My Mummy is here! Hooray!

After two months of solo travel, I was finally heading to Amsterdam airport to pick up my Mum. I was very excited... maybe a little too excited. One thing I pride myself on is the ability to sleep anywhere, anytime. Man, in college the soccer world cup (where Australia beat Croatia) was being watched in the room next door, but I didn´t hear a thing. Not even the boys running up and down the hall screaming with victory could wake me up. I´ve fallen asleep at the speedway. I make falling asleep on the bus home from work look like child´s play. But the night before her arrival, I kept waking up, afraid that I had overslept and missed picking her up. I woke up at three, looked at the clock and went back to sleep. I woke up at 4:30, looked at the clock, groaned, and went back to sleep. By the time I woke up again at 6:30, I though, b***** this, got up and began to get ready.

After staking out prime position at the arrival gate, I couldn´t help but notice the other people around me who were awaiting their loved ones. They had signs, banners, small children holding flowers, and even songs that they all sang when their beloved emerged through those doors. I felt severely under-dressed in the welcoming party department. The only thing I had was a croissant for Mum, and a camera to capture that ´oh my goodness, I´m here!´ look on Mum´s face. Lucky for me, the OTT (over the top) welcoming committee had welcomed their person before Mum arrived, and had left, so I didn´t look as bad. Something that made me giggle were all the English lads arriving at the gate. I think when they were all in primary school a memo went around that said, if we are ever arriving at an airport, when we bust through those gates I reckon it would be hilarious if we pretended that all those people were there for us! Ready, hands in lads - Mooother Englaaaand! And all of the English lads I saw kept up their end of the deal. Without fail, they would come through those gates acting like movie stars saying, thank you, thank you, I´m here now, you can all go home. Hilarious the first time, but after the fifth lad with a crew cut, it gets a bit stale...

And then there she was! ...But she had come through the door I wasn´t expecting, so the ´I can´t believe I´m here!´ photo didn´t work quite as well as I planned. I was soooo happy! As much as I love traveling solo, it was the best thing to see my Mum again.

After loading her up with her backpack (my Mama turtle! HA!) and eating our croissants, we heading to our hostel to check in. This hostel is a bit strange. It´s the same hostel I stayed in for my first night in Europe, but it seems to have gotten stranger. It seems like a magnet for people who are just a little bit different/strange. On the night before I picked up Mum, I was sitting at a table writing a blog when a young woman sat down next to me, and proceeded to read my palm. Apparently I am going to die young, around fifty years old. She also offered to read my cards, before asking me what religion I was (she looked Muslim, but I didn´t realise they were into witchcraft...). Then there´s the guy who insists on clomping and dragging his feet everywhere, like his kneecaps didn´t exist. It would take him forever to get anywhere, with all that friction going on under his soles. Then there was the young man who was about 90cm tall. Then there was this tall lanky guy (who I think was Slovenia) who would just sit on the couch upstairs and just stare. He was there when we´d leave in the morning, and still there if we came back three hours later. And he sat down with his breakfast next to us one morning, didn´t eat anything, just stared at his plate. And lastly there was this small Asian girl who kept falling asleep at the table. Interesting bunch.

After dumping our things in our room, we heading into the city to see some sights. To get there though, we have to walk through the Red Light district. I had warned Mum about it, but I think she was still a little shocked. She burst into tears once we got to the city, saying she didn´t know how I did this all by myself when I first got here! I think all of my phone calls home crying when I first got to Europe had painted a terrible picture of my life in Amsterdam, but it was more that I was just homesick. Even so, I´m still not sure if I actually like Amsterdam. Out of all the cities I´ve visited, Amsterdam is the place that I feel the least safe. Even in war-torn Bosnia, I would never be worried that someone is going to mug me or anything.

After Mum got over her initial culture shock, we got some of my favourite chips and mayonnaise (or mayonnaise with a side of chips - these Dutch love mayonnaise!) and took a walk down the main shopping district. It was so exciting to see Mum marveling over all the same things that I did when I first got here - look at all the bikes! We have to pay for toilets?! Look at those strange ´fast food´ boxes! Don´t people smoke a lot here?! Look at all that mayonnaise! Can you smell that?! I felt like a real seasoned traveler, showing her the ropes and navigating the city!

