Matiss' Life

So the rest of Amsterdam was OK. Blundered around the city with one of the brits (Gaz - love the name!) I met in Rotterdam. Went to a park and saw lots of people and people on bikes. There's lots of people on bikes in the Low Countries. Really, the only thing you need to know about them is to get out of their way. That's why its so fun to ride a bike in the Low Countries. That night went on a pub crawl around the Red Light District. Met some (more) cool people. I now realize how its easy to meet people who, like you, are looking to have a good time. Keep traveling! The Pubcrawl got a little out of control tho - almost got in a fight until two Spaniards broke it up. Hahaa! yikes. The next day I packed up, got some souvenirs, and rode my bike to the airport. The bike had an ir-repariable flat, so I rode there on a flat. It was a loooong ride. Left the bike there, hopefully someone needy will get it. It was falling apart. Many of the souvinirs I got were porcelai

Ok, so Rotterdam was nice. Amsterdam is wicked. more on that later... So I didn't end up going to that BMX thing, instead I met some limeys and we went to The Hague. I inquired why the town was called that, and mostly its just because its called De Haag in Dutch. And why is the land of the Dutch called The Netherlands? So many questions. De Haag was nice too. We didn't go to the ICC because it was actually far away, you can't go inside, there's nothing to see, it was raining, and we wanted to see Bruno. Borat was better. So it was good to rest up in nice Rotterdam. Rode to Amsterdam. It was windy and I took a couple wrong turns into the wind. Grrr! First day here I stumbled into the Red Light District - pretty much first thing I did. Good thing I didn't take photos of the prostitutes in the windows, I didn't know i'd get a cup of piss thrown at me or worse! Met a 'Charlie' - guy who takes you're money believing you bought drugs.

So remember that bike I was telling you about? Well I got to Rotterdam with it. It really is a clunker, and it sucks that its got an internal deraileur and breaks so I don't know how to fix them. It made it tho, and it should get me to Amsterdam in a couple days if it doesn't get stolen in the mean time. The ride was very interesting. I gave myself like 6 days to get to Amsterdam. I could have done it in 2. So I'm spending a few days in Rotterdam. Along the way you notice things. Like how the entire North Sea coast line is like Wasaga beach. There's cafe's and restaurants and beach bums and wind surfers and change rooms and bars and towns along the way. Like the WHOLE way from the Belgian border to the suburbs of Rotterdam. I guess that's what you get when you cram 16 million people into a space half the size of New Brunswick. It was really cool riding accross the Schelt. It was epic riding on the massive storm surge barriers along huge wind turbi

So I left Paris. I will have to go back some day, tho better planned. I decided to go to Brugges on the advice of Paul Auzins, and I was not dissapointed. I knew it would be good as soon as I got here - there was parking for a couple hundred cars, but bike racks for a few thousand bikes! And there was the Brugges Cactus Festival (yes, those familiar with the Dundas variety) going on, so I knew this place was gold. This place is great - Venice of the north. Once again I blundered around for a while, but this place is made for blundering - everythings very close. And there are tourists EVERYWHERE. Its not really a problem, especially since I'm a tourist too, and I met a lot of them. Being in Belgium, I had to try the beer, and boy have I tried lots! So, naturally I got pissed. Seems to be a theme here in Europe. It helps when a beer and a soda cost about the same... Things I did here: go on the brewery tour, go to the beach on my new bike (more on that in a bit...), pla

So the beer pong went well - it turned into a hell of a party in the hostel bar. Its not really surprising considering its called Clink Hostel. Met lots of people from everywhere. Met some that were going to Stonehenge the next day and I tagged along. It was actually really cool driving around London, looking at all the random monuments and stuff. Stonehenge was interesting - the tour guide put it best: "...so we don't know who made it. We don't know why they made it. And we don't know how they made it, but it wasn't made with slaves. We really don't know that much about it." We also went to Bath - very interesting and nice town. Got off the bus and took lots of pictures. I'm such a tourist! Also went up the Bath Abbey tower. And took pictures. Got back to London and we commenced to blunder around and look at historical places some more. Actually that's mostly what I'm doing in Europe. That's ok. Its cheaper than actually

Its crazy here. Crazy right hand drive and weird taxis and double decker busses! People clean the benches for you! People don't speak english, but british. The streets lead you in circles. Acually its not that crazy... I flew in this morning on the overnight flight. My mom drove me to the airport on the way to work and I had to wait like 8 hours before my flight. I thought it would be UUUUber boring but I met tons of Latvians who I knew - they were coming from the Latvian Song and Dance fest in Hamilton from the weekend (don't know if I told you about that - I'm Latvian too). I was talking to them for so long I almost missed my flight - they called me like 5 times! The flight itself was good. I had the extended legroom seat by the window, and saw the sun set over Canada this morning for the last time for 6 weeks. The only issue was an air leak witch ended up nearly freezing my shoe before I realized my foot was really cold. Kinda made me question the integrit

Ok, I figured it out, why I don't post as much - I started writing these while travelling. Ofter I find myself having tons of time with nothing to do. And I got all these crazy times to talk about! So generally its good to write it down. Even better if other people might read it. When I'm not travelling for long periods of time, I have to squeeze all the adventure in before returning much too soon to reality (ie - working life), where procrastination rules supreme. So, really, it makes sense that I don't post. That, and the pic uploader on this blog engine sucks, which drags to posting out waaaay too long. So no pics. If you want em, go to Facebook, look up (you got it) Matiss Valdmanis. There's only one. Believe me. So AAANYWAY, back to all that posting that was put off in reality... So went skiing again with Tracy, this time at Sunshine. veeeery nice. I went to Jasper with Zack. Saw ALL kinds of wildlife - like 200 big horn sheep in three heards, tons