Good morning, Ams-ter-dam! The part about Amsterdam will mainly contain more pictures than texts, because for some weird unknown reasons I hadn't written much about it in my private blog either. Our next and also the last host was an Estonian! And let me be honest and straight-forward, he's an odd person. Probably not for everyone, but for example to me he was. He had been living in the NL for about a year and when I asked him what brought him there, his answer was: ''To party! But I'm leaving the NL in two weeks, moving back to Estonia, because I have been to every party here and it is now boring for me already.'' We met up with Kaarel again as well. I know that Kaarel and I shared the same opinion about this guy. At least I wasn't alone in this. But what can I say, the dude was living his life to the fullest as he wished to. He talked way too much and my little brain wasn't able to sort and process all of it. Agnes now had a more interesting person to talk with, Kaarel and I were always in the ''background'' staying rather quiet and being totally okay with it. Taivar's place was the saddest place we stayed at. It was a two floor apartment with (I think) 4-5 people living there, all of them being from different nationalities. We didn't have a separate room, but instead we had a bed under the stairs near the front door. As you may guess, it was quite cold, I slept with all of my clothes on. Now if I think about it, then there were actually two doors. One of them was in the front of the house, it was locked, of course, but the other one was at the feet of our bed and it led to the courtyard. That one was definitely not locked... Aaaand, of course, we stumbled upon another unpleasant event, which, gladly, ended up nicely, but during the time it was a mess and we probably shed a few tears with Agnes at some point. I don't remember how many nights did we stay in Amsterdam, but this story is going to be about one of them. Agnes and I had a lot of fun in the day time and we were tired by the evening, so we wanted to go ''home''. We called Him to let him know that we are coming. He wasn't home at the time, he was like an hour a drive away from Amsterdam, partying, of course, and none of his flatmates weren't at home either, but we found it out later. He told us that he'll be there in an hour. Okay, no problem. We could still walk around a little and then take a tram to go home, it's nothing. We arrived to his house and called him again. He didn't answer. He didn't answer an hour, two hours, maybe even more. It was definitely past midnight time already and we were freezing. Eventually his phone was switched off, so there were no possibilites for us to reach him. At that point we were so, so mad that we didn't even care if someone was asleep, we knocked on the door for so long, but noone came to open it. We were so cold that it was hard for us to even move our fingers. We sat in front of the door as close to each other as possible, wrapped our scarves around us to stay warm and tried to fall asleep. Homeless level to the maximum. I have no idea how much time passed when neither of us couldn't sleep any longer. We decided that we had to move around to warm our bodies. Maybe we could find a shop or a gas station nearby. And yeah, we were also starving by that time already. It was a suburban area... so as you can guess, all of the negative aspects just happened to fall together, and we couldn't imagine a sunshine. Even a snail's speed wasn't comparable to the time's. We walked around and tried to find some places to go to. One lady came to us and asked what had happened. We told her our story and then she showed us where she lived. She said her apartment number so if we couldn't find a place to stay at, we could go to her's. Another example of generous people. Then a car passed and stopped. A man inside asked if we needed any help, we told our story to him as well. He took us to McDonalds, because that was the only place around opened at that time, and bought us tea. I didn't have the heart to ask him more, but I think he bought something for Agnes to eat. Then he took us back to the place he found us from. I remember that his driving skills were very scary. He stared at his phone not the road most of the time and drove at a high speed. I honestly didn't look up, because I was too scared. We wanted to go to the lady's place, but we forgot her apartment number. What are the odds? How did we even manage to stay alive? Okay, joking, although it is truly strange that neither of us didn't remember the number. We didn't want to try some random numbers, because maybe we could've woken up a stranger. A big nope. We decided to go back to Taivar's place and try to knock, maybe he had arrived back home. I don't remember did we eventually knock or call him, but after some while we finally got inside. We were so pissed off, so tired, so cold, straving. Everything was a problem then. Also we had to use ''our'' toilet without a light and a lock. What ever. At least we survived and got some precious experiences. By the end of our trip