Back from Amsterdam!
It's been crazy saying goodbye to everyone.
On Friday evening I went down to Arras to say goodbye to the Canadian guides down there that work at Vimy and Beaumont-Hamel. I've gotten to know most of them through the 7 months that I've already been here in France.
I went to Amsterdam on Saturday morning, and got back yesterday evening, where I went to visit my friend Sebastian (who drove down from Germany). We got there so late in the afternoon that all of the youth hostels were full, and we couldn't get a hotel room for one night. So, we spent the evening sleeping in his car. At least it was only one night, and he decided to come down by car and not by train!
The city is quite beautiful, with the tree-lined canals and Flemish houses (although I've seen a lot of that style here in the North of France). True, the city does have a dark side (sex and drugs, etc.), but I found the Dutch people all really friendly. When I got lost, and was looking at a map, some Dutch guy stopped on his own and asked if I needed help, then showed me where I was on the map, and how to get to where I was going. You'd think in a big city like Amsterdam that the local residents would be fed up with tourists, but they weren't.
Anyway, I'm off to Switzerland this Wednesday to visit Conrad, a friend of mine from high school.
A+,
Stephen