The Days of Thunder

Insel Schütt

 About eighteen years ago, I used to enjoy reading blogs where bloggers described their experiences and adventures while traveling around Europe. In a way, I still do something similar today. 

My topics are also economic, cultural, and overall environmental experiences.

I also wrote about experiences with train stations. In Czechia, I often see articles about incidents around German train stations. I wrote that this says more about stations elsewhere than about Germany. 

Now I started a journey at one bus station and preferred to leave quickly… 

Someone resembling a homeless person, a drug addict, and apparently a former prisoner was threatening to stab homeless people with a knife—and then to stab me as well.

Maashaven

I told myself that I was already looking forward to Germany, and further on to the Benelux. And it really was like that. Elsewhere, of course, this reality does not exist. There was apparently one immigrant on a bus in Germany under the influence of some opiate like fentanyl, but nowhere was there anything like what I experienced at the beginning of the journey.

Christmas-time Amsterdam was great again. Amsterdam is beautiful in itself thanks to its architecture, and with the ever-present Christmas decorations it has the charm of real Christmas. 

Nieuwe Werk

In my opinion, Amsterdam is one of the most decorated and certainly one of the most beautiful Christmas cities in Europe. I like the whole Benelux at Christmas, as well as cities in Germany.

In the core Dutch city for this music genre, there was some Thunderdome event—it amused me 😄 that during my days in the Netherlands, over Christmas, I was also confronted with this modern Dutch history in the form of gabber—with the typical logo on bomber jackets and other clothing featuring this logo. 

I’m little amazed at how gabbers influenced the world. For example, Dutch Christmas (1999) by Scooter. Or One (remix of Always Hardcore Bodylotion). I’ve already mentioned that in my childhood I listened to happy hardcore along with other “dance” music, without even realizing it was happy hardcore. However, I tend to laugh at gabbers more for their dystopian history. In my view, there’s a certain sense of awkwardness in their utopia of drug use.

Just yesterday, Sunday, there was a sunny day to be had in the South. Amsterdam was typical, with a bit of wet weather. There was frost at the beginning of the journey, and also snow at its end in Germany… It was all kinds of weather during the Christmas trip.