to the NL we were quite poor already. We tried to save up money for getting back to Estonia. Our ride back was an adventure itself, again. Unbelievable. There is a site called Blablacar.com for sharing a ride around (mostly) the Europe. Some people want to meet cool companions and travellers, others want to split the bill. What ever floats your boat. The driver we found was a Polish man. He drove from the NL to Poland. We didn't know where to exactly, but we didn't care much about it either. Life's as adventure and we let it show us where does it take us. The man didn't speak nearly a word in English so that shocked us the most when we first met him. No clue how did he asnwer to our messages. Google translate? Most likely. In Potsdam, Germany he picked up a young Polish woman who helped us to communicate with the driver, so she was our real life Google translate. The driver took us to Wroclaw. Actually a little bit out of the city itself. He took us to a gas station and then pointed his finger to a taxi. Basically, the lady googled a cheap hostel for us and then asked the taxi driver to take us there. We had been driving in a car for about 12 hours. Oh, actually, at one point the Polish driver took a nap, but he snored so hard that it was too scary and funny at the same time. We couldn't ask about his plans, because we didn't have the woman with us yet. We had about 4-5 hours until we were able to check in to the hostel. We left our massive bags there and went to walk around and explored the city. Had our breakfast at KFC. Hurts to think how much unhealthy food we were able to eat. At least Poland is a quite cheap country. Cheaper than Estonia and much more cheaper than the NL. We were in good moods, because we got some food finally, the weather was nice again and we were on our way back to home. We went back to our hostel when it was check in time. Got our room, the reception ladies were nice. We decided to take a nap, so that we could start planning our route back later. There were something wrong with our beds. Oh, right, we didn't have any bed linen nor towels. We thought it was weird, but honestly we were too tired and lazy to go ask about them then. After our sweet sleep we looked for bus tickets. Found a bus that actually went from Wroclaw to Tallinn. So that was a nice surprise. We decided to book it, but oh man, there was only 1 seat left. We were out of ideas what to do, but after some while I was checking the availability again and boom - 3 spots left! Then we made our fastest moves to book the tickets. Done! We had a bus to home! It was quite expensive, 45 euros per face, but the ride took 23 hours as well. Pretty harsh.
Don't even dare to think that this was the end of our adventure. No, not even close really. More was yet to come. It was written to our bus ticket that the departure time is at 1 am. The ladies from the reception told that it will take us approximately 30 minutes to walk to the bus station, so we started heading there roughly 40 minutes prior. It was easy to find the station, but difficult to find the right stop. It didn't really look like a bus station. Something really shady was going on, but we couldn't figure it out. I remember looking at the time - 4 minutes until our bus should depart. We ran around like headless chickens, trying to get some information about our bus stop. Where the hell was it? Polish didn't understand English, confirmed again. We looked up for some ''emergency'' numbers from our bus tickets. Found some, called, didn't get any useful information anywhere. No buses on our horizons. Anyway, finally we managed to find the ''real'' stops. It was past 1 already. These feeling we had, inexplicable. We somehow managed to find a number to contact a driver or a guide at our bus. The answer we got from them was very rude: ''Uhm.. We left like 20 minutes ago, sorry, your loss.'' Agnes and I were speechless and the madness-fire inside was unbearable. I personally snapped was a while. I was so devastated that I couldn't react to this. Agnes, in the other hand, flipped totally out. She started screaming, crying and smashing things. We had our little riot there. I thought: ''Well, okay, uhm... So we could theoretically hitch hike back, but.. we are too tired, mad and sad for that right now.'' Our head were filled with various bizarre ideas how to get home. The only negative side? We were absolutely out of money by this point. After a few minutes we saw 2 people at our stop as well. They looked as puzzled as we did, called somewhere and spoke their gibberish (Polish and/or Russian) language. The only thing I understood was that they asked about the street we were at. After all we found out that they were also supposed to be on the same bus as us. How did we understand that? The bus came back. They picked us up, and we fi-nal-ly were headed to home, sweet home. Agnes was still in a shock and she couldn't stop crying for another 30 minutes and whined about every single detail what was wrong in the bus, for example she didn't have enough leg room and so on. Soon she calmed down and everything was starting to get better again. Although some aspects still remained a mystery. Why did the bus leave so early and how on earth was it possible that we didn't see it? We arrived to Tallinn earlier than we had to. So... did the bus depart earlier from Wroclaw as well? As I had mentioned before - this journey was wild from start until the very end. It was a huge mess, a perfect adventure and a priceless experience.
