Amsterdam: Reiseführer, Preise und kostenlose Unterkunft · 2026

LLLiubov Lopakovalyubalopakova · 10.12.2019Lesen

Barcelona, Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki, London, Reykjavik, Vienna, New York, Miami, Boston, Washington, Amsterdam, Brussels, San Francisco, Los Angeles - these are the major cities I have already visited, and you know what? I found my favorite! This is a case where a city truly deserves its massive global popularity. Los Angeles is a unique city. I'm serious. A huge metropolis with completely different neighborhoods. So, which one is the most memorable? Of course, it's Hollywood! This is where the most famous film studios were born, this is where the Oscars ceremony takes place at the Kodak Theatre, here is the Walk of Fame, and everything around is vibrant—just like in movies and video games. By the way, the first film ever made entirely in Hollywood was the 1910 short film 'In Old California'. In short, spend your money on experiences.

ЛЧЛена Чернецоваlena_chernetsova · 30.10.2012Lesen

- Hey do you guys wanna come with us to fire? - Fire? You mean - bonfire? - Yeah, fire. "Hakuna Matata," we decided, and became regulars at the night hangouts with the golden youth of Williamsville. Our new friends are burning a fire in a low rectangular grill. Cans of Budweiser are passed around in a circle - with the American flag - and small clay pipes - the smell of burning wood makes it impossible to catch the pungent sweet smell, memorable from the eternal hazy cloud over sleepy Amsterdam. Lera is twisting her can in her hands, Dana is lost, smoking cigarette after cigarette. I try to listen to the guys' conversation - and immediately get stuck in a pile of slang and interjections. Today one of the guys is flying to Afghanistan. The future hero is the biggest, the ugliest, the only one here - with a girlfriend. Getting bored, I take a "captive" - a native in the next lounge chair. I nudge him in the side: - Hey, they keep repeating "dirty", what is that? He thinks for a moment. - It means "good". My victim's name is Joe, and Joe has perfect diction and a wonderful sad smile. Joe says he is half Polish. I have to tell him that I have been to Poland, and that it looks like one big Buffalo. He thought about it. Meanwhile, Mike tells a sad story about a friend who met a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel head-on on the highway: - I'll get a tattoo with his date of birth. We tell them that in Russia, you can get away with 4 years in a settlement for hitting a person. Deep shock: - 4 years?! According to our laws - 20 years. Cruel. - Nope, fair. I am tactless in any language. New logs fly into the fire. At the end of the evening, Joe friendly pats me on the shoulder. Americans are very non-contact, and such rare gestures should be valued. What else? Surprisingly, the morals in the American province are no different from those accepted in the Russian hinterland - everyone is terribly bored. Through the grapevine, Lera was surprised to learn that she, it turns out, is sleeping with Mike, and the three of us are weaving intrigues against Jess. It would be funny if it weren't so disgusting. Also, it is categorically not accepted to pay for girls. An unpleasant surprise for us spoiled ones. Mike even paid for Lera's cola with a creak, and she is, after all, the lady of his heart. A priori, almost everyone treated us very coldly. At work, we were sincerely considered stupid, and they tried to explain what a dollar is. We, in turn, tried to explain to them where Italy is. It's true. I am offended in my best feelings. It would be fine if we were ugly, but why stupid?! A stranger's soul is a dark place. You can not understand a person in any language. But I fell in love with the local cemeteries with all my heart. They regularly shoot movies there, and you can find tombstones two hundred years old. We lived near one. Once we picked a whole handful of wild strawberries there. And also - one of the saddest things I have seen in my life - three tombstones in a row: MOTHER 1923-1995, FATHER 1915-1981, DAUGHTER 1944-1952. That's how it is.

