Ok, I’ve stayed in Amsterdam for 3 days and 2 nights. This Evening I’m leaving and heading through Germany towards Berlin. I may be without internet for the next few days but possibly will be able to get on in Prague or Bratislava.
I’ve added some pictures to the facebook group. Now got 100 likes for the facebook page. Wonder how many we can get it up to.
My first night in Amsterdam was great. After I had changed all my passwords and bought a camera I was ready to come back and check in to the hostel. I had a shower and headed out to a bar.
The first bar I went in I bought a Guinness and thought about my missing stuff, I moved on to another bar and got another Guinness. This is where I met a Polish guy who was working in Amsterdam. He walked in and sat down, asked the barman for some ‘good beer’ and three shots of vodka. The Barman poured him a Guinness and the three shots were for him, me and the Barman. The Barman refused his as he was working. I started talking to the Polish guy and told him about the missing stuff. He said that I should have the other shot. It turned out that Guinness wasn’t the good beer he had been looking for so after we had finished our drinks he moved on and I ordered another.
While I was drinking my pint I was joined, at the bar, by a Turkish guy. We started talking and after we had finished our drinks we went out for a smoke. The rest of the night was awesome and for some reason walking around Amsterdam felt like walking round a modern equivalent of a pirate port. Groups of different people from different parts of the world, wandering around merry on their own particular choice of intoxicant. Boats moving along through the canals with loud music and people dancing. A really awesome night, walked back to the hostel after a circuit or two of the red light district.
The Turkish guy had recently been in Bratislava and recommended that I go there on a weekend. I checked my remaining places to visit and would imagine that I will be in Bratislava next weekend. The only negative point is that all the places I’m visiting will be more alive on weekends, but I don’t have the time or money to just go for a weekend out in each city. Although that would be fun.
While I was out last night I thought I should get a cheap net book, so this morning I got the metro over to an electrical superstore and picked up this tiny computer. I’ll have to make sure I hide this one away in secure places.
Ok, this morning I got off to a bad start. I woke up some time between 4 and 5am to find someone scrambling out of my tent. I jumped out and chased them a short way in my boxer-shorts as they jumped into a car and drove away. I came back to the tent and at first glance thought they had gotten away empty handed. I checked again and saw my camera was missing, it had been in the entrance of the tent in a bag which they had gone through, for some reason they had also taken my toothbrush, toothpaste and a bar of soap. I was annoyed but checked around and my stove and pans were still in place, I got into the main area of the tent and checked to make sure my wallet was still there, it was. Then I noticed my laptop bag was gone, this is when I got a little more angry. The bag had my laptop, external Hard drive and my folder with paperwork. The paperwork included my qualification certificates, Insurance cover note, Motorbike logbook and some other less important things.
I packed my stuff away as quickly as I could and went to the petrol station to call the police. There were cameras around the petrol station so I hoped that maybe the car had been captured on them. The police arrived and took the details, checked the cameras but they were not on there. They said they would send the report to my home address in the UK. I then set off up to Amsterdam, arriving here at about 8am. I managed to find a hostel pretty quickly, locked my stuff in a locker and set off to the library to change all of my passwords.
I’m actually not as stressed about this as I think I probably should be, I figure that there is nothing I can do about it now so there is no point dwelling on it. I have booked myself in to the hostel for 2 nights and have replaced the missing camera, toothbrush, toothpaste etc. The certificates and paperwork should be easy enough to get replaced and posted out to me in Spain. The three or four people I have told about this said that it is fairly common in Holland, the policeman I reported it to even went so far as to say ‘Holland is full of villains’. I’m going to take the next 2 days to relax before I set off through Germany.
