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A REVIEW: A LIFE, A JOURNEY, AN END, A BEGINNING.

I'll start from the end. I'm here. I'm sitting in my hotel room in Reykjavik, my stomach full of skyr (Icelandic yoghurt) and stroopwafel (Dutch cookies), my ears filling with Sigur Ros (An Icelandic band) and the voices of my family fresh in Halifax. The words are flowing, as is the journey. I'm still moving miles at a time, but the pace is comforting.

So where did I start, if that is the end?

I left off in Bergen, the old Norwegian capital. It was...nice. It was the place I started to feel and end to all of this.It was my first city as a solo traveller. It's hard to pull off after 4 weeks with a companion, but I made it through!

The train ride back was probably the most eventful I've ever seen! I got there, expecting to have the car to myself, but intead a gaggle of grade ten students from Bergen got on, fart jokes and candy aloft, settling in on a two day journey to Poland. I had my passport out, trying to find my ticket and the kids noticed I wasn't Norwegian. This sparked a 4 hour conversation about our lives, albeit different, but a great way to pass the time.

And then came the pinnacle of my French speaking career. A lone, (I could only assume) menopausal woman boarded the train, running with a fire in her ass down the aisle. I was sitting in the four person section, usually reserved for groups, as the Gr. 10 guys seemed to be. She paused, blocking the aisle if not with her girth, then with her fiery glare, and proceeded to shriek at the students who appeared to sitting in her seat. It was not hard to notice that this car was by a wide margin, an adolescent car, but she demanded that she have her reserved seat, rather than calmly finding another one, as reserved seats tend to mean little in the European train system.

The beauty of it all was that she neither spoke English OR Norwegian, only French. I made the mistake of saying "Oh, tu parles francais?" Under pressure, I tend not to use the formal version (Vous parlez francais?) and for that reason she lost her s*** on me! "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT!"

Oh ok...she means business! None of us in the car knew what her deal was, so I finally elected myself to be translator. After trying to calm her down by speaking in French, she eventually decided that it would be in her best interests to insult the only other person onthe train that spoke her bloody language. "I am insulted by your French! As a Canadian you should be able to speak with respect!" EXCUSE YOU!!

By this point, I had had enough of being chewed out by this woman whose meds were OBVIOUSLY not strong enough that day, so I faked a nap and hoped she would disappear. My gr. 10 comrads, however, decided to have some fun with her while she had her eye mask on, going so far as to fart on her. I never said they were classy, they just got the job done! This was about the highlight of the night, seeing this lady with a bone to pick with the rest of the world come unglued at the most unlikely of victims, but such is the life of a Parisian I suppose...

After a successful night of putting this woman in her place, I stumbled to the Oslo airport for a quick flight to Amsterdam, famous for it's vices and the omnipresent "Dutch tolerance".

Amsterdam is a great city, for groups of more than one. Kelsey went on ahead of me to Amsterdam the weekend before and raved about how friendly the city was...I found a different side. The first day, I basically spent doing my own thing. Walked around, explored the canals and the coffee-shops littered around the waterways.I even caught a hooker walking around in daylight! It is at that point, when you see your first hooker, your first coffee-shop that you really start to realize you are in Amsterdam.

I won't bore you with the details of the first day, cos it was basically me napping and reading my book. Great.

Second day! Much much better! I decided to drag my ass out of bed at an unruly hour (9:30) to get ready for a free walking tour. I'd heard that is the best way to meet other people, and it turned out to be true! The group of us at my hostel walked to the main square to meet up with the bigger group and go our ways. It was on our way to the square that a girl came running up, looking lost, looking for our tour! I said she'd found it and to just follow us. She was my friend from then on in! Haha. Her name was Eileen and she was from Baltimore. After you reach 20, age stops being a factor, and when you can role with a 25 year old grad student and still keep up, you feel pretty accomplished!

We started off in the Red Light District, around noon; noon being far too early for the "ladies and gentlemen of the night" to be hawking their wares.But the odd few pulled back the faded curtains for the opportunity to catch the early rising John. We walked through Amsterdam's past, as a symbol for both the Dutch Golden Age, but the pinnacle of Dutch Tolerance as well. The Dutch view the soft drug use and prostitution as a means of control, by regulating the vices within the city they can monitor it so it never gets out of control. Better this than something worse, is their take on it. But even with that, the Dutch have a lower drug usage percentage than most nations in Europe and N. America.

The tour ended at the Anne Frank House, where we learnt that the Dutch resistance during the second world war showed that the only thing the Dutch were intolerant of was intolerance. They fought long and hard to keep their Jewish brothers and sisters from the worst of the war for longer than most other nations. You really do get a sense for the Dutch resilience in Amsterdam, with each winding canal, you find yourself deeply rooted into the story of the city. It's weird, I know, but Amsterdam is a city that you can't feel from monuments or buildings, it's a city you lose yourself in and only once you leave can you judge if you truly felt it.

After the tour, Eileen and I decided to hit up a coffee-shop and possibly take in the Sex Museum. The coffee-shop we hit up was featured in Ocean's 12, and there were enough pictures of Brad and George to remind you of that fact in case you ever forgot! It was called De Dampkring and it was spectacular! Groovy would be the best way to describe it! Haha.

The Sex Museum was alright, mostly just bad porn from the 1900s. Sweet. Brazilian waxes were definitely not in vogue back then, I can tell you that! Aside from the old school porn, it was basically your run of the mill fetish gallery with some dildos and chastity belts for some historical perspective and a little bestiality for s***s and giggles...and horrors too I suppose.

We wandered around, getting lost amongst the canals and mushroom trippin' tourists, stopping for stroopwafel and fries, two things the Dutch do very very well! The best fry place in Amsterdam is conveniently located to a well known coffee-shop too! Good for business I suppose...

We went our separate ways for a serious nap break and reconvened to grab some grub and see the sights at night. We grabbed some serious shwarma and wandered around until the faint pink hue rose up to the clouds, letting us know the Red Light District was in full swing. We grabbed a bottle of red (much to my dismay as I'm a white wine kinda guy) and sat by the canal talking Devs and life. Eileen had just finished two and a half years working in Romania in the Peace Corps and was working her way back to the states to go to school and this being her vacation.

We wandered amongst the maze of flesh where immigrated women choose to rent out little boxes along the streets to punters looking to add another notch or gain some notoriety back home of sleeping with one of Amsterdam's famed ladies of the night. The hygene kinda put me off. Would you put on a glove that every other man had worn? Ya...that's kind of how I looked at the whole prostitution thang...but fun to look though!!It is definitely awkward to catch their eye, as they start tapping on the window, making a come hither gesture, but you keep walking by. We had our fill of flesh and the voices of British tourists making offers, the best being "WHY ARE YOU SO EXPENSIVE??", and decided to make a run for the hostel before the rain set in.

The quintessential red wine hangover set in and I made my way to the airport. Schiphol is a zoo. No reason around it. Globalization is alive and well as cultures cross and transfer to gates, planes, portals to worlds only a few hours away par avion.And much like the rest of them, I found myself far flung, but flung closer to home than I'd been in along time. Mom, Dad, and Cam found themselves to Halifax, only 3 hours between us this time, so it's feeling like home already! They should be here around 7 tomorrow morning, jetlagged, but up for the adventure! I can't wait. Two months is a longer time apart than you realize, but looking back it was all worth it!

A week left and then it's normality, or normality as best I can fake it. Turrah!

Robin