(The Great Wandering)

2006-06-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

Europe February-March '06

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Europe earlier this year because my friends Chris and Kim had decided to get married in Paris.

My friends from college, Vogel and Chris, and I started in Amsterdam, and Vogel and I worked our way through Brussels to Paris, where we met Chris and his fiance Kim for the wedding. Afterwards, Vogel and I continued to Italy, where we explored Rome, Florence, and Pisa before returning to Amsterdam and our flights home. Overall, we were in Europe for almost 16 full days, and it was an unforgettable experience.

Please enjoy the pictures and video from our trip.

UPDATE: I have been warned that, due to "the captivating nature of the commentary and riveting photos," it takes a while to get through this album. Be warned.

Amsterdam (18^th)	Amsterdam (19^th)	Amsterdam & Brussels (20^th)	Brussels (21^st)

Brussels & Paris (22^nd)	Paris (23^rd)	Paris (24^th)	Paris (25^th)

Paris (26^th)	Rome (27^th)	Rome (28^th)	Rome & Florence (1^st)

Florence (2^nd)	Florence & Pisa (3^rd)	Paris & Amsterdam (4^th)	Amsterdam(5^th)

Caution: some of the pages may load slowly on slow browsers. Please let me know if I've made any errors. Thanks to Vogel for the pictures.

Email me: kornork (at) yahoo (dot) com
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Amsterdam (Feb 18th)

2006-05-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

(Day 1: Into The Haze)

Left SB airport at 1:30PM on Feb 17th, and after a brief stop in LA Airport (where, yes, I got on the wrong tram and nearly missed my connection), I was on my way. I met this nice girl on the airplane who was from The Netherlands, and she told me all about what it was like. I don't have a picture because, er, when I asked her for her photo after the flight she got freaked out and booked it. Waited for my friend Chris (the bachelor) at the airport in Amsterdam for about an hour, during which I made several observations: 1) Playboys are sold at child's eye level in the airport, with no protective cover to hide boobies and 2) there were beautiful girls EVERYWHERE and, unlike in SB, they would make eye contact when they walked by. Customs in Amsterdam was ... non existent. Chris and I managed to get from the airport in Shiphol to Amsterdam, despite the fact that we had no idea how to read the train schedule or pay for our tickets (Our first try with the ticket machine, it kept asking for a pin on a credit card. Very strange.) Here we are coming out of the train station in Amsterdam.

Notice Vogel's unique photographic perspective, which serves to hide my terrible fashion sense and ugly James Bond t-shirt:

We stayed at The Flying Pig downtown location, which was pretty close to the train station. One of the interesting things about this hostel was the elevator:

Downtown Amsterdam is pretty small, incredibly full of people, and the pedestrian traffic far outnumbers the car traffic. In fact, many of the streets we walked down had no cars at all, and there was a regularly running tram that nearly hit me several times. The cobblestone all looks the same to my Californian eyes, so the street, sidewalk, and ubiquitous bike lane all looked the same to me. Here's a famous square:

Amsterdam is famous for (among other things) its canals, which encircle the downtown in concentric rings.

I found the streets in Amsterdam to be longer and narrower than streets in any of the other cities we visited.

Interesting shutters:

There were bikes and graffiti everywhere. I was shocked to see more graffiti, seemingly unchecked, in Europe than I've seen in America. At least this image is nice:

Mostly, the bikes were jammed together. They were all the same brand, which I didn't understand, and there were far more than my only reference point, UC Santa Barbara.

Here's one of the famous coffee shops of Amsterdam. I can't remember if we went in or not.

Oh wait, Vogel did.

After we walked the city for hours, we decided to visit the Rijksmuseum, which was having an exhibit of Rembrandt, who worked in Amsterdam. After walking through rooms of masterpiece art, which we figured out after about an hour was only Rembrandt's students, we walked into a room which contained all of the works of Rembrandt. I think the room was called "All of the Works of Rembrandt". Amazing. Can you recognize his most famous painting (The Night Watch)?

Vogel's photography puts a unique spin on this art, by bringing out the blurriness the original artist failed to display:

More walking around. Here's another typical Dutch street (we actually stayed here two weeks later, and it looked much different then):

If it hadn't been so cold, this would have been tempting:

In our wanderings, we found a group of people playing a giant game of chess:

There was also this street performer who did the most amazing juggling I've ever seen. He climbed up a street lamp juggling the ball on his head the whole time. When he got to the top, he juggled over the light posts between his feet and his head. Here he is doing some more juggling on the ground, and the photography manages to capture the amazingly fast footwork he displays.

This does though! Thanks Myspace.

Click here if this video does not play.

We must have had a good time in Amsterdam that day.

Photographer: Josh Vogel

My Trip To Europe

(The Great Wandering)

Europe February-March '06

Amsterdam (Feb 18th)