Trip To Amsterdam (TTA)
On Tuesday Zlati (A friend of mine introduced to me by Father
Veliko), came to Arnhem. The plan was that he came on Tuesday here
and afterwards in Wednesday morning the Trip to Amsterdam was going
to happen. First we had settled that he will be in Arnhem in 12:00
o'clock. So Around 10:50 I walked down the way to the train
station. I was on my way when Zlati ringed and told that he still
haven't catched the train and he is not going to make it for 12:00,
though he will be on Arnhem Central Station in 04:35 in the
afternoon. I came back to home and on my way bought some apples as
well as a oily sweet thing from the Turkish shop "Sultan"
Around 3 I
took my way to the city center again, on my way I had to leave
Sali's laptop in his home. I had taken his laptop to re-install
Windows and setup his Windows in Bulgarian as well as configure it
to be able to watch Bulgarian TV channels online. In order to
achieve that I used a proxy donated to me by Amridikon. Thanks
Amri! To make Windows Vista Home Premium to Bulgarian I had to use
a small proggie "Vista Change Language 1.0". I had to burn the
program to a CD and boot into it and then use the downloaded
language pack to change the vista text language to Bulgarian. I did
so all went well, unfortunately after an upgrade the text in the
menus did screw up. So I have to boot again in the Vista Change
Language 1.0 boot CD and revert it back to Bulgarian. Then I had to
disable Windows Vista updates in order to prevent the same language
mess up to occur again. This was a little out of the topic, but I
decided it's nice to have it on paper. So back to where I was .. I
took Zlati from the train station, we went to Sali and he treated
us with some kind of traditional turkish soup meal. The soup was
quite nice btw. He was extremely happy that he could watch
Bulgarian TV's online through the
bg.gledai.tv website. I was glad to that
God helped me and blessed me in succeeding in all the things I
mentioned above. Afterwards we went with Zlati and Koko to
Albertheijn picked up a beer and a couple of other things. Then I
and Zlati went to my place where we used my notebook to research
about places of Interest we would like to attend in Amsterdam. We
went to bed around 2 o'clock at night. At the morning we went to
the train station. I suggested that we go a little earlier because
I thought, well it might be better to be earlier in the city for to
have more time to walk and look it. We were on the train station
8:10 and had the intention to take the first train at 8:29, however
God had other plans for that. It seemed that we have to wait and
buy a ticket for after 9:00, or otherwise Zlati couldn't use his
train card for my discount. He was quite irritated by the fact that
I suggested that we went to the train station so early since he was
quite sleepy in the morning because we went to bed so late. Anyways
I got a coffee from the waiting-room coffee machine. And, eh the
coffee there is expensive, be careful if you travel in the
Netherlands by train. The coffee costed 1.50 per cappuchino, huh
... We catched a train in 9:29 and we were in the capital of
Amsterdam in 10:40. I was so excited! Yes the trip worthed the
price of 16.30 EUR (with the 40% discount). Amsterdam is a really
nice city, especially considering it's architecture. And I saw such
a big shops and so many things to choose from. The whole city is
full of canals and boats are traveling through it. We went to music
store, wow there was so much music in it. We entered a lot of
Catholic Churches in one of the Catholic Churches there was an
orthodox icon of St. Nickolas! So I made the sign of the cross and
prayed the Saint to pray God for me the sinner. With our arrival
right after we went out of the central station I saw a bookstore,
so I proposed Zlati to enter. It seemed that was a protestant
Christian bookstore. Even though a protestant one the people there
at least were believing in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I had
a small chat with one of the guys asking if they have Orthodox
Bible, It seemed they haven't so I started telling him about the
advantages of being Orthodox Christian. And I became orthodox after
God gave me the faith and transformed my life. The bookstore had a
free/coffee and tea. So each me and Zlati took a cappuchino. It was
so nice God gave me a hot drink in the Early morning in Amsterdam.
A lot of people are insane in that place, there was a lot of pod
smokers on the street. On a lot of places the air had that typical
pod stell. We saw a lot of Museums, we tried to use a citymap
although in a lot of cases not really succesful. We so so many
Churches, Madam Tusad's museum, as well as Anne Frank museum, the
tulip museum. There was also sex, museums we saw on our way and
even this freaks had gay museum. We saw some road building in
progress where a couple of people were building a road on top of
pillars, right above the water!
The city is
full of old buildings most of which originating from 16th century.
The Architecture is really amazing. The parks and everything and
the terraces had that typical European style which I've seen in
movies showing people from the 18th or 19th century. We made a lot
of pictures. Unfortunately I still haven't taken the pictures from
Zlati. We entered into a shop which was selling buddhist, hindu and
indian statues and souvenirs to warm a bit. We had a nice chat with
the storekeeper, about religion and about my Orthodox faith in Our
Lord Jesus! He mentioned that near around there is an Syrian
Orthodox Church. So went to seek for it. After some rambling we
found it but unfortunately it was already closed the time was quite
late over 18:00, so it was quite normal to be closed. The style of
the Church didn't really much differentiated from the rest of the
Catholic Churches. Earlier we went into a Church whether they had
that modern exposition, again we went their to warm ourselves. The
Church inside was nice but the pictures, they was selling on the
expo was really terrible, a lot of sado-mazo and perverted motives
in the pictures ... I was saddened to see that they have desacrated
a holy place. Well it's true that the catholics stepped aside from
the orthodox faith some time ago but still they were believing
Christians ... Though such an abomination really makes sence. I
think they shouldn't allow such things to be. The good thing was
that in the Church they even had made toilets and the drawings
representing the way our Lord Jesus has walked on it's way to final
execution by the jews, carrying his cross on the way to Golgotha.
Around 18:30 we went to the street where the so famous prostites
and drug addicts street was the so called "red lights". I couldn't
believed my eyes, prostites staying behind windows half naked
waiting for a customer to hire them for sex ... I have heard about
that place but I really couldn't imagine it could legally exist.
But no wonder there in Amsterdam this place existed. We walked in
that section of the city for around hour. There were all kind of
junkies people who looked really criminal, the prostitutes on the
windows. Sex shops, sex video rooms, you name it .. all the
disgusting stuff you could imagine. After this walk we went to the
train station around 8:00 and took the train back to Arnhem. The
whole day went quite flawless, God has heard our prayer to keep us
from evil and give us safe journey. The whole trip was really
relaxing for me! Praise the Lord for his great mercy towards me the
sinner !