Our first touristic experience was the house of Anne Frank. Mum had always been a fan of the story ever since she had to read it in school. I had read part of the book, but had then seen the movie, and thought it was an amazing story as well. So we were both really excited to be there! While there is no original furniture left in the apartment (it was all taken, and then Anne´s father didn´t want it replicated in the museum), you are walking the same stairs that they did, you are looking out the same windows that they did, you are walking through the same concealed entrance that they did. Amazing stuff. The photos and pictures that Anne had glued to her bedroom wall are still there, along with the original wallpaper. It is amazing to think that it was her who put those there - do you think you could still find her DNA, like if a piece of her hair had got caught in the glue? Could you swab the handrail of the stairs and tell who had lived there? It was all very surreal. And it was great to see Mum so excited! The last part of our tour was really confronting - it was a section devoted to the concentration camps. There were all these horrible pictures of their lives in the camps, and movies with interviews from people who had seen it. It made me wonder if I would be able to stomach going to one of those camps on my trip. I had been told it is an important thing to see, but even looking at photographs of it made me feel sick. I don´t know if I could handle the real thing.

Much of our first day in Amsterdam was devoted to the search for specific types of food. Mum had meet some lovely Dutch people on the flight into Amsterdam, and they had made a list of things that she must see, do and eat. First up on that list was to find a coffee shop (actual coffee, not the coffee shops that Amsterdam is famous for...) called Winkle (which means ´shop´ in Dutch) and try the best apple pie in Holland. While I haven´t tasted all of the apple pie in Holland to know that it is in fact the best apple pie in Holland, I can safely say that it was the best apple pie that I have tasted. We also had some peppermint tea, which was basically just peppermint stalks and leaves in a glass with boiling water poured over top - yummy!

On our way back to the hostel, we came across the China Town of Amsterdam. You just can´t get two minutes noodles in supermarkets in Europe, which is such a bummer because sometimes you just feel like some Megoreng! So we ducked into the store where I stocked up on some ramen goodness. That´s number two on our food hunt down...

Number three was to get some Thai food - one of Mum´s and my favourite foods, yet again something that is difficult to find in Europe (I have it at least once a week at home!). We got some yummy curry take away, and sat in the hostel courtyard eating while I showed Mum my photos and we chatted about my travels so far. Mum was sooooo tired from her flight (I obviously didn´t inherit my awesome sleeping habits from her!) that we went to bed fairly early. The next morning Mum said that she had had one of the best night sleeps ever, which was strange, as we were in a noisy hostel. But Mum had come prepared - she had industrial strength ear plugs with the highest decibel rating, and I had given her my sleeping mask to block out all that nasty light - equals a good night sleep!

The next day Mum and I went on a day trip to Volendam and Marken, two traditional Dutch villages about half an hour by bus from Amsterdam. When we arrived we noticed that all of the houses in Volendam keep their curtains open - why was this (apparently we would have been told on the bus tour if we weren´t so stingy and just opted for independent bus tickets...)? Was it a leftover from war, where your curtains had to be open so the Nazis could make sure there were no illegal Jews hiding in your home? Was it just tradition - your parents always left their curtain open, so you don´t know anything different? My guess was that they had restrictions on their electricity - there were no lights on in any of the houses, and people were sitting by the windows to read their newspapers. Similar to our council insisting on four minutes showers and only watering your garden with a bucket, I think the council of Volendam insisted on people not turning their lights on between certain hours of the day. See, no need for that expensive bus tour!

Fourth on our list in our search for food were these cinnamon biscuits that a friend of Mum´s had told her we must try - problem was she couldn´t remember the name of the biscuits, and asking whether the biscuits we had found had cinnamon in them didn´t go down too well with the store staff - what is the Dutch word for cinnamon?! But we think we bought the right ones - either way they were delicious! They just smelt like Christmas!

We then headed to the quaint village of Marken, which was once an island but had been connected to the mainland by a dike many years ago. After wandering around, checking out the matching houses that only seemed to come in pine green, cashmere cream and midnight black, walked along the harbour and found some lunch. We had a look around some of the souvenir shops too, and after what seemed like a couple of hours, we picked out some nice gifts for family back home (it´s seriously a difficult task!). A quick visit to the Marken museum (which showed all the traditional costumes the Dutch would wear at Marken) and we jumped on a bus back to Amsterdam.

