Day 3 - Depeche Mode! (Amsterdam)

Okay, so today was the day!

The Depeche Mode concert was tonight at 8pm and it was the whole catalyst for planning this entire trip in the first place.

If it weren’t for this concert, I wouldn’t be in Amsterdam – simple as that.

So, yeah, I was pretty excited for today.

Before the concert, however, I had a whole day in front of me…

Day trip to The Hague

Sticking to my plan of doing a day trip to different cities in the Netherlands each day, I decided that I’d visit the “unofficial” capital of The Hague.

Although, technically, Amsterdam is now the capital of The Netherlands, The Hauge remains the de-facto governmental center of the country housing the parliament and other government offices.

My plan for day trips is to take a train to the city, take a free walking tour, grab some lunch, and head back home.

The tour company I’m using offers both 10:30 and 1:30 walking tours so I have the option of leaving the hostel early or late and having lunch either before or after the tour.

As it turns out today, despite have two very long days behind me, I woke up at in the wee hours at 6:30 in the morning.

I very quietly tip toed through my dorm room, got ready, and headed out the door past my sleeping roommates by 7:30 and I was in The Hague just before 9am.

Just enough time to have some breakfast before the tour.

Using the “Find Me GF” app on my phone, I was able to easily find a place nearby offering gluten free options. It is actually an amazing app, and I recommend it highly to my celiac friends out there.

The restaurant/café I stopped in was Bagels & Beans and, sure enough, they had gluten free bagels available.

For breakfast I had a tuna melt bagel along with orange juice and, because I’m soooo sophisticated here in Europe, a cappuccino. All together it came out to 15€ ($22) which I guess is a pretty decent price for what I got. I can’t wait to get to my trip in August in the Balkan area of Europe where everything is dirt cheap.

I casually strolled over to the meeting point for the walking tour. It was kind of nice being so early, not many people on the street and not racing to get to where I needed to. Just strolling along just kind of puts your mind at ease a little bit, ya know.

Again, I chatted up my tour guide Oscar before the tour telling him about my banking adventures and how I couldn’t prebook the 2€ free online. He didn’t care at all.

In fact, I found out the company actually charges the tour guides an additional 2€ for each person that booked the tour. So, yeah, the guides tip out to the tour company which means if someone comes on the tour and doesn’t tip, it costs the guide money instead of them making money. Crazy!

The tour itself was kind of lackluster. I mean I will say, the tour yesterday set a pretty high bar for tours but this one was mostly about architecture, royalty and government.

Not that many interesting stories and alot of facts thrown at me. I mean, facts are nice and all, but I crave them stories.

No worries though, they’re not all gonna be homeruns.

I tipped Oscar 5€ and soon after I was on my back to Haarlem.

Bernhard

I arrived back at the hostel in the early afternoon and decided to just hang around for a bit before the concert.

I had bought an extra ticket for the concert with plans to find someone at the hostel to go with. The night before, a man from Hamburg, Germany overheard me talking about it and was excited to go with me.

The man, Bernhard, is traveling with his wife and kid for a week and we exchanged numbers so we could make plans to meet up today.

Of course, my phone having all those issues with my Netherlands sim card didn’t allow us to contact each other at all today and I had given up hope that we’d meet up for the concert.

So, part of me waiting out in the hostel this afternoon was to see if he’d show up and we’d be able to go together.

Just as I was contemplating possibly standing outside the stadium scalping my extra ticket, Bernhard figured out a way to contact me by calling the hostel phone and having the front desk clerk hand me the phone.

500 IQ there.

We quickly made plans to meet just before the concert started and I was now at ease, everything was working out the way it was supposed to.

Afternoon chatting

I still had some time before I had to head out to meet Bernhard and was trying to figure out how I was going to go to dinner beforehand.

I had planned on going to a fancy restaurant in Amsterdam offering multi course meals but it didn’t open til 6pm and it was in the complete opposite area of where the concert was.

As I was trying to figure out a plan, I ended up chatting with a girl Emily who was sitting across from me in the lounge area of the hostel.

Turns out she is visiting from France and actually works at the hostel.

Of course talk quickly turned to travel adventures and, well, once you get me talking about traveling I really can’t stop.

Soon, the hostel manager Pavle (originally from Croatia) joined in the conversation and we all sat there talking about travel and hostels.

Talk soon turned to food and I was showing Pavle some of the Dutch dishes I wanted to try and when I showed him a picture of the Stamppot, he was like “I can make that for you”.

Classic case of don’t just a book by it’s cover… so yummy

The hostel has a kitchen/café/restaurant attached to it so it wasn’t like he was going home to get the ingredients to cook it but, still, it was pretty cool to see him scurry into the kitchen and start preparing the meal.

Well, my dinner plans were solved.

Dutch food on it’s way and a concert to see!

Depeche Mode!

I took the train into Amsterdam arriving just after 7pm. Bernhard was waiting for me in front of the main entrance to the station and we headed for the stadium via the metro.

I haven’t been on the metro yet here in Amsterdam and, in fact, I haven’t been on any metro system since my last trip 5 years ago.

As we squeezed onto the train like sardines, I quickly moved my wallet and phone to my inside pocket remembering there’s always a threat of pickpockets.

Twenty minutes later we were exiting the station and following the hordes down to the stadium entrance.

At just before 9:00, Depeche Mode took to the stage.

Oh my God, it was amazing.

They placed some of their new stuff but their biggest reactions were obviously from their classics back in the 80s and 90s.

I took so many videos but here’s one to whet your appetite.

The concert ended around 11pm and by 1am we were back in Haarlem.

As we walked the quiet streets back to the hostel, it became suddenly clear that I was very, very hungry.

We found a Mr Burger place open and, even though I can’t have the bun, I figured I’d just order a burger without just so I had something to eat before going to bed.

Turns out they also had donair as well and, to my delight, Kapsalon.