The Poetist

Highlights:

The Van Gogh museum
watching a bad movie (The Parking lot) in a random coffeeshop
the beautiful canals
the beautifully classic architecture
Anne Frank’s house
Dutch pancakes
coffeeshops

Lowlights:

losing €110 on my train ticket to Amsterdam
the unexpectedly cold weather
discovering that unsavory characters start appearing in the streets after 1am
being lost in Amsterdam after 1am
leaving a piece of clothing behind in the hostel
cold apple pie

***
The best thing about the Van Gogh museum was the letters. The exhibit was replete with letters written by the artist to his brother, and his artistic contemporaries. Given that there are so many artists that we memorize facts as about as children, I really enjoyed getting more perspective on Van Gogh through his personal letters.

***
I have to admit, the Amsterdam segment of my trip was colored by a train debacle that actually took place in Paris. My friend and I obviously bought our train tickets in advance of our trip, and arrived at the train station armed with our itinerary and confirmation numbers. The ticket agent, however, would only issue the ticket if presented with the same credit card that was used to purchase the ticket. Not wanting to use that particular card on my trip, I left it in San Francisco. Very much to my dismay, the station agent offered no other alternative. So we hopped onto my friend’s Blackberry.

First, I tried logging into my account to get the information, but then we remembered that online bank accounts rarely display your full account number – and even if it had, I would need the expiration date too. We then got the idea to call one of my roommates in San Francisco (even though it was 1am) and have him read off the card information to me. Unfortunately I had left my cellphone in Dublin (my phone couldn’t even keep time in Europe), but I knew I could get my roommates’ numbers from Facebook! My friend pulled Facebook up on his BB… and I realized that I didn’t know my password – without a QWERTY keyboard, at least. Just for the record – I have a *very* secure password – it’s a combination of letters, numbers, AND symbols. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the particular symbols, just where they were on the keyboard. I had one last option – I called MasterCard. But MasterCard, in case you didn’t know, doesn’t have 24 hour service. So there I was – I had tried every option I could think of and we were running out of time. About 5 minutes before the train departed I decided that if I wanted to continue my trip I would have to buy a new ticket. With hindsight (which is always 20/20), I realized I had had one more option – I could have spoken to the agent in French. It’s been my experience in France that if you’re speaking English, a person won’t try to help you – keyword, try. As it was, the agent first spoke to me in English and I answered in-kind.

I’m going to write a letter to SNCF (en français, of course), to try and get my money back. It’s ridiculous that they made me buy a second train ticket when I had clearly already paid for the first one. I doubt I’ll get anything more than a credit towards another ticket, but that would at least be something.
*
And so I entered Amsterdam smarting over the €110 hit my vacation budget had just taken, but the wonder and craziness of Amsterdam helped me forget.