New Apartment, New Start

You know what's amazing? The fact that such a small change, such as moving to a new apartment, can make everything seem so brand new.

I'm officially all moved in to my new place and couldn't be happier. It's a tiny little studio apartment, but it's my own space. No one else's. Just mine. Not that I don't like sharing, it's just that it's so nice to come home at the end of the day to a place that is all my own.

It's in a perfect location, too. I now live about 10 minutes away from the bus station where I take the bus to work every day. So now instead of having to take the metro for 30 minutes to get to the bus station, I have a little morning walk and I'm there. It's fantastic. It's also in a great, lively area with tons of restaurants and bars and young people. Plus, I'm now living right next to my friends Robin, Tom, Marcus and Lupe, so it's a little added bonus!

And now it's time to give you a tour of the new place! (which, let's be honest, won't take long)

First up is a shot of my "living room." You can see my storage places and my little tv and on the right is one of my balconies. That's right...I have multiple balconies.

Next up is my kitchen/entry way. Conveniently located right next to my living room/balcony area.

And here we have a close-up of my kitchen area, complete with all the necessary amenities: sink, mini fridge, microwave, stove, washer AND bottle of wine. All the important things for a happy home.

On the other side of the apartment is my "bedroom." The bed is actually a futon that doubles as a couch for my living room, but so far I've mainly just left the bed out. Next to the bed you can see my other balcony. And, as you can also see, I'm still showing my Oklahoma pride. :)

Here is a shot out of one of my balconies that faces onto my street and directly across into another building. At night we can kind of all see into each others' places, but it's all good. I've never been much of an exhibitionist before living in Spain, but it kind of comes with the territory here. You can also see that this balcony also doubles as my "dryer." Gotta love hanging the laundry out to dry. (side note: next time I write a "Things Jordan Misses," I will write about dryers)

Here is a shot of my street from out on the balcony. You can kind of tell that it's a lively little area with tons of shops and tons of action.

Here is another shot of the bedroom area but now converted back into the living room. So my big comfortable bed becomes a big comfortable couch.

And last but not least, my "dining room." I have a little folding table that can extend out even further than this depending on how much company I have. And with the size of this apartment, I honestly doubt I ever have a ton of people over at one time.

The only thing I don't have pictures of is the bathroom, but it's pretty basic. Shower, sink, toilet and that's about it. I'm sure you can imagine it.

Anyway, I'm really happy with the new place and happy with my new start. And I honestly think it's the perfect way to live out my last few months in Spain.

Amsterdam, Ik hou van je.

Translation: Amsterdam, I love you. In dutch, of course.

As always, the time is flying and things are happening and I'm failing to take the time to sit down and write about it all. I suppose part of this can be blamed on the fact that I have moved apartments and don't currently have internet. Which makes it kind of hard to write on the blog.

So I believe the last place I left off was talking about my upcoming trip to Amsterdam. And before I continue, I just want to point out that this is the perfect example of why I love living in Europe. Anytime I want, I can hop on a plane and be in a foreign country with a whole other language and a completely different set of people. Weekend trip to the Netherlands? Sure, why not?

So anyway, along comes yet another random Spanish holiday that gives us a long weekend. As always, I had no idea what the holiday actually was for and none of my Spanish friends or coworkers could explain it to me. However, the fact remained that it was time for a little vacation. Much needed, of course.

So my friends Lupe, Rachel and I hopped on a late flight from Madrid to Amsterdam on Thursday night to fully take advantage of our three day weekend.

The first thing I want to point out is that flying with an actual good airline instead of a cheap airline like Easyjet or Ryanair was INCREDIBLE. I officially love KLM. Tons of free food and drinks, friendly stewardesses, flights on time, and no people on the speakers constantly offering to sell you lottery tickets, bus tickets, cologne, etc. etc. I need to fly with real airlines more often.

Lupe on the left and Rachel on the right are showing how excited we are to be in Amsterdam AND how much we love KLM.

So by the time we got to Amsterdam and got to our hostel, it was around 2 in the morning, so we ended up going straight to bed. But the next day we got up fairly early and headed out to see the city.

Unfortunately, the weather gods and I always seem to butt heads. As you can see here the days were overcast and kinda rainy the entire time. What you can't see is that it was freezing. But whatev. You can also see a good example of typical Amsterdam. Canals that run throughout the entire city and beautiful buildings and houses situated right on the canals. Everything just looked so.......dutch.

And aside from kind of being the Las Vegas of Europe (neon lights everywhere and the smell of marijuana gently wafting from the many, many "coffee shops" in the city), it was pretty awesome.

Of course we had to take some pictures with the famous "I amsterdam" sign. You can never avoid being a tourist, you know?

And this picture shows a good example of how we chose to fight the cold. Amsterdam is completely full of bakeries and coffee shops (the non-marijuana kind) and they are all DELICIOUS. We stopped and had pastries, sandwiches, coffees, etc. as often as possible and we were always satisfied. My waistline and my wallet both prove just how much I enjoyed the Dutch food.

And their apple pastries were always INCREDIBLE.

Of course when one thinks of Holland, a few things come to mind. Tulips, apple pastries, and clogs. Here is a picture of Lupe in one of the clog stores somewhere in Amsterdam. There were tons and tons of them hanging all over the walls and the ceiling. Although they don't look too terribly comfortable, they were really cool looking. I bought a small one for a souvenir.

And luckily, I found that the store did, in fact, make clogs big enough for my big American feet.

One of the favorite things that I did in Amsterdam was make a visit to the Anne Frank house, where the Frank family spent over two years in hiding during WWII. For those not familiar with the story, the Franks were a Jewish family who had fled to Holland to escape Nazi Germany. Later, after Holland fell to the Germans, they went into hiding in a small annex at the back of a storage/office building. They spent two years hiding from the Germans and eventually someone betrayed the family and told the Germans about them. To this day no one knows who it was.

The house became so famous because Anne Frank, who was 12 years old when the family first went into hiding, kept a diary about the family's experience in hiding. After the war, Anne's father (the only member of the family to survive the concentration camps) published her diary. For anyone who hasn't read the book, I highly recommend it.

Seeing the house in person was incredible. I can't imagine living in such cramped, dark spaces for such a long period of time, all the while being terrified of being found out and captured. This picture is of me in front of the front door of the house.

And I ended up finding a pair of clogs that fit just a tad bit better....

So all in all it was a great trip. Very cold and very rainy the entire time, but awesome to see another new country. Just another reason why I love living in Europe.