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 !