Discovering the park

Well well well... today is day four, and I am getting acclimated to the life of a nomad.  In the beginning, all of the stimulation and problem-solving felt quite stressful, but it is beginning to be quite exciting and fun!  In some moments, we feel quite stumped, but we have learned to just start walking, and asking people for help... and the universe has a funny way of making everything work out.  We have been staying on budget super well, and have been eating well.  At the moment, our host Ad is preparing us a dutch meal!  YUMMMMMM.

We are currently staying with Ad Bakker, our second host in the Netherlands.  He lives in eastern Amsterdam, right across the street from Flevopark, which is a huge park with walking trails.  Also, the entrance is a jewish cemetary from the 1700s containing 160,000 bodies.  Just today, we had some time to kill and decided to wonder into the park; it is SURREAL, almost tropical.  It's easy to forget that in Amsterdam you are near a coastal area, besides the canals which run through the city every two or three blocks.  I love the cityscape, but it felt great to reconnect with nature; it helped me feel grounded again, allowed me to breath for a moment, and gently pushed me to step away from the intensity of city life.

 

So lets catch up the blog a bit.  We stayed with Dennis for two days, and on the second day, we left around 1 pm to arrive at Ad's place on the East side of the city.  We left Dennis a thank you note, and ventured to centraal station to figure out how to navigate the buses and trams.  After looking at the maps, asking several people for help, and walking back and forth, we finally found the bus we needed to take according to Ad's directions.  It only took us about 20 minutes to take both the bus and the tram, but it took us over an hour to find his place as we wondered through the neighborhoods with our heavy backpacks.  When we arrived it was 3 pm and thankfully, Ad was already home.

Ad is from outside of Amsterdam; he moved here after him and his boyfriend of 18 years broke up.  He has an amazing apartment which is very zen; it has an incredible view of Flevopark right outside of the window.  Ad studied fashion, and is a production manager for Karl Lagerfeld (!!!) Here is a link to the studio he works in (it's worth checking out): http://l43.nl/ .  We talked the evening away over coffee and then wine.  So that brings us to today!  Today Matthew and I wondered around the city a bit and were able to get some nice footage for the documentary we hope to possibly make.  The weather was immaculate. 

 

 

DOEI DOEI! XOXO Elliot