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Headed to Wageningen, we couldn't stay away from some unpleasant situations. I think we had magnets attached to us. We had to take a bus to the train station. The day was probably one of the hottest days of our stay, it was very sunny and nice. It took about 20 minutes to get to the train station and the bus was full, so it was quite uncomfortable to be there with our huge bags. After some while Agnes told me: ''Alice, I think I want to puke.'' As I was feeling a little bit unwell myself, because neither of us hadn't eaten breakfast and there wasn't enough fresh air in the bus, then I was slighty mad that Agnes joked around. It was something she would naturally say as a joke in a random situation. She repeated herself a few times and I tried to ignore her, because I didn't have the mood for joking around. Finally I asked her to stop this. She was quiet for a while and the next thing I heard her whispering: ''No... I think.. I am... going to... faint.'' and then she grabbed me from behind and fainted. She had her backpack on and fell on her back, so when I turned around, heart pumping intensely, I saw the exact moment when she landed on the ground and hit her head, it bounced away from the ground. I suddenly felt I was going to pass out as well, this sight was so abominable that I physically started to feel sick. Gladly Dutch people are so helpful, generous and caring, that everything turned out fine eventually. Right away some of the strangers helped to get her up, asked her if she was fine, gave her a seat and told her what pose should she take so that her blood would continue flowing normally etc. I was the one doing the talking, because she was in a slight shock. They offered her water and zephyr sweets to get some sugar. Even the driver stopped the bus in the middle of the road and came to ask us if we want to go outside or is everything okay and if we needed anything. Then he asked where are we headed and if we are sure that we want to stay in this hot bus for the rest of our ride. We were sure about getting to the train station as soon as possible. The driver called an ambulance to our stop. I am still so amused how many helpful people we met and I hope that someone helps these people, too, when they're in the need of it! The ambulance questioned us what happened and why did it happen. We thought it was probably because of the heat and because we hadn't eaten breakfast yet. They even asked if we had any money to buy ourselves some food! I am honestly speechless, because if I had to imagine a situation like this in Estonia, it wouldn't look like this. Estonians would probably think that the faint would have been caused by an overdose of something. They are really scared to help and touch strangers, so I can't really imagine anyone coming up to help. Nevertheless, end good, all good. After resting a while in the fresh air, we went to the train station and bought some food. It was the best part of our day so far. Agnes recovered quickly and started joking about it soon. I was confused and a little bit shocked that she managed to joke about this as well, but as they say, expect the unexpected. She told me what kind of dreams she saw in this short period of time while being passed out... Hmm, interesting. Our next host was Robin. As I had mentioned before, he was one of the kindest person I had ever met. So sincere and fun to have around! Our arrival timing wasn't sadly the best for him, because her mother had a heart attack a day before, so he was visiting her in a hospital in the other side of the country (haha, a huge country to get to the other side of it, right). He hid the door key for us and messaged me the instructions to get in. Apparently Agnes and I are not very good with keys so we couldn't open the door. A lady heard someone messing with a door, she worked in a shop next to it, and came to help us, asked who are we looking for. Fortunately I was able to convince her that we are not trying to break the lock and rob the place so she let us in and even told on which floor Robin was living. He had a roof-apartment, so there we were again, in a really narrow corridor with our massive bags and a lot of stairs! Stairs again, why? He had left us a nice note where he welcomed us and asked to feel ourselves as in home. Of course, if we needed help with anything, we were free to call him. Later on when he arrived, he took us for a nice walk in the city. He knew so much about Wageningen and told so much interesting stories about its history. A pity that I can't remember all of it! His English was also perfect. I am still very