance to see Amsterdam before meeting up with Andrea in her hometown of Arnhem. The last time I was in Amsterdam was in 1980 at the end of my 6 month trip to Europe after graduating from University. My boyfriend and I worked the summer in our Landscaping business, saved every penny and arrived in Amsterdam with $1600 cash each. Within minutes of arriving at Schipol Airport, I learned that I was not strong enough to carry my own pack.....small problem....big trauma. I remember every detail of that first day in Amsterdam which eventually saw us spend, on day two, $650 worth of our money on an ancient VW cargo van - not a camper - that we bought off of four Israelis who were returning to their Kibbutz after touring around in it. Even though it was winter, we lived and worked out of that van, eventually ending up on the island of Crete (Greece) where we started a short career as migrant workers - harvesting olives by climbing the trees and raking the olives onto tarps which we collected and then loaded onto our own donkeys for the long trek back to the farmhouses we lived in.....oh, those were the days. After the winter we arrived back in Amsterdam completely broke - those were the days before credit cards and calls home to mom or dad for money. I remember sitting in that van, with a For Sale sign in it, day after day. We only had enough money for one sleeve of French Fries with gobs of mayonnaise a day - shared. Since then I have yearned to return to Amsterdam to eat more of those famous fries. During the time we were living in our van, parked on a back street, Amsterdam had a renowned period of unrest - the city broke out in full scale riots when the police tried to move squatters out of abandoned downtown buildings. Maybe that will happen in Porto??? We got to take in a flash civil war one night as we followed the rioters through the streets as they smashed the windows and doors of the banks and any building that represented social order. We watched the McDonald's get smashed in and the looters entering. As that night wore on, the military organized and the tanks began to roll and they strategically herded the rioters (of which we were inside that group - taking pictures!) into a small area. Lynn (the boyfriend) and I managed to escape and get ourselves to the outside and get back to our van early the next morning - amazed at what we had gotten ourselves into.
OK - so Amsterdam has many many memories - albeit very old ones - but it is a place I really wanted to return to.

Quickly I found a Hotel on line, Clem was kind enough to drive me to town to buy a train ticket for the next day, and packed up my stuff. Problem....seems I had a lot more stuff then I came with - two bags and two pairs of shoes from Portugal and a whole lot of clothes I bought in France. Really quick trip to the Post Office to buy a box, pack it and then back to ship it....quite frantic pace after a couple of weeks of calm. Poor Clem - the house guest becomes high maintenance just when her life was becoming extremely busy - time for me to go.

Next morning Clem dropped me off at the train and I took the high speed train to Paris - about 250 miles - this time I was getting off on south side of the city to schlep my s*** across town on the Metro. I am now used to amazing Metros - having been in Asia so long where everything is brand new. Yikes - welcome to the Paris Metro! When I was last in Paris, just a few years ago, we stayed right near the Eiffel Tower in an apartment so we did not use the Metro...I had read about it being a very high crime area with many many warnings but figured that those things had been written by non travelers.....This time I was on a mission as I had a short time between the train to Paris, and my next train to Amsterdam. I had to access the international station which was completely on the other side of Paris and meant changing metro lines half way through. My first introduction to the system was buying a ticket - huge lines and it was midday on a workday! Down into the bowels of the system - lugging my luggage up and down stairs as the place is so old and decrepit they don't have escalators. what a s*** hole! Filthy dirty, graffiti everywhere, gangster types from every country in the world hanging about, looking for prey. A shocking dump! I know I keep going on about the differences between Asia and the rest of the world but....the differences are truly shocking. The Paris metro looks like the New York Metro did back in the 80's. New York had their revival and now it is a beautiful system - clean and efficient and used by everybody. when you let something become dark and scary and inefficient - you lose the average folks and give in to the criminals.. this place looks like that. I did make it across town with time to spare, arriving at Paris Nord with time for lunch before jumping on the train to Amsterdam.



I emerged from the huge station and found myself a primo people watching seat in a cafe overlooking the entrance to the train station. This part of Paris is not abandoned like the Porto downtown but it certainly is stressed. Large groups of gypsies were hassling anyone coming off of buses, junkies and beggars were shoulder to shoulder - all trying to hustle up a few Euros from the regular folks walking by. It is really horrible what has happened to this beautiful City. The human rats from the metro tunnels must come up and work the train station through the busy hours of the day. Fascinating and depressing watching. 

 
Inside the station, the military was on high alert. Lots of them - and this was a Tuesday at noon! Both police and military guys with huge machine guns patrolled the train landings. Interesting but also disconcerting. Bizarre unsettled atmosphere. I felt like I was just waiting to become a victim of something - not sure what but certainly there were predators of every kind everywhere. The Police were certainly taking liberty of searching people at will. We would never get away with what I saw them doing - just shaking down young guys at random. Not sure if this is just daily life now.

So so many immigrants and they all appear to be quite disadvantaged - a real visible division between the very proper French and the rest of everybody else. The "New French" as Clem calls them. I was really happy to get on the train and get out of that environment.

The trains in France are very very expensive. Therefore, only a certain class of people can travel this way. I usually like to travel with average local types but this day I was really happy to have enough money to buy myself some relaxing space.

On to Amsterdam for some Fries!