The Netherlands: Texture | #Europe2015

Upon arrival at the airport we had to find a bus that took us to this place (pardon the stain on the map). 

We had to ask the very nice bus driver to tell us when to get off, as it was getting dark and we couldn't understand a word that was being said over the bus speakers, or read anything on the screen that announced the stops. Our first night was to be in The Flying Pig hostel on the far coast from Amsterdam, a hip, eclectic, semi-famous hostel nestled in-between quaint Dutch beach cottages. Loud electric music and a game of poker welcomed us once inside, and a room with painted sea creatures was where we stayed. The next morning we ate our breakfast of yogurt and toast with jam (and they had Cocoa Puffs) and then got on the train towards Amsterdam, on which a man with recumbent bike made room for us in one of the cars.

In simple terms: Amsterdam was too cool for me. 

It exuded hip and green and vibrant and young. The first thing I saw were all these bikes and I knew that Amsterdam would have this kind of youth - one that had nothing to do with actual age - that I probably just couldn't hang with. Despite my lack of confidence at the leveling of my coolness with that of the city, it was like the buildings themselves were full of energy.

To me it seemed like so much of Amsterdam's identity was expressed through art. Whether it was the bunny figures or the giant statue in the middle of the fountain, or the park that was literally lined end to end with those boards where they have a cutout for your face and different figures painted below, there was art everywhere. And there was this almost defiant feeling to that art that it wasn't just for visitors or tourists but that it was for the community, the families and artists and people that live there full time and just thrive off the stuff. The city was a mix of textures - of dark and light, of bright and dull, of concrete and water, of brick and wood and grass.

We walked to the Van Gogh Museum, walking under the walkway pictured below and past most of the pictures above. It was on this walk that we passed the park with the rabbits and the flower garden squished between canal bridges. Every building was a different shape, color, character. 

 There were moments in Amsterdam where it felt like I was in some sort of Dr. Suess book or something, where it seemed like the buildings weren't exactly straight or they were leaning in or over. The streets are windy and sometimes narrow and all the street names were mostly indecipherable. At other times, it felt like I was in some other ancient place, like Budapest or something. 

The influences of so many places has little touches all throughout the city, but somehow makes it all the more colorful, interesting, alive, and distinctly Amsterdam.