Amsterdam and Wacken Continued...

So now Im at the airport at Eindhovem, Netherlands about ready to get on a plane to London where I will spend my last 2 days in Europe. This has me thinking a lot about omse of our recent past experiences that I havent commented on yet.

First for Wacken:

Wacken is a town of 1,928 people in Northern Germany not far from the Danish border that raises cows for dairy farming. Once a year for three days, however, 80,000 metalheads bombard tyhis tiny town for the World's largest heavy metal music festival. We were a part of this amazing festival and it was the perfect grand finallee to our trip.

We stayed in a tent city on a beautiful farm where the concert was held. On our shuttle bus from the train station to Wacken, we became friends with a professional juggler from Peru who has been living in Germany and a film student from Colombia who was studying in France / niether of which spoke English. So we became neighbors with them and a British girl our age who never met with her friend who was supposed to bring their tent and she actually had to stay with us during the festival. Also, we became really good friends with a girl from Brazil named Ju whose tent colapsed and had to pile in with us. On top of this, it rained and we were covered in mud and smelled from three days of sweating and no showers / it all was glorious, however. I saw some of my favorite bands in the world and learned about some great new Northern European metal we don´t get in the states.

The crowd was friendlier and safer feeling than any concert Ive been to in the states and everyone, no matter who they are or where they came from, all had the love of true metal music in common and it was a beautiful experience. Some observations I noted...

Greg and I met people from at least 24 other countries

All Scandenavian metalheads look the same

Canadiens annoy me

Every band told the audience that it was one of the best festivals they had ever been to and I believe it
German street food is amazing / we had incredible barbecue, kebabs, beer, everything for not too much money.
Greg wore a kilt without a shirt on and looked like he was born to wear the skirt.
We both bought bull horns with holsters that clip on to our belts to use as drinking cups.
We saw too many naked men, tons of tattoos, piercings, different colored hair, great costumes, etc.
I had the greatest time of my life. Period.
It was sad to leave, but it was also to great to see Amsterdam. Amsterdam is both a beautiful and ugly city / I cant decide which one. However, it´s a great place and the Dutch are really cool people. Everyone is really tall and all the women are beautiful, but look too much like my mom and grandma for my own comfort. We saw beautiful canals, the Anne Frank House which looks like a small Ikea, the Van Gogh museum, walked all around the city and got lost several times...all around a good time. Now I have London to explore, a place Ive always wanted to go. I´ll try to update some about London later.