If I have to find a word to describe how the past week has been, the first that comes in my mind is crazy: everything started with the flight to Amsterdam to visit my friend Anni for a week of vacation. I was a bit disappointed with the maximum allowance weight for the cabin baggage with Alitalia – 5kg – even though it was a great idea to bring a checked suitcase too for the souvenirs. Anyhow, once arrived at Schiphol airport, the first thing I realized was that probably shorts and summer t-shirts are not the best choice when you travel to Netherlands.

Met Anni at the airport – after about 5 months – we headed with the train to Leiden, the town where she lives. Trains in Holland are kinda expensive – and not expansive as I usually write: I first thought they were perfect-always-on-time ones, but that’s not the truth even here. We reached our destination in around 15 minutes and we needed other 15 to walk home: Leiden is a pretty nice town, with hundreds of bikes and the typical dutch houses with a very particular roof.

We still didn’t know, but Anni’s house would have soon been the main problem of the holiday: situated in a attic, it has with two rooms, a little kitchen, and a bathroom that is not usable by those who are more than 80kg; I placed my stuffs in the “free” room, which was rented by someone else since few days before, and after a fast lunch we went to visit the town. I know, you’re probably wondering why the house was so problematic, but of course I will go on in chronological order so that you won’t stop reading ’till the end.

Leiden – and as I could see later even other towns in Holland – is full of fast foods: I’ve been eating burgers for days and looking now forward for a delicious italian lunch at home. We visited Leiden on the very first day, while Monday was dedicated to The Hague: we had plans to meet my italian friend in the evening to watch our Italy playing against Paraguay all together. The Hague is slightly different from Leiden: still very calm and nice, it was full of Dutch dressed in orange because of the match vs. Denmark; we went near the screen to see the result twice and both the times Holland scored a goal: they must thank us.

However, we realized that visiting The Hague from the morning to the evening was quite too much, so we decided to head to another town for a couple of hours: our choice was Delft. It needs very few time to move from one town to the other and also this time we didn’t need more than 15-20 minutes. Also Delft is nice, small and with a very beautiful square where Anni decided to show off her ability to wear tights in the public: memorable her “what I do now?” when she realized it was not the simplest thing to do without having people watching at you.

Time to go back to The Hague, we met my friend – Luca – and with his other friend we went to a pub waiting for the football match. Even if not fast-food, I had again a burger there: awesome lifestyle. Better not to comment the result of the play (and neither the reaction of Luca when we scored a goal).

Amsterdam was the destination of our third day: I imagined it more confusing and messy, but it is not really so; it was indeed more full of people, walking mainly in the main roads – full of coffee and sexy shops, actually – but still it can’t be compared with the mad places I love (did anyone say Tbilisi?). We found out there was a photos exibithion in a church, so we decided to go back again to visit it.

But let’s spend a couple of words on the church: as most of the others in Holland, it was house of exhibitions and shows: most probably dutch god likes to have fun. The second nice thing of it was the location: just at the beginning of the red lights district, it was surrounded by sexy shops selling all the stuffs you would need for a night of fun. We then had a visit in the red light district, which at that time was (unfortunately ) not fully working; however, at any time you might find a girl that would please you – which is not so different from what happens elsewhere, actually.

In the evening, Anni had to go to some lesson at the University and I had two choices: joining her for a 4 hours lecture about management (or marketing or whatever) or visiting The Hague again where Luca was experimenting cooking lasagna; no need to tell which my choice was, just it was very good. Haarlem was the next destination: we went there again by train, without any particular enthusiasm, but we found out that is probably the best town we visited during the week. Full of life, people all around, small and beautiful.

Let’s open a little bracket before talking about Thursday: Anni’s neighbours. We visited their house few times in order to try to get internet at our home, since it has not been working for a week already: strange people indeed, with a dog just apparently evil, a cat and some reptiles including two wonderful snakes some meters long. Running from their apartment, an ethernet cable was supposed to connect us to the magic world of the Net, but since it wasn’t working, we tried to ask to the owners to come and check what was wrong.

Finally, Thursday: in the morning we went again to Amsterdam to visit the photo exhibition; apparently the day was calm, but it was the longest and craziest day ever: back from the capital, Anni invited me to attend a Business Club meeting with her professor and some her classmates in a bar in Leiden. They accepted my attendee in the secret meeting – that reminded me Fight Club and they also asked me to give a brief introduction of me: “Hello, I’m Davide Cassenti, from Italy, and I’m here for holidays. I’m attending the Business Club meeting because otherwise I would have been home alone.” was without any discussion the best introduction of the day.

Quite boring for an IT as me, the meeting lasted about an hour and after that Anni went to work, while I decided to visit the whole Leiden by walking. Everything looked fine and even fun, until I got a message from Anni saying the owners saw my stuffs in the forbidden room (everything is forbidden there) and got angry for this. She finished working earlier and we went home together; here we found the big surprise of the week.

The owners not only got angry with us: they removed everything from the room, including my suitcase, computer, clothes and everything. In a minute I became like a vagabond, with only my camera and nothing else. The house is small, so I didn’t need so long to realize that they really stolen all my baggages; and I got mad. We first tried to call them to get explaination about that, but since they didn’t want to talk to us, we decided the best thing to do was to go to the police. And there, we got the second surprise.

The first thing you would expect to receive in a police office is help: this would be normal in every country of every continent; we explained the situation and what we got was just a simple answer: “let’s wait tomorrow: they might have done it just to scare you”; and I got double mad. How the hell can a policeman tell you that everything is just a joke, without even ask us names or documents? I still am wondering about it, since I got shocked and had to go out still without anything. The evening ended with a drink in a bar: we were too nervous to go home and the little walk helped us to get back to normality – if we may call it so.

That night I was so nervous that I couldn’t sleep more than few hours: at 6am I was already awake, waiting  for the moment to get my stuffs back. When Anni woke up we called the owners, asking for them, and they just told us they would have brought them in the evening, but that I had to pay the room that I used. We decided to avoid problems, so we agreed to wait few hours and we continued our trip, trying to have anyway fun in a gloomy Friday. We took a train to Alkmaar, town famous for the cheese one hour far from Leiden. I liked the city a lot: somehow it reminds Venice, even if our city still has something particular that makes it different from everything else; we unfortunately missed the Cheese Market that is held every morning in the town, but we visited a shop where I bought a very interesting wasabi green cheese (yes, the cheese is green) and some others: if anyone would like to taste, you’re welcome.

The next day is today: waken at 7am, was time to get the plane back to Italy. The best thing of today’s flight was the fact that I used an Alitalia airplane: thanks to the italian as primary language, I finally understood what the pilot says just before landing – and I was very happy. Pleasant flight, I cannot tell the same about the weather: more gloomy and rainy than the cold Holland. Thanks God a delicious carbonara saved my day.