So my Icelandic, German and Latvian friends have moved out, and I'll be moving on soon, too. I've bought a bicycle for cheap from a junky at junky bridge (ask anyone from Amsterdam what that means and they'll tell you), and I've rigged it up as best I could for travel. Where to next? East, I think. Maybe germany, then maybe into scandinavia while the weather holds.

Oh, and sorry I haven't posted in a while, and had to give all the posts at once. It's sometimes hard to get to a computer for any length of time. Now there are five new posts, so read them all in order, otherwise you'll be very confused.

So Fleur (See previous episode...) knows I'm in Holland. We've been exchanging e-mails since BC. She wanted to see me, but I didn't know if I wanted to meet her as a friend, meet her boyfriend, pretend nothing had ever happened between us. Finally, she told me to meet her on monday the 26th at the meeting point at amsterdam centraal station - no expectations. Half a day later I got another e-mail. She was calling it all off, there would be no meeting. You keep your memories, I'll keep mine, she said. So I sent her back the message that I was going anyway and that I'd wait three hours, and she could be there or not. So I'm here now, at the meeting point, waiting for a girl that isn't coming, next to an accordean player playing an appropriately tragic song, writing this.

So I've been in Amsterdam for a while now. I've met loads of good people, was adopted by an icelandic and a latvian woman who have been filling me with icelandic shark meat and ukrainian pepper-vodka (ouch on both counts). I've befriended the staff of an aussie bar here, and have become a de facto tenant of a student building at the Amsterdam University. I've spent much of the uncharacteristically good weather here on the beach in Zandfoort - it's not a nudist beach, but the dutch seem to think nothing of going around topless, even the pretty ones (doing my best not to stare)! I've also made the requisite trip to the red light district for some culture shock. What was most shocking was not the women in the windows but the drunken tourists in the streeets. A drunken pack of englishmen welcome their friend back from a romp with a girl inside one of the private rooms with hoots and hollers. He responds, "I fucked her brains out! I really fucked her brains out!" Hmf. I'm sure he rocked her world. Very strange place - weird dynamics. There were only men in the street, only women in the windows. The sexes seperated by glass - and by money, I guess.

Now apparently, the clerks at the ticket desk at the Lille train station are not used to getting requests like, "Give me a ticket to somewhere, anywhere, as long as it's cheap", because they couldn't help me unless I named a city. Pushpinned to the wall behind the clerk was a map of europe, so I chose a city at random. "Give me the cheapest ticket to Rotterdam.". Well I had picked well because there was a very cheap ticket to Rotterdam via Brussels. I paid the woman and was on my way. The train ride to Brussels was short and uneventful, and I didn't get a chance to see more than the train station in Brussels before my connection left. I met some americans on the train and learned about the reputation of Rotterdam: voted the most boring city in Europe several years running; No wonder the tickets had been so cheap! Now one American told me that if I wanted to come to Amsterdam, instead, that he could hook me up with a place to stay. That sounded especially good since the sun was going down and I had no place to stay in Rotterdam. Now tickets are checked on board the train over here, and my ticket had been checked earlier; It was unlikely that it would be checked again before Amsterdam, my new friend Ron told me. I decided to chance it. So I let Rotterdam pass by without regret, and the tense hour-long illegal ride began. Time ticked by without incident until we reached the outskirts of Amsterdam - then, the conductor reappeared and started demanding tickets. When he finally arrived at Ron and I, he looked at us expectantly and I was about to give the lame excuse that I had gotten confused between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but then his look softened and he said "Wait, I've already checked you two." and walked away. He had checked my ticket, but it said "Destination: Rotterdam" on it! It seems even the Dutch get confused between the two!

So Lille was beginning to wear a little thin on me. First off, the directrice of the hostel turned out to be a tyrant who would continually berate and verbally abuse her workers; Secondly, the weather had been consistently awful for a good while; and thirdly, I had failed entirely to find a bike for cheap - it turns out that the french simply do not bike! So as I said, I was getting fed up already when the following events occured.

Alright, so I had told the directrice that I would be leaving that day, but found that I was scheduled to work anyways and since there were only two of us to clean the whole hostel, I couldn't very well abandon my friend Jorge to do it all himself. So I was ticked off when Celine, the directrice, went off the handle - as usual. So I just walked away, but I was muttering to myself, and I said that the directrice was "folle" within hearing distance of the wrong set of ears. A staff member heard my relatively mild insult (It was certainly mild compared to some of the names she'd given me!) and reported it back to Celine! So she and her hulking boyfriend, who was twice my size, stormed up to my room, and after an insane rant ordered me to leave within the half-hour. Now remember that I'd been living there for three weeks, so my things were pretty spread out. So half an hour was a tall order. So at a certain point - I had still not exceeded my half-hour - the directrice's boyfriend decided that I was not moving quickly enough. The man was blind with rage; there was no reasoning with him. After he repeatedly threatened me with violence I warned him that I would call the police to protect me as I gathered my things. He, indignant, insisted I do so, as he assured me that they had a very close relationship with the police. And so I went to the phone and started to dial. Now imagine my surprise at being put on hold by the french equivalent of 911. Well, this was too much for the hot-headed boyfriend, and he grabbed me my the throat, strangled me, rammed me into the wall and eventually threw me into the street. I could not fight back or escape with my heavy backpack on my back. So, now outside, I called the police again, and they assured me someone would come by that afternoon. Brilliant. So when the police finally showed up, they could find no marks on my neck visible enough to sustain charges, all the witnesses to the assault had gone mum or disappeared, and the police were unwilling to do anything. In short, I got no justice. But I think the message had been clearly delivered by the universe, that it was time to leave Lille, and, why not france too? :)