DDDmitrii DvornikovBonhamJohn · 18.10.2012Lesen

Finally, after such a trip, I made it to New York. Thank God, during my layover in Washington, I met two other outcasts like me from Russia who had absolutely no idea where they were going to sleep in the Big Apple or what to do at all. The shock started when we took off from Washington. That was when I saw the full scale of what was happening. We landed. The weather didn't seem the most favorable. However, despite the clouds and occasional rain, it was very hot—that's the local climate for you. We arrived at the Port Authority. And that's where the most interesting part begins. Broadway, Madison Square Garden, NY Subway. And this is my first trip abroad. Who would have known what I was feeling in those first few hours. We decided not to waste time and look for a hostel for the night. I found an ad for a hostel on Amsterdam Avenue. After giving a strange taxi driver 12 bucks, we walked into a lively hostel. After the question: “Do you have a reservation?”, we were a bit bummed out, as there were no free beds. A friendly African-American girl with a Muslim crescent and star tattoo on her arm started calling other hostels. After a long conversation, she said there were 3 spots at the Chelsea International Hostel. No choice, we took the subway there. The subway is a separate topic. A hundred times livelier than the Moscow one. Not in terms of the flow of people or the crowd size, but how people behave in the subway. It turns out that Chelsea is not far from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where we came from. We arrived and checked in. I was put in a room with two German girls. When I arrived, they weren't there. I took a shower and just as I lay down to sleep, they came in. I said a few words to them through my sleep, something like: hi, i’m only for one night, and only for sleep. Hearing an 'ok' in response, I passed out. Morning started with rain. A proper, short-lived rain. I woke up before the girls. I lay there for a long time, then one of them woke up. We had a nice chat, I told her why I came and where I was from. And she shared her impressions of Russia in return; she had been to St. Petersburg once and complained about the terrible cold, talking about -16 with wind. And I told her that where I live, it even gets to -30. Then a nice breakfast. You walk up and get a bagel with jam, butter, and an apple, then you make yourself coffee or juice of your choice, you could also have cereal. Overall, everything is very pleasant and civilized. Next stop - Port Authority again, from where I am writing this post. I don't want to say goodbye to New York, I've ended up in a dream. But what can you do, it's time to go to Lake George.

ЛЧЛена Чернецоваlena_chernetsova · 30.09.2012Lesen

The flight is ending, the journey is reaching its logical conclusion. From several thousand feet up, the promised land looks like a dull, gray patchwork quilt of suburban bedroom communities with the occasional bright blue button of a water tower. While the plane is still catching low rain clouds over JFK with its wings, a sharp desire to touch the ground with my own soles and ground myself in this new reality is born, replacing the numbing fatigue. Lera spent the last hour entertaining pierced Italian teenagers (“—What? The whole summer? Oh, no, we’re just here for a weekend in New York for shopping!”), and now she’s out of sight. In this new reality, it’s raining and chilly. We find Lera, nervously joking with each other by the carousel while waiting for our wayward luggage. Back at the Rome airport, we noticed a fabulously beautiful, impeccably stylish Italian flying on our same flight—in the company of his cooing friend. Life, why are you like this? We continue to impolitely admire this phenomenon, a magnificent specimen of the human body and the labors of all the fashion houses of blessed Europe. An ironic fat man at the temporary immigrant registration desk stamps our documents without unnecessary questions. He points a webcam at my face: —One photo, young lady,—I hastily pull off my glasses. A few minutes later, right there at the airport, we have our first encounter with a local monster on clay feet with a lion’s head—an American Russian. An inconspicuous guy in a baseball cap radiates cheerfulness. He methodically calls through our list of motels and finds spots in a student hostel on Amsterdam Avenue. Rare raindrops fly in through the open sunroof of his terrifying green SUV. I try to breathe deeply and carefully, as if getting used to the atmosphere of an alien planet. There must be some special chemical element in the air by which New York air can be easily recognized, even if brought in a tin can to the other end of the world. It’s getting dark. The city across the bridge sparkles with skyscrapers. We drive in and start winding through beautiful and completely identical neon streets. —Two floors in this building belong to Yoko Ono. You know The Beatles, right?—he points to an old brick apartment building with a white convertible parked at the entrance,—it’s the only building that has gas lamps constantly burning on its facade. —Actually, many celebrities have homes in this neighborhood. They even have a council that decides who is allowed to settle here. Madonna was refused. Reputation, you know. He offers gum (“imported”). I run through all the knockout-drug stories in my head and politely decline. Contrary to all warnings and our gloomy looks, the nameless native of Lviv safely delivers us to our destination. He explains things to the American woman at the reception, hands us a business card—just a number, no name or surname—and disappears into the twilight behind the glass door. At the hostel, for $59 a head, we get decent beds, three Australian roommates, and a divine, desired, hot shower with singing Spanish women in the neighboring stalls. We try to figure out the Grey Hound intercity bus system. We are irritated, snapping at each other and the lagging google-maps. Lera is sleeping with her eyes open, leaving behind an autopilot charged with generic affirmative phrases and vague humming. I feel like an unhappy lost child, and I am one. The Australians form a remarkably harmonious trio with their snoring of varying volume and timbre. Our first night in America—and, to be honest, we are not thrilled.

