Queen's Day . 2006-04-29

Today we went to Amsterdam for Queen's Day celebrations. We left pretty early, around 1030 in the morning as there were rumours that it may become so crowded that you cant even get in. So we went earlier, but I had my reservations; which were proven wrong the moment we reached Delft train station. We had to wait for another half hour as the train we were scheduled to take was full. After hanging around on the platform, the train finally arrived and we managed to get on, barely. It was like morning rush hour, only everybody was rushing to Amsterdam. When we stopped at Haarlem, the passengers suddenly emptied the train! We didn't even hear any announcement. Probably some track fault along the way from Haarlem to Amsterdam? Anyway, after some enquiries, we were told to take the 300 bus to either Hoofdorp or Schipol and take another train to Amsterdam. The bus ride was interesting though; we managed to see some architecture featured during our lectures in Msc 1, mostly by Nio; we finally got to see the mouldy styrofoam bus-stop or post office and the serpentine bus-stops . The remaining trip to Amsterdam from Hoofdorp was uneventful, accept for the time when Keith was nudged by a Japanese boy on the train and his mother apologised, to which Keith, with his many months of Japanese self teaching, replied "Daijobu" (forget abt the spelling already...)...the Jap lady looked at us with quizzical eyes...I smiled back wryly...'yes we are wannabes'....haha...
Amsterdam... was really crowded...there were people in every corner. The security fences put up made it look kinda intimidating; hope they dont have to be used. Some of the girls brought stuff to exchange with the locals. ( Hawking is permitted only on Queen's Day, which happens to be the birthday of the present Queen's mother, I think) Towards the end of the afternoon, while the girls were busily grabbing cheap stuff, Dina lost her wallet right after she made a purchase with a 50 euro bill; sounds suspicious no? The rest of the evening left us making a police report and going home a little affected by the dent in the outing.