Well, here I am wasting more time in train stations, this time in Antwerpen Centraal. While the train network in European is extensive and frequent, the Europeans seem to be particularly bad at running any of their trains on-time. According to the timetable, I had 20 whole minutes to make my connection at this train station. According to reality, I had 2 minutes. In my travels thus far, I haven't had a single train running on-time, however this was the first time I had to make a connection. So here I am waiting an hour for the next train to Brugge.

Anyway, on Tuesday, I made the 7 hour train ride to Amsterdam and that pretty much took up my entire day. I had booked into a hostel in Amsterdam that the Lonely Planet, Hostel World and several backpackers I had met along the way had all raved about. I found when I got there, however, that I was paying 27Euro (>50AUD!!) for a bed in a dingy 14-bed dorm in the basement with a shared bathroom that was definitely on the lower end of the clean scale. It did have a pretty good bar but given that I was out most of the day and only came back to sleep, it really wasn't worth my 27Euro per night.Or perhaps the people who had recommended the place had visited too many coffee shops in Amsterdam to notice the crappiness of the place.

On Wednesday morning, I had an interesting problem. I wanted a coffee. However, in the Netherlands, a cafe is a pub and a coffeeshop sells marijuana. So where do I get an actual cup of coffee? I never figured it out. I made a day trip to Den Haag, about an hour's train ride from Amsterdam, and learnt a valuable lesson about checking up on current visa requirements. My Lonely Planet had told me that I needed a visa for Romania and, since I really, really want to go to Romania and that time is rapidly getting away from me, I thought I had better go visit the embassy to apply for a visa. Except that the embassy happened to be located in Den Haag, not Amsterdam. So I had a pleasant train ride, then a less pleasant trek across the city to the embassy. When I finally got there at 12:30, an intercom box told me to go away as visas were only issued until 12 and to come back on Friday morning. Needless to say, I was unimpressed. Especially when I checked on the Romanian Foreign Affairs website afterwards only to discover that Romanian joined the EU after my book was published and I no longer require a visa to visit. The trip wasn't completed wasted however as I went to an art gallery in Den Haag (where a random gave me a free ticket out the front of the gallery which was handy). Now, you may be thinking that an art gallery is a strange place to find Josie (and you'd be right) but this particular art gallery housed a large collection of Rembrant's work, including his self portraits and the surgeon giving an anatomy lesson, and Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, which inspired a book by the same name which we studied in year 12. I then returned to Amsterdam and did some only-in-Amsterdam type things, like the Hemp Museum and the Erotic Museum.

Thursday I went along to a free walking tour run by the same company as I went on in Berlin (and also ran into a girl I met in Berlin), which encompassed lots of the historical and WWII aspects of Amsterdam, including the house where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazi's. I was also able to impress the tour guide and group when I correctly answered a question about the 80 years war between the Netherlands and Spain (which, I might add, I learnt from my witches subject last semester). There were also funny things such as the royal palace with a fun park in front of it. And, of course, there were coffee shops and the red light district. I also did the red light district tour on Thursday evening, which gave lots of historical stuff about prostitution in Amsterdam over the past 100 years or so.

Today (Friday) I went to the Van Gogh museum (yes, another art gallery, Amsterdam Josie is far more cultured than Melbourne Josie) 3in the morning before catching my train to Anterwerpen.

Overall, Amsterdam was really a whole different world. Tiny cobbled streets and canals everywhere made it very easy to get lost and there was a strange balance between the historical old-world charm aspects of Amsterdam and the x-rated theme-park aspects of Amsterdam. Three nights was definitely enough though as I'm feeling quite Amsterdam-ed out and glad to be heading somewhere a bit quieter for a couple of days.

Incidentally, before I wrote the above blog, I asked a person who worked at the station if I was at the right platform to catch the next train to Brugge and they said that I was. Turns out I wasn't so I missed ANOTHER train to Brugge and had to wait another hour. Fun.

Now I am in Brugge. Lounging mostly. I've had too much in the way of fries, waffles and chocolate today so now I'm lounging in my trackies for the afternoon. :) Earlier today I went to a convent and to the church where they keep some of Jesus' blood. I donated a Euro and got to touch the vial containing the blood. It was pretty weird. I'm not sure how they know it's Jesus' blood. I'm going to do some internet research to find out. Other than that, not much news. Off to Luxembourg tomorrow. Those of you who used to play trivia will know that this is exciting.

Love, hugs, etc.