I love watching Mum around birds, it makes me giggle so much. She is absolutely petrified that they will fly over and land on her, which, as I pointed out, has never ever happened. So whenever one of the millions of pigeons of Europe comes anywhere near her, she gives yelps and jumps saying, get away from me! We were sitting on the pier at Market eating our lunch when some friendly little ducks paddled over to us. Mum stiffens up straight away, and being the lovely daughter that I am I proceeded to feed the ducks the left overs of Mum´s lunch. That made them very happy, and in an attempt to get as much food as they could, they would randomly arch up like they were going to fly up to the pier and sit down next to us, something which made Mum very uptight, and consequently made me giggle! Poor Mum.

The next day Mum and I went to find the fifth item of food on our list - Old Amsterdam cheese. Luckily, we didn´t have to search too far, as there was actually a cheese shop just around the corner from us! We were going on a canal cruise that night, so decided to purchase some different cheeses, some salami (for Mum), some tapenade, some bread, and some wine to make a yummy picnic dinner to take with us. Goodies in hand, we headed back to the hostel and stored our food in the fridge before going for a walk to Vondelpark (which had been to on my first trip to Amsterdam).

We had heard about the canal cruise from that travel show on Channel Nine in Australia called ´Getaway´. Actually, seeing Amsterdam on that show was one of the main reasons Mum wanted to go to Amsterdam. The canal cruise goes for about an hour and a half and is free (except for giving your captain tips at the end). A maximum of ten people can fit in the boat, so it is a lovely, cosy tour. There are these huge tourist boats that parade up and down the canals all day, but you don´t actually have a person telling you what you´re seeing, just an audio guide in 17 different languages, to which you can´t ask questions. These tour boats are the enemy of the Free Canal Cruise! And because our boat is much smaller than the big tourist boats, we can navigate parts of the canals that are inaccessible to the big boats. Take that! And it turns out that the captain of our boat was actually the captain that had been interviewed on Getaway! What a famous fellow!

Mum had gone to the fridge to get our fabulous picnic lunch and discovered that some b****** had eaten all of our cheese. I was very angry. Why steals cheese?! I wasn´t annoyed that I no longer had any cheese, because it was easy for us to go and buy some more - I was annoyed because some crummy person had the nerve to go into the fridge, rummage around our plastic bag and take it all. What an arrogant, selfish person. Grrrrrrr. If someone took my camera, I would be annoyed because I didn´t have my camera anymore. But stealing cheese?! It is the fact that they did it that annoys me the most.

Fresh cheese in hand, Mum and I jumped aboard our vessel for our canal cruise with a couple from the US, and three guys from Canada. We offered around our wine, saying, we´re not going to drink all of this between the two of us! But sure enough, one canal cruise later, Mum and I emerged from the boat with purple teeth and a sunny disposition. Ha! It was a great cruise - our captain Deigo was very knowledgeable, and pointed out some really interesting sights along the way, including the skinniest house in Amsterdam and the numerous prostitute windows that had been closed down by the Amsterdam council and turned into ´fashion windows´ with mannequins and clothing. Which I think if they keep doing, prostitution will return to the streets, and there will be serious consequences.

After our last night in Amsterdam, we were checking out - Mum would be catching a train to Paris, and later that night I would catch an overnight train to Vienna. But not without a little drama first! Mum lost her passport. Ooops. We searched through her bags, through my bags, I checked at the reception, etc. We knew she had it when she checked in, as they need it to complete your reservation. We eventually found it sitting on the windowsill of our room, where she must have put it when we first arrived, and it had been sitting there ever since. We are so lucky that Glen, our cleaner, is a nice boy and hadn´t taken it (or perhaps it was that he was a bad cleaner, and hadn´t cleaned the windows and therefore didn´t find it...). But anyway, crisis was averted. We learnt a very valuable lesson, didn´t we Mum? Always keep your passport in your money pouch, and your money pouch in your handbag...

After three days together, I had to say goodbye to Mum again, which almost felt as bad as when I left Brisbane two months ago! I waved her off at the train station and headed to the library to bum around on the internet before catching my overnight train to Vienna.

Talk to you soon!

Love Hayley x