My boyfriend and I just put down the deposit on our first flat... rented, but 12 months minimum contract.

All I can think is 'How will I afford to go to Amsterdam??'!

Last time we went, about August last year, I fell in love with the city. My second time, last month, was even more fun. Now I am buying kitchen utensils when I should be spending my cash on plane tickets. I don't know if I'll be able to come back in May like I planned, and I need to use my holiday allowance spending time with a girlfriend who is coming over from New York to see me.

This is just me lamenting that I am stuck in sad, rainy England for the foreseeable future. Waaah!

There are flights on EasyJet from Luton to AMS for as little as £5.99 each way. What are you waiting for?????

Plus 'airfare' £34.98, plus taxes £29.00, plus at the very cheapest avoiding restaurants and eating bread and cheese from Albert Heijn, plus alcohol, weed, entrance to shows and clubs...

Alas.

Count yourself lucky - I bet those plane tickets are a hell of a lot more expensive for those coming from the US. I think it's pretty cheap myself - I got a return flight yesterday from Amsterdam to the UK for just 60 euros total.

Oh, and don't go to Albert Hijn - that place is damn expensive - the most expensive Dutch supermarket I know of.

True, but those going to Amsterdam from the US probably have a lot more money than I do- I am 18 going on 19 and earn £18k/year...

Heh... I made it out to Amsterdam when I was on my 4.5k / year student loan. 18k should be no problem.

Just booked my latest trip to the dam, if you fly from the uk you now pay extra tax return flight £27 tax £35 plus £5 insurance grand total £67 still cheap but the last trip in jan was £15 for tax and insurance and £22 for the flight .

Ah, but were you paying around two thirds of that in rent?...

I think I must resign myself to waiting a while. Hell, I would go whether I could afford it or not, but my boyfriend is more sensible than I am!

I sympathize with you lolagirl. Amsterdam is such a place that you can truly get obsessed with returning. I want to visit in June from the U.S. and the airfare is over $900.00! Like you I have been dreaming of returning since my last trip. I make a decent living but naturally I often think of all the other things I could and should be doing with my money instead of traveling. It’s hard to find a balance sometimes. You are not going to look back on your life and reminisce about all the fun you had with your utensils, yet they are necessary.
Moving in to your first place is an exciting time so enjoy it. It seems like you have some fun things going on at home so try to be positive. Maybe you could look for some specials or perhaps travel off season to save money. For me just getting somewhere from the U.S. is expensive so I try not to spend too much on things like shopping and restaurants once I get there. My weed and hash budget, that’s a different story! I know it’s probably not that comforting but you should be thankful that you are in England and at least getting there is a possibility in the future. If I could fly to Amsterdam for those prices I would be there all the time!

money spent on travelling is never a waste in my book!

anyway, its raining here in amsterdam so youre not missing out on much really... oh maybe the coffee shop next door ;-)

fine avond!

withnail

Hi,
So you (and your boyfriend) earn around 2250€ each month and pay ~1500€ per month for a flat. Damned, its expensive in UK or maybe you are renting a rather big flat or live in london dontown. In France, they do not allow you to rent with this kind of ratio unless you pay a big caution.
Clostro

I understand this feeling being obsessed with Amsterdam, I am living with this obsession for 1 year and half now, even though it is decreasing a bit after the 7th trip ... Trip n°8 in less than 3 weeks :)

When spending 50 euros in my home city for food or clothes or whatsoever, I am now often thinking "shit, this money would be better spent in Trompetter street" ... This is probably what we call addiction. It's a bit weird and frightening. I don't know where it will lead me. I should try to reduce the number of trip to 2 or 3 a year ... And not spending more than 10% of my income in Amsterdam trips !

Hi Withnail,
personaly i think it is the the best season when it is raining with not so much tourist and very good hotel rate.
Why the price are so high to go from Us to Amsterdam while the reverse (at least from Paris) is not true ? i paied something like 400€ a return ticket to the state from france.
Clostro

Here's what you could do lolagirl.......start saving NOW for the next trip. 2 bucks, euros, pounds (well.....better make it 3 if your saving US 'bucks'.....damn exchange rate) saved every day will earn your airfare plus hotel and other expenses in 1 year. Just skip that morning Latte or Egg McMuffin and put that money religiously into a Christmas Club account or similar. You'll feel like your working your way toward that next trip every time you stash some loot away. Talk about anticipation!

By the way , I'll be taking advantage of one of those cheap, Easyjet flights that really do seem like a bargain when I next visit in May. The problem is , I gotta pay $882 to get from Chicago to Heathrow first!

