Rainslick Road of Uncertainty

I write from a large couch, made square with the assistance of a footrest, quite comfortable as a bed or seat in an apartment in Amsterdam. I wrote last from Helsinki, quite some time ago and since have been to Paris.
For the exorbant lateness of this submission, I apologise and cite serious lack of writing inspiration and too many late nights as pitiful excuse. (Although I write this mostly to avoid making decisions regarding when I should depart for my next destination, what mode of transport should be utilized to depart and of course to what locus this mode of transport should bear me. These decisions all seem quite easy in theory, "for one on an expedition must always have a plan". Ha! I throw out your conservative and derivative opinions of expedition planification! Plans are to be made by the skin of someones tooths on the rainslick road of uncertainty rather then in a safe mohogany drawing room! And I never had my mohogany drawing room finished so I didn't plan too far...)

In anycase Paris is Paris, what more needs to be said? Streets are distinctly Parisian to anyone who has seen a movie or read a book, people are distinctly French but not nearly as horrid as the stories claim and it is very simply an enchanting, enthralling and expensive place to be. It has everything you could want in gross profusion and far too much of everything to see and photograph in one lifetime. So I leave that up to you to sign your best Paris pictures over to me.
Your collective effort, my intrepid reader(s?), will be noted in the back pages of my books of course, just don't look too hard and trust your names are there.
Paris is certainly a somwhere I would love to return to, but alas I fear there is no time to see but once all the things one must see, let alone the time to go backwards to somewhere already trod. So as I trod around Paris quite a bit (and some other locales surrounding Paris but I may touch on those at a later date) I am in Amsterdam, and as I have stated before of many other places (and will no doubt state again) it is one of the most breathtaking places I have seen.

The canals are startlingly idyllic and the patchwork assortment of buildings, no two alike, crowd the streets like a crammed bookshelf, the names of books being coffee shops or shops selling books that arent metaphorical, this (metaphorical book) feeling heightened by the way many abodes seem crooked and hastily stuffed tween two others and none being quite able to agree on a comfortable arrangement and just settling where they are dispite their complete lack of adherence to any law of neatness, match or form. At night little bridge arches light up, their reflection on the water along with the many pretty street lamps and often curtainless lit windows creating scenes one should only see in dreams and films, for seeing these scenes in person seems a crime to all those who will never witness it.
Of course Amsterdam is not without its, messynessess. Mostly in the form of bald, somewhat short and stocky, drunken bands of roaming tourists of the british variety stalking the painfully gaudy and superficial red light district for anything that seems amusing through the cloying fog of excess cannibis and alcohol.
That said, the messynessess add to the character of the Dam (as it is apparently, colloquially known) and the good certainly outweighs the bad.

I have not actually seen too much of the Dam rather then a widening assortment of coffee shops and a somewhat shorter list of bars as I have been spending my time with H at said coffee shops and bars. Our initial meeting was as verbose as it was long, and as enjoyable as those two factors multiplied by 10. Since then we have kept up our acquaintence on a quite regular basis, much to my delight. This is also one reason I avoid the decisions mentioned previously, for, this being a good thing, it is doomed to end at some point.

So my next beginning on my hodgepodge tour of Europe will probably be Hannover, the mode of transport will probably be thumb, and I might depart on montyoosdayish. (say it out loud)

I do not recall if I mentioned previously dear subscriber, that I have a wish to study Spanish in Spain. This requires much research and whatnot so it is as yet completely undecided. But I also find the urge to travel to cheaper climes growing as my credit with my bank shrinks so I may end up just saying "Bugger it all"and buying the next ticket to Phnom Penh. Europe seems just too close, safe, easy and the very antithesis of the reasons why I conjured up this mad plunge so long ago.

Also, after Hannover I must dash to Spain to catch the famed Running of the Bills. In which they release 6 people called Bill who chase a few hundred people who aren't Bills into an arena where the Bills are tortured and then killed. This strange custom would certainly be something to behold, as long as you aren't a Bill of course.

And as I am certainly not a Bill, I will behold it!