If you haven't been to Burningman, the next couple of paragraphs won't make much sense. So feel free to tune out for this section.
I realized this morning that Amsterdam and Black Rock City are extremely similar. The city layout is roughly the same size and shape - it's a semi-circle with canals that run radially and along the arcs. The central train station is where center camp would be, the Red Light District is at about 5:00 (between Dogma & Faith), and my hostel is at 4:00 and Gospel.
In addition, there's a lot of fantastic art; sex & drugs are found along most streets; and the majority of people travel by bike. Take away the commerce and the people speaking Dutch, and you have Black Rock City.
Okay, non-Burningman folks tune back in.
This morning I tried to find a charger for my PDA at a local mall. It had accidentally turned on while in my backpack someplace in Ireland, and the battery went dead before I could get anybody's address out of it. After 10 minutes of pushing my way through the hordes (I think there must have been a sale on "I'm with Dumm" T-shirts), I remembered that I f***ing hate malls!! So after discovering they didn't have my charger, which was no great surprise since my PDA is about 5 years old, I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I then rented a bike and headed out to the countryside.
One of the places I stopped was a famous graveyard along the Amstel River. I'm not sure why it was famous, but it was definitely different. Rather than somber and depressing, many of the graves celebrated the lives of the inhabitants in colorful ways (see photos if uploaded). If a guy liked to ski, there might be a small pair of skis built in (and a picture of him skiing). Some guy must have really liked fruit, because there was a pair of cement pairs on top of his tombstone. Sometimes there would be no tombstone at all, just some type of artistic expression. One grave I saw simply had a bald marble head resting on its ear on some shrubbery.
After the cemetary I stopped in the small town of Ouderkerk to eat my lunch and duck in out of the rain. I also grabbed some coffee in a small local bar where one of the locals bought me a glass of wine. I managed to get lost in the rain on the way back to town in the afternoon, but the ride was well worth it. Oh yeah, I also saw some windmills.
At night I visited one of the many "coffee" shops near the hostel. Luckily I found my way back later.
Traveling tip of the day: When the burista recommends only eating half of the space cake, listen to him!
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