Netherlands

Even the statues seem high and wasted in the Netherlands so it's obvious what the country is famous for. Legal drugs and prostitution is the gimmick for this picturesque city by the canals and I love countries that can be defined and isn't just a bleak version of something else, even if it is for such dark stuff as in the Netherlands. It had always been a dream to go to Amsterdam and two years ago me and my girlfriend Felicia went there to celebrate my birthday.

Since I'm a sucker for statues we started off at Museumplein and worked ourselves into the city center and you can tell right away that the legal sins make a creative city. It's also a city of cyclists on speed so you need to beware of hundreds of bikes going in every direction at full speed ahead. I prefer to walk slowly in my traditional Dutch clogs instead.

The canals and the narrow houses makes the view amazing wherever you go and we went to enjoy the scenery and not the drugs in the coffeeshops.

I had hoped that Felicia would smoke weed for the first time, because when in Amsterdam, do as the Dutch, but that would not happen. When we went down to the Red Light District, which is famous for legal prostitution, she started to cry when she saw a girl standing in the window with its famous red light as to say "please come in and have sex with me for money".

There was a weird feeling there since the place didn't attract the best crowd, at the same time as there are lots of tourists like us that just wants to get a peek inside a dark world. It's strange how this area isn't pushed aside to the suburbs but instead it's the most central place in Amsterdam. 

The next day we celebrated my birthday with a picnic in Sarphatipark, not to be confused with Vondelpark where people are allowed to have public sex. I didn't know this until after we had gotten home from Amsterdam, otherwise I would have said to Felicia "when in Amsterdam, do as the Dutch" to deaf ears. We went to have my romantic birthday dinner in the Red Light District and it felt weird in that way that I like. And then we topped it off by me designing my own ice cream at a Magnum Pleasure Store and I choose to sprinkle the white chocolate ice cream with rose petals as a tribute to my girlfriend, who I loved to spend the time in Amsterdam with. It was another great birthday spent together and I was so in love!

We visited the famous Anne Frank house, but just from outside, since the queue was too long and our interest too short. Anne Frank is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust when she documented her life in hiding in a diary between 1942-1944 during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world's most widely known books nowadays. How fitting of me to wear a T-shirt with the print "Kill 'Em All" outside the house. This T-shirt got me in trouble at the airport too when the customs thought it meant that I would kill everybody on the flight, haven't anybody heard about the band Metallica and their album Kill 'Em All?

We went by boat on the canal as the perfect ending to my birthday celebration and I wish I could live on a houseboat in Amsterdam, it seems like a dream life!

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* UPDATE

Saint Martin is a small island in the Caribbean divided since 1648 into a northern French part and a southern part called Sint Maarten that belongs to the Netherlands. It's actually the worlds least populated territory divided by two nations. The Dutch found the island to be a convenient halfway point between their colonies in New Amsterdam (present day New York) and Brazil. The Dutch and the French then divided the island between them to avoid war, but the conflicts changed the border sixteen times. In the end the French came out ahead with owning almost 2/3 of the island.

My friend Christofer and I arrived by cruise ship to Philipsburg, the capital on the Netherlands territory. We were struck by how organized they were for being a Caribbean island, and it was easy for us to get to the Princess Juliana International Airport, that has direct flights to Europe and USA. We wouldn't be going to either of those places, we just went there because of the short runway and the location of it between Maho Beach and a mountain which makes for spectacular approaches by the planes just a couple of meters over the beach. 

We went down to the beach and it didn't take long until a plane came from nowhere and approached us at high speed. It was awesome to see at such close range and they just kept on coming in all sizes.

It felt absurd to be swimming in crystal clear water while planes were hovering above our heads. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience and a check on the bucketlist for something that I had forgot to write down.

The planes appear to land dangerously close to beach goers, so the beach and airport have become a popular place for people to view aeroplane landings. In the summer of 2017 a New Zealander even died from head injuries after being propelled backwards from a jet engine blast. We kept our distance because of this and only saw hats and sand fly away.

We went to the Sunset Bar & Grill next to the beach and it was as amazing to sit there and talk, have some beers and suddenly gigantic airplanes appeared meters from the back of Christofers head.

 We had buckets of beers because I thought it was funny they called it a Bucket List.

When we went back to the capital Christofer headed for the cruise ship while I asked the taxi driver to drop me off in the city center. I just rambled around tipsy on 6 beers through the nice and tidy center. I saw a cop in almost every corner with a dog laying in the shade, and I thought about petting the dog because I was so high on life. Thankfully I didn't and I could keep all my limbs for later. After a 20 minutes walk back to the cruise ship I felt as if I would faint, I was dehydrated in the hot sun and had catched a cold from the ship from before so it wasn't the perfect combination. When I arrived at the boat I headed straight to the buffet to get some water, and some 7 desserts. I was tipsy so I had no rules about how much I could eat from the buffet anymore, I even went back for 2 more desserts.

Sint Maarten doesn't seem to care too much about the connection to the Netherlands anymore and I wouldn't be surprised if it will become its own country in the future. I'm a supporter of their independence and I hope the French will retaliate as well and give back the whole island to the natives even if it's 400 years too late.

* Best things about Netherlands – the picturesque views wherever you go and it's got a lot of character even if it's all about dark sins, I also love the creative spirit and the feeling of being free to do whatever you want to do, the view of airplanes landing over Maho Beach is something I will never forget

* Most mediocre thing about Netherlands – Amsterdam is a great city but it's also very small so I guess you grow tired of it pretty quickly too

* Worst things about Netherlands – the idiot that ran around all over town trying to force "helpful" (more likely useless) advice on tourists and then claiming money for it, when he even came at 04.00 in the morning and gave us the advice that the train station was "straight ahead", when we already were walking that way to go to the airport, I had it with being polite and asked him to go to hell

Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):

1. Croatia

2. Montenegro

3. Andorra

4. Cyprus

5. Greece

6. Italy

7. Monaco

8. Malta

9. Netherlands

10. Iceland

11. Denmark

12. Lithuania

13. Macedonia 

14. Ireland

15. Belgium

16. Estonia

17. Kosovo

18. Finland

19. Latvia

20. France

21. Bulgaria

22. Luxembourg

23. Liechtenstein

24. China

25. Bosnia And Herzegovina

26. Albania