ВВикторияmoscowmain_788129275248 · 04.11.2010Lesen

So, we all arrived safely at our destination, JFK Airport in New York, with a layover in Rome. But no sooner had we finished celebrating our landing than we were faced with that queue again, and another mini-interview with someone who would finally decide whether to say "welcome to the Big Apple" or "goodbye, get back on the plane and fly another 12 hours, but back home." Again, there was anxiety, although the probability of being let into the United States was higher than being sent back, some nervousness was still present. But this time everything went smoothly; a nice person in uniform asked me the purpose of my visit to the USA, where and what I would be working as, where I was studying, took my fingerprints, and said, "Welcome to New York." After those words, it was as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and despite the fatigue from the flight, I felt very energetic and happy. The thought that I was finally in New York and no further checks awaited me was simply exhilarating. My first impression was: "What a huge airport!" There is an express train between terminals that can take you to any part of the airport for free. So, I went from my Terminal 1 to Terminal 4, where in an hour the plane from Amsterdam was supposed to land, from which my expected Miss Universe was to disembark. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next, we (now the two of us, with Miss Universe) found ourselves in the subway, where we unsuccessfully tried to buy a transit pass, having no idea how to do it. A woman helped us, showed us how to buy a ticket, and even helped with change since we only had large bills. Navigating by my route planned on Google Maps and using the help of locals, an hour later we were at the place where our reserved hostel was waiting for us. In the office of this student dormitory, a nice dark-skinned man in a hat was waiting for us, who later turned out to be the owner of this hostel, Santos. He showed us to our room and told us about various places in Manhattan where we could go. And he tirelessly repeated that it was a safe place and that we could walk around here until night. This was Harlem (a neighborhood of Black and Latino people) in Manhattan. As scary as it might sound at first (believe me, at first we were a little uneasy, it was more out of habit), I must say that it is indeed a safe neighborhood, provided, of course, you don't go deep into Harlem at night. The first few days felt like a wonderful dream or a romantic movie in which I was directly participating. It was like falling in love. I just fell in love with this wonderful city. I wanted to walk everywhere all the time, which, by the way, we did, and just stroll around the city. "Yes, New York is truly beautiful," I heard the voice of an elderly man next to me when I was sitting with my head back in Washington Square, soaking in this specific air with sincere pleasure, eyes closed. "Yes, it is amazing," I replied. In New York, people are generally very easy to talk to. People you see for the first time might wish you a good day, give you a compliment, ask how you are, offer help, or wish you a good morning and a great evening. "That's all of New York; you can sit somewhere and tell the story of your whole life to a person you just met and never see them again," said one wonderful New Yorker with whom we also happened to strike up a conversation. After a couple of days of carefree wandering, the serious search for housing began. Money was running out every day, and the places we needed to visit were increasing every day. And here craigslist.com helped us a lot—on this site, we found many addresses where we could rent a room. We wrote down the phone numbers of landlords who suited us in both price and location and started going to see our potential future rooms where we would live for the next month. After looking at several options, we settled on the

