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August 14th-20th
Bed and Breakfast Annemarie
tel: 625 67 48

August 14
We moved. Hotel Utopia was not Utopic (unless, of course you like windows that fall out of their frames when you open them... and constant smoke. and warnings not to touch things like light switches. and drains that don't drain. and really really lumpy narrow beds.), which we could tell when we checked in, but we couldn't bring oursleves to wait in the 2 hour queue for hotel bookings elsewhere. we did later, only to dicover that thing were even more expensive. but, we stopped by the Homo Monument, and the guy working at the kiosk gave us a bed and breakfast phone number. It is.. so much nicer. we have the whole floor of a flat, and it's cheaper. although still out of budget. ah well.
We saw the anne frank house last night. It's suprising how big it is- you'd think the workers in the store downstairs would notice that the 3rd, 4th, and attic of their building was suddenly gone. it was very cool.
--christi

I am soooo happy about our new lodging. yay. Of course, it was hard to tear Christi away from the first place we stayed. This is a very touristy city, it's like Fishermans Warf around here, except no seals, which is a good thing, cuz who would want seals hanging around their canals? But they do have a lot of herons. I think people feed them breadctrumbs or something, cuz they like to perch next to cafe tables like large non yucky pigeons (pigeons are flying rats)

One surprising thing here is the number of didjeridus. There are more digeridus around here then there are weiner dogs in Prague (I didn't mention this earlier, but I'm pretty sure weiner dogs must be the czech national pet, cuz they were way more than half of all the dogs we saw.) We blundered into a didj shop this morning, where i forced christi to hang out for too long while i tried playing every single one of them. if i played better, i'd prolly get one.
Yesturday we stopped by Steim but did not manage to get a tour out of them. Tried some name dropping, but it didn't help. (i picked good names too, the receptionist had just been talking to one of them on the phone.) Steim is, of course, the coolest thing in Amsterdam that I know about, but I think they might be more cool in the theoretical sense. Like, they have very nifty output. Otherwise, it's more like going on vacation and trying to see your favorite software company. Which people do, strangely enough. There's software companies around here too. We passed some dot nl's.

The one thing that every youngish tourist (even at the ripe old age of 25) does here and that's visit a "coffee shop." But we are not going to, because we know our mothers read this webpage. (please note halos developing in rolls of pictures being sent back)

Holland is the only place in the world where it's legal for same sex couples to marry, but only Dutch citizens, not tourists. If you happen to read the newspaper (we don't cuz we're lazy and they're all in dutch anyway) and see that this has changed, email us immediately. I'm not sure how hard it is to get citizenship, but, you know, this is a nice city.
Nonsensically yours,
celeste

August 14
Well, it's official. I have forgotten ALL of my computer passwords. Tried to log into some machines from home and couldn't remember a single one of them. Dern it.
Christi has been down with a cold for a couple of days and just now ventured forth into the world again. So we haven't done that much since the last update except i read 3 novels. It was kind of strange at first. i would look up from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency because i would hear a boat out on the canal or some people yelling in dutch, sounds coming in thru the window and i would be momentarily disoriented. The i would think, "oh yeah i'm in amsterdam." and go back to reading.
We have a stove where we are, so i can do some home cooking (prolly what made christi feel ill in the first place.)

We went out on a canal boat ride with about 9 people on a tour. Everybody but 2 Norweigans, the boat pilot and us two saintly electrogirls was smoking weed. The quality of tour information being offered quickly fell. Actually, I'm not sure if the Norweigans just didn't speak much english, or were smoking too, since they were behind me. What's the point of this anecdote? just say no to drugged boat tours! (Except actually, even given the low level of discourse it was very fun. we went under a bridge that was less than a meter above water, so we all had to duck. thought somebody was going to bean themselves on it, but nobody did.)
We also we to a comedy show called Boom Chicago, run by American expatriots. They did their regual show + a 45 minute improv routine for which I (yes, me personally, the loudest member of the audience) suggested the theme "buying a fish." So there were a lot of fish.

Today we saw the national museum and the Van Gogh Museum (but we did not see any Van Gogh Gogh Dancers). The national museum was pretty good. We saw three images of St. John the Baptist, including a painting of Solome holding his head on a platter, a sculpture of his head being lopped off, and a sculpture of just his head. No mention was given to the curing of headaches. Still, we are so far no closer to locating or visiting any holy relics of poor St.John.

The Van Gogh Museum was pretty vacous. Three floors with at least five Van Gogh paintings. Prolly more than five, but still disappointing. The Munch Museum is a better art museum dedicated to a single artist, but there wasn't much Van Gogh in the Munch Museum either.

Still, we REALLY like Amsterdam. It's a lot like home, in berkeley. The streets are dirty and filled with stoned tourists. Just kidding. Actually, it's hard to say whether there are more stoned tourists around People'sPark than there around some places here. But it's full of bicycles, which is cool. And there are no slums. And there is no politically powerful group who views me as a threat to morality, which is quite nice. We're going to look into obtaining permantent residency in The Netherlands. Not sure I want to stay forever, but it would be a nice break. Actually, I think many of the comics in the aforementioned show, Boom Chicago are fleeing the Bush years. And, of course, I want to marry Christi. And if or when we came back, California and the feds would have no choice but to honor our marriage rights.
Having a great time. Wish you were here.
-Celeste

Thank goodness I am feeling better. You know that the health of amsterdam depends on the health of the dykes.

or so I've heard.

anyway,we're in amsterdam. celeste has already said everything. even if I had gone first, she would have changed everything that I'd written. so yeah. how about that local sports team that's been in the news lately?
--christi

August 19
Celeste did the laundry this morning! So now, all of our clothes are blue! actually, it's a lovely shade. I'm quite glad that I like blue. Celeste would also like to say that she is planning on moving to the netherlands. This is of course after moving to sweden, london, prague, and copenhagen.

We looked at the red light district a couple of nights ago.. it's very strange. It seems that every single doorway and window has a half naked person behind glass, with a red light shining on them. And like the entire dutch navy was wandering around in the streets. Didn't stay long- it was a little scary. We went to the modern art museum in amsterdam this morning. Very nice. I can't think of anything witty to say.

We are leaving tomorrow to head to frankfurt.
--christi

Hey now, I'm serious this time. I like it here. The laws are better. And everybody seems to have little boats they party in the canals on. I want a canal party boat!
I bought a digeridu. I am weak and caved in to temptation. It's really nifty. I really need 4 digeridus in my life, so it was a good descision.
We went to the Gratched Festival concerts, well, 2 out of 70. The first one was kids music and featured pre teen shimmying gogo dancers and songs like She'll be Coming Round the Mountain in Dutch. The second one had nifty classical music. It was free and in the canal and very well attended. The canal was plugged with boats and all the boats would blow their horns during the applause. The people just loved the music. And it was hard stuff, like Shastakovich and Rachmoninoff. Appreciative classical audiences! How cool is that! People lined the canal for a long block on either side of the stage and the bridges were impassible.
Turns out the reason I could not log into my regular mail server is because it got moved, renamed and telnet turned off. So I may not have forgotten the password after all. Xkey, tho, I can't remeber anything more than two letters of. :(
-- celeste