Netherlands day 1

I arrived in the Amsterdam airport at 11:40am and I couldn't be more impressed. The people are friendly, helpful and fluent at English. I needed to ask information about how to get public transport to my hostel, but I was fearful because previous efforts to get help from locals usually resulted in me making embarrassing hand gestures and noises. I was pleased to hear the lady say "I know a little bit of English" at the counter. Clearly the only word she didn't understand was "little" because her English was 100% fluent. You know you're doing something wrong when someone who claims to know very little English has mastered a greater vocabulary than you.

Before I left the airport, I heard a bunch of eerie screams. Not the type of screams you would expect from a zombie outbreak though - they were high pitched bursts of teenage fan girl screams. That meant only one thing - Justin Bieber. I never got to meet the untalented, overrated teen heartthrob, but I did hear a lot of girls scream his name, and a lot of young adults muttering it.

I'm on a public bus at the moment heading to a place just outside of Amsterdam called Noordvijk which is only a few stops of a place called 'Harlem'. God I do not want to go clubbing there.

I've also noticed that everyone speaks just like the way Vikings speak in the computer game "age of empires". This gives me the very socially dangerous idea that I can have a conversation with someone just by saying the words "choppa" and "boulden" on repeat.

The rest of the day was spent roaming around the immediate area including the beach. Its really beautiful and clean. I'm sad to admit the first building I entered was a McDonalds so that I could steal some free wifi.

The hostel is awesome. Its filled with so many young people from different cultures. I was originally disappointed to discover that the first two people I met were from Australia, however the next 10 people were from: germany, Finland, Sweden, Italy and England. Germans were by far the coolest. I mentioned the war once but I think I got away with it!  Its so interesting to see young people from all over the world bond over their love for marijuana.