glad we got the chance to stay with him. Although the city is very small, he had lots to talk about. He showed us a small and an old cemetery which was located between local's homes. This praticular cemetery was for Jews. He also showed us a place from where we could see the affects of the ice age until today. As I don't know the right termins to explain it, I'll show it from a picture. We visited a local little supermarket, bought ourselves some food and cooked at Robin's place. We watched South Park and Tenacious D, talked quite a lot about ourselves and enjoyed the evening. The next day Robin had to leave early for his mother, of course. I still feel a little bit bad that we happened to visit him at the most inappropriate timing, but what can I say, he is a gentleman and a strong person for being able to deal with all of this at once. I mean, despite all of this, he was so nice to us and had time, or maybe made time, to spend it with us. The weather was nice again so Agnes and I decided to have our breakfast outside in a park on the grass. I cannot stop saying how nice Dutch people were to us, because there were many occasions when some random strangers were passing us and told: ''Enjoy your meal! Bon appetit!'' This made our mood definitely better every time. After our breakfast we went to wander around and very soon found ourselves climbing some awesome trees. We were just fully enjoying our stay. I think this was already our last day in Wageningen, because this place was so small that a few days were enough. Wageningen is known as an University city if I am not mistaken. We spent the evening the same way as a day before and left the next morning, Robin sent us off and wished us the best luck on our way. Next stop: Amsterdam! Our driver was an awkward Estonian man. Maybe the awkwardness actually hides in me, not in him, I don't know. He loved to listen to some pretty old Estonian music. What a patriot! Nothing bad about that, don't get me wrong. I was just a naive young lady back then. Sorry for sounding like a 50-year-old granny, who is talking about her adventures that occured 30 years ago: ''Back in my days...'' The adventure itself began thoretically from Tallinn, our hometown. We took a train to Tartu therefore we needed to spend a night there. Luckily, my dear Heleri was our saviour. We could spend the night at her's and her brother's place. We wanted to feel fully rested the next day. I remember exactly that Heleri and her brother went out partying. We hoped that it would give us an opportunity to have a good sleep. They came back home at around 5 in the morning, which meant that they were drunk and so happy about it. They messed with my hair and tried to pull the blanket off, while I was trying to sleep, and told some weird jokes, so I got quite angry and asked them not to bother us. Eventually they went to sleep, too. We had to get up early. I think it was around 7-ish. The driver was late for like a half an hour, so I thought that he had ditched us, maybe it was some kind of a scam or something. Luckily for us, he was only late. Nothing else. The car ride from Tartu to Utrecht was actually a huge pain in the ass, because I had never sat for so long before. We had a stop in Valga/Valka, where he had to take some things to transport. Some work things I guess. Next stop was possibly already in Lithuania, and then after that in Poland. We spent our night in Poland, in a random cheap hostel. Everything was actually very nice, the room was cute etc. The only thing that could have become any kind of a problem, was a language barrier. Neither Agnes nor I spoke Russian, yet Polish people do speak. They don't understand English nearly at all. Gladly our driver knew Russian, so that was a huge help. We started our ride the next day quite early as well. Our breakfast-story is a nice one. We picked a random kiosk to eat at. It was a little bit isolated, so it seemed pretty suspicious to me. But what ever. Of course, the waiter there didn't speak a word in English. It was difficult to order anything, I don't even remember what we ate. Some suspicious local stuff probably. After leaving this place we talked about our food. The driver said then: ''Have you ever seen a stray dog in Poland?'' Our faces expressed confusion. ''Exactly,'' he said. And suddenly a dog passed by that little kiosk. So what he was trying to tell us, was that we just ate dog meat. No clue whether it was an innocent joke, or a really bad one. We drove through the rest of the Poland, Germany, and finally arrived to the NL about 20 hours later. We made our first stop in a little city where he transported the TV. The family was mostly Estonian so they invited us to have a few drinks. We declined, we were too tired by that time, although arriving to the NL woke us up a little, but we wanted to reach our destination as soon as possible. Our first host in the NL, in Utrecht, was Vincent. He lived in a big building, which had a very old-school look inside. It was a dormitory in fact. We said good bye to our driver, and said hello to our host. We