Tourists or Travelers

There's a difference, isn't there, between these two kinds of people. Maybe you can't put your finger on it right at first, maybe you have some ideas, but I hadn't really thought about it until Gabe mentioned it in class today. As a tour guide, Gabe comes into contact with a lot of tourists, and really appreciates when we become travelers.

I'm sorry I haven't written in a long time! Internet connection has been slim to none this past week but now it's one in the morning and no one else is on, so the wifi is mine! Win!

Back to traveling, I thought I would bullet point some everyday life stuff that we now take for granted but are kind of funny. Also, you should know that an inside-joke of our trip is the twitter firstworldpains, where the writer basically complains about things in privilaged situations, like: "I really want to go to McDonalds for breakfast but I won't get up before 11" or one of ours is "My apartment in the middle of Paris only has one ethernet cable and so I have to go out and appreciate the city more instead of being on the computer"...firstworldpains: FWP. Some of these will be firstworldpains, and I think they're funny.

• The showers have either very hot or very cold temperature settings, and the nozzles all come as hand-held things with hoses out the bottoms of them, we didn't relaly know what to make of that when we first got to London. 
• The bathroom light switches are always outside the bathroom, and I still always forget to turn them on and hit the wall right inside the doorway first.
• When people here do american accents, they make really harrrd 'R' sounds and sound like pirrrrates, or like they keep chomping on their worrds or something
• Breakfast cereal is either corn flakes, museli, or chocolate
• People buy only one or two day's worth of groceries, and grocery "sacks" are 10-50 cents
• We always know the price of ice cream: Here in Berlin it's best so far: 80 cents for a scoop of gelato!!
• NUTELLA: actually these people are sugar junkies, they have crazy croissants with chocolate in them and other pastries for breakfast with sugar and cookies and cakes everywhere, it's rediculous how thin these people are when they eat all this.
• Walking everywhere, I love it!
• Women's style: flats, skinny-leg pants cuffed at the ankle, belt, collared shirt tucked in with a sweater or blazer over the top, very classy :)
• In my bag: water bottle, small notebook with pen, gum, camera, city and metro maps, bobby pins, euros, tour guide system.
• Amsterdam is WINDY. Makes sense with the windmills, but I never put that together.
• You don't have choices of coffee sizes, and they cost a lot but you pay for the table, they don't pressure you to leave, coffee is a thing to DO not to GET here.
• Travelling in a group: mass chaos of bags getting on and off trains, everyone trying to lead (too many cooks...) guys embracing their manly-ness and throwing our bags at each other while leaving us to fight for our lives through their elbows and shouting and bag throwing! ...And then we stand and wait for 47 tickets to be bought (elevator music)... and then parade through the station.... and AHHHH mass chaos all over again
• First thing everyone asks when we get to a place: is there wifi??!?!?! Personally, I think it does us some good when we can't get on Facebook every free moment we have :)

Me, Bry, Joanna, and Laurel sitting by an Amsterdam canal about to have lunch, it was delicious! :)
  

We're in Berlin! Coming from Amsterdam! Coming from Bruges! Coming from Paris! Yep, count 'em--4 countries in one week! AND yesterday was our one-month anniversary! Woot! But, as I think I've said before? I don't think in terms of weeks I think in terms of countries: this is our second day in Berlin, last 'week' was 2 days ago when we were in Amsterdam which feels like a year ago. Time is totally relative!

A quick recap, I have SO MUCH I've wanted to say and haven't been able to!

In Amsterdam we stayed in The Shelter, a christian hostel in the red light district, seriously. Girls were standing in windows that share the same portion of wall that our hostel door was cut into. People in our group either liked or hated Amsterdam, personally I couldn't tack this city down. What is Amsterdam? A beautiful city with gorgeous architecture and canals winding in concentric circles through the city, the city that hid Anne Frank during the war, a city with cobblestone streets? Or is it the city with coffee-shops (not coffeehouses, there's an important difference on what is available for purchase here...) on every corner and two in-between and the red light district, where girls stand in windows while men window shop. Seriously. 

Being in the Red Light district gave me a weird, and this is the only way to describe it, vibe. A lot of people in our group felt it, it was heavy, for the first time we had no desire to go out and explore the city and we stayed in the hostel when we had free time, which was awesome, actually. They had hamburger night--6 euros and you get burger, fries (with mayo, that's the thing), salad, drink, and vla (runny pudding stuff that tastes like...runny pudding)--we all turned up for it and made it an event, we talked with other people staying and working there, did some homework, played music, it was great :)

Our group enjoying Amsterdam Hostel's coffeehouse/cafe. 

We did walk through the red light district and my reaction was surprising. I think we all had the different reactions that God wanted us to. It is really, really hard walking through that place seeing so much of humanity gone wrong, these girls completely objectified and men talking about cup sizes and who they like best. It's hard to see the girls try to get attention, to see them wearing those outfits, to see curtains pulled and to see girls showing men out. There are no pretenses, it's very in your face. I was expecting it to really weigh on me, but it didn't, interestingly. Praying, "Father, look at this! Save them! I don't know how but get these girls out, tell them how beautiful they are, enable them to give and receive true love and give them a chance to live life the way you intended it!" somehow made me... confident, or emboldened. Instead of sadness and solemnity all I felt was a strong trust flow into me that

 "My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart". --Jeremiah 24:6,7

Some people had really emotional reactions and weren't ready to hear this. It's hard to leave them behind, knowing that we didn't even have the chance to talk to them. The only, and most powerful, thing we can do is to pray.

To be a traveler rather than a tourist, I think the key is to interact with the city and it's people more and look through my camera less. A tourist goes to see famous things with the purpose to say he saw them when he returns home, a traveler goes to places and tells stories about the true experiences she had there.

 I will be a traveler, and I will pray.