I couldn't have afforded the trip at your age and probably shouldn't have. I can't imagine that myself or any young American could withstand such early exposure to a place so desireable yet so distant. Holland didn't then and doesn't now need a few million punk Yanks (and I can say it 'cauz I wuz one) wandering around trying to figure out how to scam enough bucks to live the dream they abandoned everything for and now can't afford. Wow....I shouldn't post while stoned...look at me ramblin...

Anyhow, consider yourself lucky for going AT ALL so far, and I hope you get back again sooner than later!

OK, resolution to problem!

When my girlfriend comes over from NY in May, I'm going to take her to Amsterdam for a weekend.

Huge love for everyone who replied to me :)

And in the meantime, I will be learning Dutch.

De kikker is klein! (This is all I have learned so far today... and words; hont (I think this is right... or maybe hond?), zalm... I guess that's all!)

I'm going in two weeks. I usually go in April, but this year the difference between going the last week in March or the first week in April was $450 to $672 in airfare and 92e to 140e per night in hotel rates. I'll take my chances with the weather for that much of a difference.

One thing I do is I have an Amsterdam jar that I put $5 into every day that I'm home. It adds up.

See lolagirl, your not the only one. I buy my next plane ticket to Amsterdam as soon as I get back. That way I know unless I'm dead, when I'll be back. Three weeks from right this second, I'll be on that plane over Canada I think right about now.... ( non stop from Seattle $ 880 ).............Cooter

I'll tell a personal story, parts of it I've told once or twice.

While attending school in Paris, I made my first trip to Amsterdam. At age 18. We did the find-the-cheapest-place-to-stay knocking on doors thing, watched people skate on canals, saw Golden Earring perform live, was invited to stay with some Dutch guys sister who we'd met in a student restaurant, who showed us around. We had a fabulous time. It seems like yesterday, when in fact it was over 20 years ago. I made one more visit after that about one year later. My next visit came several years later, after finishing school, when several years at that young age seems an eternity. I was still relatively poor, and staying in some cheap hotel with my girlfriend of the time. She had to return earlier than I, and on her last night in town, she lost her wallet and cash. She still had to purchase her return ticket to Canada. This was before the automatic teller machines, so cash was hard to find. I gave her all my cash but 40 guilders or so, which I kept. Neither one of us had credit cards. She promised to send me the money back once she got home and settled.

So being broke for the foreseeable future, I holed up in the hotel room. I decided to buy a small bag of grass to pass the time, because it usually makes me go straight to sleep, but on my way back to the hotel room, I passed a comic book shop. I went in and browsed. I discovered a reprint of an old comic I'd heard of in art school. It was something Picasso and others of that calibre read and enjoyed, or so we were taught. I bought it, just to see what it was.

The old comic reprint was called Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse. It was not an easy strip to get into, with the strange language and very vague, poetic, sometimes metaphysical stories and lot's of very creaky gags. But that weekend as I smoked, slept and read, I became hooked.

I still have that comic book. This very day I pulled it out. It's very tattered now, very tattered. In a few instances over the 30 year run of the comic Krazy Kat refers to his/her nemesis/love Ignatz Mouse in the weird ungrammatical language he/she spoke as 'Ignatz Mice'. That really tickled me for some reason. I found that line in the comic book again, and it still tickles me. Okay, you'd have to understand the context or something:-) But never mind.

After returning home myself, I adopted my first kitten. I named him Ignatzmice (1986-2003).

In time I found myself, surprisingly, becoming financially solvent, perhaps even comfortable (for a sodding artist). I was then able to start enjoying twice yearly extended trips to Amsterdam. (Eventually 6 months of the year visits---which I have maintained for 10 yrs).

Finally years later the WWW arrived. I had the little idea of publishing the first version of this here website thing. I published some of the first photos of the red light district available online, and wrote a little text. It grew from that. No one else was doing this city at that time. Now there are countless Amsterdam sites, and it's like a little cottage industry.

When it came time for selecting a domain name as the thing became successful after a year or two, I selected the name of my cat, who was named after the comic mouse who I discovered in Amsterdam during a poverty stricken week in Amsterdam. It made some sort of sense.

That was back in 1995, so it's been a very long while.

I guess the whole point of this, if there is any, is that one can just get completely, crazily tangled up in the city. I did.

And there's no end in sight.

Warm regards!

Great story...Golden Earring- Radar Love ??

Did you see the cartoon in the 60's on American TV ??

Best Regards

Smuler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNrL_-jVvXo

doog!

withnail