put a bike together that our driver brought there to another Estonian, about who I will talk later on. Next on we let Vincent to go to sleep, and since our sleeping schedules had been totally messed up, we decided to have a night-walk in Utrecht. The city seemed to be totally dead. We didn't see any people moving around. Okay, we finally met some cops, we asked them for a direction to the downtown. Long story short, we got lost and didn't manage to get to the city centre. Finally the cops saw us again and asked us if we were lost and waiting for the bus, because we were standing at a bus stop. Laughing, we answered no. How stupid of us. Maybe they could've taken us back to Vincent's place. Eventually we called a taxi and went back home. Calling a taxi also became a little bit funny, because it was hard for us to pronounce the bus stop we were at. We thought that the easiest way to describe our location would be by a bus stop. Apparently the service man on the phone just laughed so hard at our pronounciation. Vincent had a school day, so he left us a note with some general information about his home, his bike we could use, and some more stuff. There was a huge kitchen, which was shared with everyone in that building. Literally, the kitchen was bigger than my apartment. Also the shower was unisex, there were cabins, were you had to change your clothes, wash and dry yourself and so on. It was a mystery to me how was it possible to keep your clothes dry while showering. Amateur. On this day we met with the Estonian guy who came to Utrecht for his bike. His name is Kaarel. So, we had 2 bikes and 3 people. We got to the city centre. For me it was the worst bike experience ever. I sat on the thingie that some people put on their bikes to attach their bags to(a carrier, a rack?). The bike was so old, rusty and didn't have proper gear to even ride it like a normal person. Agnes rode on a Kaarel's bike and Kaarel and I took Vincent's bike. It was a mess. My buttocks hurt me after that ride for a while, but I am alive. I think Kaarel had to go somewhere, so Agnes and I started exploring this city together. Finally! We wandered around the city, did some really touristic stuff - loads of pictures, had a picnic in a park, where we saw a soap opera in real life. I mean, two girls were kind of fighting over a guy, but the guy didn't seem to care at all, also they had a public make-out session. Quite uncomfortable, yet funny. I had my first KFC in my life in Utrecht. Hooray to that! Met some local under-aged girls, who asked us to buy them weed. I declined, but Agnes did her thing. Explored more of the city. Nothing too amusing. Nevertheless, the day was so fun and interesting. Don't get me wrong, Utrecht was absolutely stunning, but just nothing exhilarating happened. Dutch people are very generous and friendly, and they mostly speak perfect English! In the evening we finally had the opportunity to actually spend some time with Vincent. He collected old-school sunglasses, played tons of video games, and made me to play a horror video game as well. Actually it was really interesting and I would like to know what game was it. He told us about his travels, his girlfriends, and if I'm not mistaken, he was a digital designer...? Or something like that. He showed us around a little bit, too. There was a little cabin built near the house, looked again very old-school, but absolutely amazing. I am sad we didn't take any pictures of it, but it was too dark already. On the next day we had two bikes. Yay! So we biked our way back to the city centre as locals do it every day. I think we did mostly the same things as the day before. Tried to explore the areas we hadn't been to yet. We also wanted to meet up with a Dutch guy I knew from the Internet, but he thought that it was a scam, and didn't trust us back then. By the way, by now he has visited me in Estonia. What are the odds! Although the day time was very ordinary, our evening certainly was not. It was already a little bit dark when we got back to Vincent's house, and as we didn't have keys, we had to wait for him to get home. We decided to put the bikes behind the house, because that's where they keeped them. We saw Vincent's window, and something just didn't seem right. It was opened, and the light was on. We both were really confused and scared at the same time, because we thought that we had left the things like this. It wouldn't have made any sense, because we left the house at a day time when, so we didn't need to turn on any lamps. And we were more than sure, that we didn't open a window. There was no reason for it. So I sent a message to Vincent saying that we probably left the lights on and the window open, hopefully it wouldn't be a big concern. We waited for his response for a long time. I don't exactly know the minutes, but it took weirdly long for him to answer. He messaged something like: ''Ok, let it be then.'' What I am trying to say is that his response was fairly rude. So I apologized to him politely and asked him when would he get home. He said he doesn't know