Rotterdam and Berlin

It's Kyle again, doing work on the blog.  When we last left you, we had spent a couple nights in Amsterdam.  We spent a total of 5 nights there, and while we had fun, we've decided that 3 nights in a new country is the magic number for us, at least on this trip.  So that's our plan from here on out, 3 nights in each new place we visit.  Then we should have a good idea of the places that we would like to go to again, and hopefully when our time is over in Sheffield we can afford another trip, in which we'll just go to a few cities and live a little higher on the hog than this time.  Then we can spoil ourselves with such luxuries as doing laundry and not sharing a room with 8 other people.
We spent most of our time in Amsterdam just wandering the streets and taking in the sights.  We covered some more ground on our "hey look, I'm a tourist!" rental bicycles and got more accustomed to the aggressive riding style of the locals.  We did notice that while the local cyclists will just ride out into an intersection on a red light to avoid stopping, they are kind of weenies when it comes to anything resembling a hill.  We were getting used to being passed most of the time in the bike lanes, but were often caught behind people struggling up a slight grade on a canal crossing.  All of our cycling in Portland on single speed bikes (we live at the base of a decent sized hill, so we're always going uphill to get somewhere via bicycle) paid off, I guess.  We were hit with some bad weather, so Jillian decided to go to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum (sp?) and I, being the cheap bastard that I am, didn't want to pay the entry fees so spent my time wandering the streets.  The original plan was to see a movie, but due to my inability to decipher a Dutch cinema website, I got there too late and just walked the streets instead.  It would have been good fun, but it started raining, then got progressively worse until I gave up and headed back to the hostel to dry out.  Packing lightly by only bringing one pair of pants is not advantageous in this situation, so I hung out in the hostel pantsless for a while until Jillian returned from her Museum adventures.  We then saw a movie (seems lame to do while traveling in Europe, but it was quite nice.  Plus you can get beer at the concession stand, which was cool) and took a trip to the Torture Museum.  It sounded quite promising, but didn't quite deliver considering the steep (for us) admission price.  It did make me glad to not be around during the Spanish Inquisition, though, those religious fanatics don't mess around!  The next day, we splurged on a cheese tasting session at a local cheese shop, which was definitely worth it.  We had some cheese that was aged for 2 and-a-half years, and while it's a little bit older than most of the dairy products I consume, it was delicious.  I'm pretty sure the only souvenir we got from Amsterdam was cheese.  We saw another movie that night (the rain had returned), then packed up in the morning and headed to Rotterdam.
Right as we arrived in Amsterdam, I realized that I actually know someone who lives in The Netherlands.  A couple years back, I was attending a bachelor party for a friend (strictly a black tie affair, of course) and met his cousin Tuan, who lived in Rotterdam.  Rotterdam is about 45min away from Amsterdam via train, and is a much more modern and less crammed city, due to most of it being destroyed during WW2 and rebuilt afterwards.  It is now home to a major shipping port, formerly the biggest in the world until China one-upped them.  So after leaving Amsterdam, we took a train to Rotterdam and met up with Tuan.  He graciously had cleared his schedule so he could take us around the city and show us around, and we shamelessly accepted his offer.  We had a great time, and toured the city for several hours.  I had some Turkish food for the first time, which was delicious, and the restaurant had a gluten-free menu available, so Jillian was able to find a meal.  I think we will be planning another trip to Rotterdam in the not-too-distant future, we really enjoyed it.  After our day in Rotterdam, we boarded a night bus headed for Berlin.
We had a pretty smooth trip to Berlin, the only hiccup was some sort of Dutch/German roadblock that diverted a bunch of people (including our bus) off the freeway and into a fuel station to search their cars.  I never figured out what they were looking for, but luckily they didn't find it necessary to search our bus (good thing as I was smuggling a lot of contraband, as usual)  and we were on our way.  Upon arrival in Berlin, we found it a fairly straightforward procedure to get tickets for the local train (impressive, as everything was in German and people seem a bit less able/willing to speak English than in the Netherlands) and get to our Hostel.  We were quite early, so we dropped our bags and headed out in search of breakfast.  This will be a challenging place for us to find Gluten-free food, as everything is quite glutenous (and delicious for me), but we will figure it out as always.  Jillian enjoyed a bockwurst for breakfast, and I had a couple of giant pastries.  We then got some sleep (sleeping on a bus is somehow not all that restful) and are now enjoying happy hour in the in-hostel bar (it's so cheap!) and getting our internet on.  So that brings you all up to speed on our travels, more to come once we hit the town.  Now for the part everyone skips to, pictures!

Our rental bikes.

Mmmm, cheese.  The ages of the cheese ranged from a few weeks to 2.5 years, and it was all delicious.

Today was a good day.  That is a 1L can of beer, we saw a bottle of Rogue Mocha Porter in the shop where we bought it.

funny signpost in a park in Amsterdam

3 passenger bicycle.  These were a common sight.

the place where we rented our bikes. 

never trust a garden gnome piloting a bicycle.  Cargo bikes similar to this are pretty common.

cool building, now a hostel.

Us in the middle of the cubist hostel

Cool fountain in the middle of a Rotterdam roundabout.  When the World Cup was going on, a bunch of people jumped in the fountain when The Netherlands made it into the finals.

Controversial statue in Rotterdam.  Interesting note:  the controversy is not over the statue itself, but the price that the city paid for it. 

Us sitting under the Santa Claus statue

The view from the train station.  You are supposed to be able to move the lights around from a control panel, but it wasn't working when we were there.

The newest bridge in Rotterdam, with some idiots standing in front of it.

Tuan and me in front of said bridge.

The Germans have some pretty tough gasoline!