Yes, I know a war is going on and I am very far away. So I will contribute to the war effort at least by showing you that there are some beautiful and quiet places in the world ... like Amsterdam!
I was there for just 3 days, but in some ways it was even more fun than a week in Germany during the world cup. Just for the simple reason that there aren't too many cars ... exactly the way I like it! You either bike or take the boat :-) I rented a bike for a day and it was great! Here you can see a regular bike traffic jam (waiting for the bridge to go down while a boat is crossing the canal).
They say that there are more bikes than people in this city. Maybe because people just forget them in the multi level parking lot ... amazing!
One thing is sure - every year they need to do a canal cleanup of all the bikes that were thrown/fallen to the water. Maybe they should send them to China to help with the iron shortage ;-) Anyhow, the canals are very useful to go from place to place (preferably with a boat and not with a bike, because bikes usually don't float that well). I was sitting in a beautiful coffee just off the canal, and suddenly some new clients arrived from an unpredictable direction ...
Actually, why get off the boat, if you can have the party on the boat itself?
And even when you drive a car in Amsterdam ... it is usually quite small! (that's a real car, I swear)
Yes. And there was also the world cup going on, not a big deal other than some footballs here and there.
Even in the red light district people were looking at the TV monitors instead of the windows. Go figure!
And ofcourse I couldn't leave Amsterdam without some Jewish tourism, so I went to visit the old Jewish quarter. When I stopped to look at this building that used to be an elderly house (check the sign above the door), I found this two nice dudes having their dinner outside. Isn't that beautiful ? :-)
One general thing about my trip in Europe ... the weather was excellent. I didn't have one drop of rain in 10 days. When I was in Netherlands, it was raining in Germany. When I was in Germany, it rained in Netherlands. And when I was back in Amsterdam ... guess what, it was sunny Again :-) That is why I chose to go to the artificial beach, just in the middle of the city (as usual, nothing compares to the beach in Israel. But it was still fun :-)
As you probably noticed ... I wasn't on any of the photos above, so just to prove you that I actually was in Amsterdam myself, here is a picture of me doing some juggling in a local music festival.
That's it for now. I'll try to post some more pictures from Berlin in the near future.
Stay strong!
