"amsterdamning"

okay, so the title of this post is blatant plagiarism, but at least i'll give a plug with a fancy amsterdamning hyperlink, sound fair? good deal.

after our first glorious day in amsterdam, josh and i bid farewell to megan as she headed off for krakow, and we in turn set off on our own journey to find our hostel. again, we would find ourselves battling inclement weather at every turn; but this time, this time, it was different. we had an advantage. we had cheese.

our 'directions' from hostelworld said "metro/sneltram 51 (subway), you go off at Spinnerij (15 minutes walk, see map) or at Sacharovlaan (bus 199, 3 minutes)"

well, we had no map to see, so we got off at sacharovlaan and caught the 199 just about dusk. 'success!' we thought.

we stayed on the bus, but saw no hostels, and after about 15 minutes we came across something familiar: a metro stop we'd passed on the tram about 30 minutes before... we got off, got back on the metro, went to spinnerij, and decided to walk the 15 minutes. we knew that we had to go vaguely southwest from the metro stop, so we walked vaguely southwest. as night fell, our bones chilled, and our spirits began to flag, we decided to stop in a bar and ask directions. a friendly dutchman turned from the bar to slosh the beer from his mug and yell to us that it was "teyan keelomeetars south. then FEEFTEE KEELOMEETARS WEST!"
the bartender chuckled, then drew us a glorious map that outlined the remaining 10 minute walk to our hostel. 'ok.' we're set, we thought. and as we set out into the dark night, reinvigorated and secure in the knowledge of our hostel's location, it began to hail.

this is where the cheese comes in. we two travel weary companions, without an umbrella, weathered the coming storm as best we could; we laughed at mother nature in her petty attempts to dissuade us from our mission. we opened our satchels, took out our melba toast and cheese, and feasted as we made unflagging progress towards our destination, cackling at the absurdity of our predicament and challenging mother nature to give us her worst as we ate our delicious dutch cheese en route.

the hostel was quite nice. our camping chalet was very new, very clean, and inhabited by a dutch woman of few words. so we decided to go back to the helpful bar for a beer. after that, we went to the communal kitchen, smoked, and devoured two packages of cookies.
quite a successful evening.