Monster Ball!!

I've got GaGa fever... along with thousands of other Little Monsters who saw her last night in Rotterdam. The concert was SO GOOD! The atmosphere of the entire arena was incredible (something that the videos and pictures do not capture).

Lady Gaga describes the Monster Ball as a place where you can overcome anything and will set you free. She has often talked about how she was very lonely high school and she felt like a freak, and she strives to break down barriers through her music. She wants to use music to bring all sorts of different communities of people together; to blur boundary lines. For music has no politics, no religion, no colour, no sexual preference. Music is a celebration of freedom!

Semi Precious Weapons opened for Gaga

I have to be honest, I had heard of the name, but never heard any of their songs before last night

 Then it was time for... Lady Gaga

My camera isn't a professional camera or anything, so the quality of the videos and photos aren't exceptional. It won't take videos longer than approx. 1 minute so the songs are all in pieces. But they make me happy because they remind me of being there :)

I took 57 videos in total... here are a few of my favourites

Just Dance (part 1)

 

Just Dance (part 2)

 

Love Game 

Telephone 

Alejandro

 Bad Romance

The end came too soon!!!

The end came too soon... though it didn't end until about midnight. And then I had to make my way back to Amsterdam. At that hour there weren't many trains running and I had to take the "sneltrein" (SLOW) which had 16 stops before Amsterdam. I got home around 2:15am. I even fell off my bike on the way home. Note to self: don't break suddenly while riding on ice. It was late, sore leg from falling, but completely worth it.

Thank you for a FAB night GaGa. Hopefully I will see you soon =)

 

Duitsland for the Weekend

Weekend in Koln!!

Didn't find Adrienne and Benny on the train to Koln (Cologne in English) until I got up to go to the bathroom and look who it was... two little Asian Waterloo Architecture students watching Glee in the train corridor, having been kicked out of their seats :(

Arriving at Koln Central Station

Today is the first Sunday of advent - CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!  Decorations flooded the train stations.

Adrienne and I stayed at Pathpoint Youth Hostel. Ours was full so we couldn't all stay at the same one - Benny stayed at one called The Black Sheep... well for one night at least :P

 At a bar with people we met at Benny's hostel (one was taking the picture) - they were from Hungary studying to be Doctors

 After the bar Benny, Adrienne and I went for some dancing and drinks at CentClub. They played GOOD music. We had a blast. We stayed until about 3:30am then Adrienne and I left to go back to our hostel while Benny apparently stayed longer...

...and the phone call I got Saturday morning sounded like:

Benny: "Jen, why am I in the hospital?"

Jen: "Benny! Why are you in the hospital?"

So Adrienne and I headed to meet Benny at St. Hildegardis Anlieferung Hospital

L: Where Benny paid to spend the night (aka Black Sheep Hostel)

R: Where Benny spent the night (aka St. Hildegardis Anlieferung Hospital)

 No coat? Benny made the gymnastics sweater work!!

Once Adrienne and I gathered Benny, we headed for the Christmas Market

Then went to the Kolumbia Museum

 Beautiful building! Gorgeous minimalism design. The floors had been pulled away from the walls creating a gap around each room, which was so subtle, yet made such an impact on the feel of the space.

 Koln Central Station

Dinner at Oscars

Koln Cathedral: Kolner Dom

I've been to mass in English, Dutch, Spanish and now German :)

Beautiful Cathedral

Walked up all 533 steps up the Dom Tower

 Koln from the top of the Dom

Christmas Market

Prague has a CN Tower wannabe, and apparently so does Koln

THE BELL

Wallraf das Museum

Christmas Market

I'm so in the Christmas mood!

Train ride home :)

Great weekend! I'm really in the Christmas spirit now. Christmas market was so fun. Met people at Benny's hostel. Went dancing at the club. Visited the hospital (while figuring out how to get to the hospital, we realized hospitals aren't marked on the tourist attraction maps haha). Got to go to Mass at the Koln Cathedral. Got a good workout in walking up to the top of the Dom Towers. Quiet train ride home and tomorrow is Lady Gaga in Rotterdam! It'll be a late night tomorrow, especially after such a busy weekend. 

It's all worth it. It's Europe. Make the most of every opportunity.

4 Cheese Pasta

Had the lovely Italian Interns over for dins tonight. They taught me how to make a 4-cheese pasta. T'was very good! 

The sauce...

...The girls

Busy weekend ahead of me - tomorrow I'm off to Cologne, Germany. I'm back Sunday night then Monday I'm off to Rotterdam to see Lady Gaga! I gotta go pack now. G'Night!  

The Deathly Hallows

Went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows... Part I tonight with LEVS. We went for dins at Toscana and then saw HP at The Movies Restaurants B.V. cinema.

The cinema was an older theatre. Small and quaint.  

The movie was really really good. It was in English of course, with Dutch subtitles. Excited to see the next movie in July 2011! 

Random comment >> Today at work I was listening to 99.9 Virgin Radio online. They overplay so many songs. One of which they got me hooked on - Love Stereo Stereo Love (thank you Quan for the correction haha)

Another random note >> if anyone has seen my blue or green sock, please send it my way. I did laundry this weekend and ended up with one lonely blue sock, and one lonely green sock. So today, guess what colour my socks are?? That's right - one's blue, one's green. 

Little Ping, Little Pong

PING-A-PONG NIGHT

Ping Pong tonight... practicing my serving, and my hitting, and my smashing. We went to this really cool bar/warehouse/awesome ping pong club in the south-west part of Amsterdam near Vondelpark.

I played three matches in pairs (we won 2/3 matches) and I also tried a new kind of ping pong. They called it Dutch Ping Pong but I'm not sure if it's actually dutch. Everyone gathers around the table and you take turns hitting the ball while moving around the table. Once you miss, you're out. It's super fun! I was really bad though - that's why I had time to take like 10 videos. Here's one of them :)

Last post I talked about how much of a minority I am here - well today I was hanging out with Stefania's friends and I was pretty much the only non-Italian. They would introduce me to other people and they'd be like "wait... you're not Italian are you?" NOPE... Canadian =)

I am loving it here. So. Much. Tomorrow night I'm seeing HARRY POTTER with my office!! So glad we're seeing an English movie =)

Sunny Sunday

Seeing the beautiful Amsterdam on my lovely bike ride to church yesterday monring... how I love this city!

And this was just... the weirdest looking tree I've seen in a while!

Last night for dins Jaewoo and I met up with some people and went to a Chinese restaurant. Chinese isn't my favourite. Before I eat things, I like the food to be de-headed. Seeing a full body on my plate makes me think my food may swim or walk away at any given moment. But some of it was good lol

 Just a side note...

I feel like a minority here. Everywhere.

Sint Nicolaskerk (10:30am Mass): Everyone's Dutch

Sint Nicolaskerk (1:00pm Mass): Everyone's Spanish

Blessed Trinity: Everyone's Black

Work: Everyone's Dutch

Chinese restaruant last night: Everyone was Asian

It's not a bad feeling. I mean everyone's really nice. But I'm just not used to sitting with so many different groups of people and always feeling like the odd one out. Hasn't bothered me... just an observation :)

And... next Monday... November 29... I'm off to see...


 


...the Lady Gaga concert in Rotterdam!!