Amsterdam: the romantic side of this liberal (and crazy) city.

English:

Amsterdam: the romantic side of this liberal (and crazy) city.

Amsterdam was one of the excursions we felt most excited about on our exchange. As you know, it was not my first time in that city, but I still liked going there again: first, the weather was way better this time (it was sunny and the city was covered by many more pleasant colours), we had the opportunity to take a boat ride on several of its canals, the company was not the same, we enjoyed the presence of tulips... We fell in love with the city the minute of our arrival despite how chaotic it appeared to be at first sight: cars, motorcycles, bikes and hundreds of pedestrians!

A school exchange with a German school: the perfect way to discover incredible cities that we never thought we would visit.

English:

A school exchange with a German school: 

the perfect way to discover incredible cities that we never thought we would visit. 

The second trip I went on with my students (this time with a different group) was to Germany. It was especifically an exchange with a school (the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium Stadtlohn) from the city of Stadtlohn, in Germany, in April 2014. Earlier that month, German students came to Mallorca and at the end of the month and until the beginning of May, it was us who went there. The programme was intensive, complete and exceptional. We never had a minute to get bored, we visited a lot of beautiful places, soaked in German (and Dutch - I'll explain why later) culture and traditions and met some wonderful people I keep in touch with today.

Amsterdam: from Van Gogh's paintings to nightclubs and coffee shops.

English:

Amsterdam: from Van Gogh's paintings to nightclubs and coffee shops.

In my last year at school, in February-March 2006, two months before turning 18, we went on a school trip to Amsterdam. We were given three different options and we chose Amsterdam for one specific reason: because there we would be able to see many Rembrandt and Van Gogh's paintings and, since we had been studying their work for one year at school, we were really interested in seeing them live. I suppose most students' main reason to go to Amsterdam, specially taking into account that we were between 17 and 18 years old, was because they could go to nightclubs and smoke joints in one of the many available coffee shops; but I wasn't at all interested in that. However, we did enter a coffee shop one night and we did party at the weekend. I like to think of Amsterdam as a clash between culture, tradition and history and the willingness to be an inclusive and updated society where an ancient building, church or museum can be located next to a nightclub, a coffee shop or a sex museum. We spent those days visiting those ancient places and marvelling at the exceptional artists that had been born there and the nights dancing in packed discos. We visited Anne Frank's house during the day, and ate a weed muffin at night. We went around the outskirts of the city by bicycle during the day, and entered a sex museum in the afternoon. If I think about it in depth, at that time, we - my classmates and I - also represented that transition from innocence to adulthood. We were still an in-between when we went to Amsterdam - we were still kids -, but, after that year at school, most of us would go to unversity and we'd have to grow up whether we liked it or not.