This weekend has been the craziest, most irresponsible, most random weekend of my life. It all starts with being homeless in Belgium on Friday. Jessica and I took a train from London to Brussels, with the intention of then taking a train from Brussels to Amsterdam. Much to our surprise, when we arrived in Brussels around 11:00 p.m., the last train to Amsterdam for the night had already left. We missed it.

After panicking, then laughing, then almost crying, but being a big girl and dealing with it, I accepted the fact that I was trapped in Belgium and had nowhere to sleep for the night. At first, I contemplated saving money and camping out on a bench in the train station, but after looking around at the people left in the station at that time of night, I decided that was the worst possible idea. So then I had the brilliant idea to ask someone where the nearest hotel was. Of course, after asking about 4 different people and having them frown and shake their head at me, it occurred to me that no one spoke English and I needed to figure this out myself.

Jessica and I walked down the street and stopped at about 3 hotels before giving up and staying at the hotel that only charged us 40 euro/night (ironically, this is less than a night at our hostel we had already booked in Amsterdam, and still had to pay for). The man at the front desk was very nice and spoke English – which was pretty much the deciding factor in choosing that hotel. We headed to our room, and encountered our first problem, we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights. There were switches everywhere but they were useless. After rummaging around in the dark, Jessica breaking a lamp, and a disgusted look from someone passing in the hallway, the nice front desk man came to our rescue. Apparently, you have to swipe your room card inside the room to turn on and off your electricity. When the lights turned on, nice front desk man realized that a lamp was broken. Right when we thought we were about to incur another unforeseeable cost, he said, “oh, it seems your lamp is broken, sorry for the inconvenience, let me upgrade you to a better room.” I know it was wrong, but instead of admitting that we were the ones that broke the lamp, we just took the upgrade. And it was worth it. We got to stay in a triple room that was huge and luxurious.

We put our things down and went back to the lobby to ask nice front desk man if there were any nearby clubs that we could go to. We figured if we were stuck in Brussels, we might as well make the most of it. And that we did. We went to a club called Fiesta. They gave us membership cards. So I even have a souvenir from Brussels! The club was so fun, it was quite a rave.

When we were ready to head back to our hotel, finding a taxi was more difficult than we imagined it would be. I tried asking for help, but no one could understand me. Here is where I became a genius in my drunken state and realized that maybe if these people couldn’t speak English, they could speak French. They could. I asked someone for help in French and 5 minutes later we had a taxi. Thank God I remembered enough broken high-school French to do that, otherwise who knows what would have happened to us.

The next morning we woke up very early and finally caught a train to Amsterdam. Of course the moment we arrived in Amsterdam we already had men following us and grabbing our arms and most likely trying to pick-pocket us. Good thing we were warned and knew to just run away, so we ran, to the nearest taxi, and headed to our hostel.

Our hostel was quite the experience. The red velvet carpet, terrifying spiral stair case that looked like it could collapse at any second, and the pleasant smell of dirty human beings pretty much describe the vibe of the hostel. Jessica and I shared a room with 4 other people - we got lucky. Tim and Ryan had to share a room with 8 other people. It was an interesting experience. You meet some cool people in hostels who have amazing life stories.

We spent Saturday mostly walking around Amsterdam. I have never walked so much in one day in my life, but it was my favorite walking I’ve ever done. The city is beautiful. I love the buildings, the canals, the bridges, the thousands of people on bicycles, the cobblestone roads, the relaxed vibe you get from the people, the coffee shops, the art, and just the overall culture of Amsterdam.

After walking around and enjoying the city, we went to the Van Gogh Museum. Coolest museum I have ever been to. Van Gogh’s work is intoxicating. I could stare at a painting for an hour and not get bored. I got lost in the brush strokes. He has such simple strokes, and all of them together create such an intricate painting. I felt like I could see into the souls of the people he painted in his portraits. The faces don’t look real, but his view of the world is just so accurate that you can tell exactly the message he was trying to display. I can’t explain it. I just loved it. The craziest part was seeing the paintings he drew before he was admitted to an asylum and comparing them to the pictures he painted during his time at the asylum. You can get a sense of what Van Gogh was going through. His paintings speak so clearly, I think I have a new appreciation for art.

After the museum, we got dinner, stopped at a pub for a little while, and then headed to the red light district. That was insane. It makes me sad to see women so objectified, but it is also just really something to see. There were probably about a hundred women, each with their own private window, displaying themselves for the night. We didn’t stay there too long.

We headed to Club Air, and it wasn’t the best. It was 90’s night or something so the music wasn’t really what we were looking for and drinks were too expensive. The crowd was an older crowd than we were looking for as well. We were so tuckered out from our long day of exploring that we decided to call it quits and head home. All day long there was beautiful, sunny weather, but our walk home that night felt colder than a Wisconsin winter.

We arrived at our hostel and our roommates were already asleep, thank God. Jessica and I headed straight for our beds. I think I fell asleep before my head even hit the pillow. I slept like a baby in that scary, crowded hostel.

In the morning, we checked out at about 10 a.m. and went to get some Amsterdam pancakes. Man, they were good. They are kind of a mix between a pancake and a crêpe. After our pancakes, we hung out at a coffee shop for a few hours before we needed to take the train back home. On our way to the coffee shop we stumbled across a man who was going to do some kind of magic show in Rembrant Square. He started the show, but a very loud Italian family would not stop talking. He asked them to stop talking, and leave, before he EXPLODED. Over a loud speaker that reached the ears of all the people in Rembrant Square, he started yelling about how this was hard work, he wasn’t being respected, and told everyone in the square to “duck off,” multiple times. Except he didn’t say duck. There are probably lots of little Dutch children who learned a new word today.

The journey back to London was made with much more success than the journey to Amsterdam. I got on the right trains and now I am safely back in my apartment in Spitalfields, London. Home sweet home.

I will never forget this weekend. I think I had one of those experiences that becomes a story that you tell for years. I am one lucky ducky.