exactly, but let me spoil the ending, we are talking about hours. It got really cold outside as we were very tired and scared, because at that point we understood that he was probably at home, but didn't want us there for some unknown reasons. I sent a message to our next host, Robin, from Wageningen. We told him about our situation and asked if we could stay at his place the next day, because we were just so scared already. He was the nicest Dutch I had ever met, so caring! He even offered us to come today somehow, but it was too late for public transportation, so we decided to tolerate the last night. Finally Vincent came ''home''. He opened the door for us from the inside(!!) so I was pretty darn sure that he was already at home. We didn't talk much. Told him we are leaving tomorrow. He sent us off the next day and gave us both a pair of sunglasses, which honestly, I am so sorry, looked absolutely hideous on us. But a souvenir is a souvenir! I don't have too much detailed information about this trip, because it was 2 years ago. I will write down as much as I remember, as much as the pictures help me to remember. I also luckily wrote a post to my private blog, so I have some fresh memories written down there.
This trip had its beginning in my head. I was so overwhelmed by school, and I felt I needed to get away. I was even considering changing my school, but it could have been too troublesome. So it suddenly hit me. I needed to go somewhere abroad! I hadn't really gone anywhere special before. I had only been to Finland, Sweden and Latvia. I turned 18 a few months before, so I wanted to take a good advantage of my new privileges. With whom? When? Why the Netherlands? The trip was with my friend Agnes. By that time I was 18, and she was 16, so I was her ''mom''. This adventure started on 11th and ended on 22nd of April. I don't really know why or how did we choose the NL. It was quite a random pick. I have always adored the idea of this country. Absolutely marvelous architecture, infamous red light district, fascinating tulip fields, wine and cheese (although I'm not a fan of them, but it just sounds romantic), and of course, the canals! The NL surely has more to offer, but these are the reasons people tend to go there. Oh, and for the drugs, too, because some soft drugs are legal there. Amsterdam, the capital of the NL, is known as the drug capital in Europe. Without further ado, I didn't care about that. About roadtrip and accommodation. Our trip had to be as cheap as possible. If I remember correctly then my budget was about 300 euros. It had to include e-ve-ry-thing, and by everything I mean from the ride and accommodation to food and souvenirs. This all started with me writing to a group in Facebook called ''Estonians in the NL'' where I asked if anyone is going to the NL from Estonia by a car. We had some dates in our minds, especially me, I wanted it to be on my school holidays, but eventually things didn't work out like this. But I'm not even sad. I am actually sad about the fact how scrupulous I was. I was rarely absent from school. Should have done that more, because I had the opportunity, yet I never really (ab)used it. Okay, now back to the main topic here. Eventually I found a man, who is driving between Tartu and London because of his work. He often transports some stuff people need and asks a little price for that. This time he agreed to transport two young ladies from A(Tartu) to B(Utrecht). I think we paid 40 euros for that car ride. It took a little bit more than 2 days. We stayed one night in Poland in a cheap hostel. 15 euros per face. In the NL we didn't stay in fancy hotels nor even not-so-fancy hostels, but on the couches of the local people. We did couchsurfing*. Couchsurfing is a very thankworthy opportunity. There are locals who are ready to offer their beds, couches or mattresses for a person on the road, who is trying to stay on a budget. Usually they don't ask anything from the guest, but I just think it is proper to maybe bring a souvenir from your country as a gift, or something like that. Many of them just want to hear your stories, something about your life. They want to share experiences and opinions. That's how it works. I remember I was reaaaally skeptical about couchsurfing, because I thought: ''Why the hell should anyone want a stranger to stay at their place... for free?'' What could I say, classical reticent Estonian thoughts. We originally found hosts from various cities such as: Utrecht, Wageningen, Zeist, Almere. But, damn, we were missing Amsterdam. Things seemed to work out nicely, because an Estonian offered to stay at his place in Amsterdam finally. So we chose to visit Utrecht, Wageningen and Amsterdam. We had our ride there, we had our places to stay. Looked like a perfect get-away adventure for us! Spoiler alerts: This is a rollercoaster from the beginning until the very end. I am going to post some ridiculous photos. The quality of these photos is probably quite bad, they were made using Agnes's phone. |
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