A friendly face in Amsterdam

As a Canadian, my journey started with a plane trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Once on European soil, Sarah and I aspired to cover a lot of territory. So we backpacked for three and a half months. We met many Americans doing the thing. The Aussies and Kiwis we met took this to another level, often travelling for a year. It was less common to met Europeans on these lengthly multi country backpacking trips.

Until we met Yöst. Yöst was Dutch. When we first meet him in Italy he declared he was doing Europe “the American way”. By the time we bumped into him in his home town Amsterdam, it was our third encounter. We often crossed paths with travellers twice. Thrice was rare.

The only hostel with availability arriving in Amsterdam was lousy so we decided on a quick visit. We still managed to hit a number of highlights (all good but tame by this city’s standards).

We kicked off the day with the smell of hops on the Heneiken Brewery tour. The samples were free flowing, so we lingered over our beers and munchies while chatting with other travellers. I was fascinated at the time with the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (having just read Irving Stone’s biographical novel Lust for Life) so the Van Gogh museum was at the top of my list. We had a coffee at the Bulldog cafe to fortify ourselves before visiting Anne Frank’s house.

Pancakes for dinner? Absolutely. We gleefully selected one of 50 flavours at a pancake house and savoured the scrumptious Dutch pancakes.

At the time of my visit, I did not know the Netherlands was one of the founding members of the European Community. I was oblivious that months before (February 1992) the country hosted the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, creating the European Union. European integration was not on my mind.

I did recognize that someone like Yöst was in a prime location for travelling year after year, by simply hopping on a train. My time in this community was more limited. I was grateful to partake for a short time.

This is one entry from my 1992 European backpacking trip with my friend Sarah. If you want to start at the beginning, please check out The journey starts in Nice.