AAlexsadus · 30.06.2010Lesen

22.06.10 The day of the flight has arrived:) Woke up early, flight from Sheremetyevo-2 at 10:25. Took the metro from Park Kultury station - the very same station where the terrorist attack happened on 03.29. Of course, there were no traces of the explosion left, but it was still creepy. At the airport, I met up with Tanya (we met about 2 months ago via VK) and we agreed to travel together to the train station in NY. That's where I'll spend the night! And in the morning I'll head to JFK, where Gleb is arriving, and after that, we'll fly to Chicago together) yesss They fed us wonderfully on the plane:) I swiped a blanket... I still have to sleep at the station! From the porthole, Amsterdam looks beautiful! Neatly built cottages, fields as even as if measured by a ruler. Beautiful... you can feel the European style. On the plane to NY, I noticed that the entire crew consisted of African Americans (it's better to forget words like nigger, black, etc. in the USA, otherwise you might get punched in the neck). New York, New York!!! Passed passport control quickly. In the airport hall, after meeting up with the guys, we headed to the center by bus for $15. The weather isn't just hot, it's just terribly stuffy, the air is dry and it's not very comfortable to be outside( Air conditioning is everywhere in the USA!! Walking down the street, you feel a bit bewildered)) It's beautiful... This is truly the largest city in the USA!! Abundant skyscrapers surround you, these are undoubtedly the most luxurious and expensive streets in the world!!! The streets are laid out evenly and it's simply impossible to get lost. Bus stops don't look like our kiosks))) here it's just a pole with a sign showing a bus, a schedule, and a route map. If you look from above, all the streets form a grid of avenues and intersecting streets. You can find emergency buttons right on the street:) Lots of food carts, they probably give the streets of NY a not-so-pleasant smell( The homeless in NY, and probably in all of America, are mostly African Americans, saw a couple sleeping at the station... always asking for something, either to change money or to give them money. The homeless walk around with such big carts where they keep all their belongings hehe After sleeping a little at the station (the stations here are gorgeous, at least I liked the train station) and seeing Tanya off on her train, I went to JFK airport to meet Gleb! PS I'm thrilled with NY!! On the way back, I definitely need to visit most of the sights)))

AAlexsadus · 16.06.2010Lesen

Hello everyone! I'm starting my blog-diary by noting that today is June 16th, and in 5 days I'm flying to Moscow, then to New York with a layover in Amsterdam, and finally to Chicago!! I live in Tyumen myself – it's a wonderful city, though it has its drawbacks, but that's not the point... In my blog, I will talk about what happens to me while I'm in the USA and give some tips for those who decide to discover America for themselves)) Preparation for the trip is almost finished; all that's left is to pack my backpack and take one exam. I'm flying light and won't be checking any luggage) I'm glad I didn't waste time and started looking for a job offer back in November, which was, of course, a terrible ordeal!!! Having initially decided to go to Chicago, the agency's offer to find me a job who knows where and doing who knows what didn't suit me at all, plus they wanted me to pay 200 bucks! I found a job at a movers company, and by then it was already February, after hundreds of emails sent all over Chicago hehehe As many have already realized, I will be working as a mover for $10 an hour!!!! I hope there will be plenty of work))) Regarding housing: -The employer couldn't help me with anything, replying with the phrase "find an apartment yourself or let your sponsor help you"( -After using Craigslist (www.craigslist.org) – I think everyone is already aware of what kind of site this is. I sent out several emails and ran into the problem that almost everything is rented through an agency, which means a price markup of about 15%. Those who rent it out personally ask to be contacted only upon arrival. So now I just need to organize my existence in Chicago for at least a couple of days, and then solve the housing issue on the spot with other Work and Travel participants like me.=) -After searching the net, I stumbled upon an interesting site, www.couchsurfing.org. The point is that it's an international social network for travelers and locals! People are ready to host you for a couple of days, share experiences, help improve your language skills, etc. And the best part is that it's absolutely FREE!! After registering, I decided to check how true this was. I sent emails to 3 Chicago residents and received a positive response from all of them within 24 hours!!! So, I've found a place to crash in Chicago for a couple of days! For comparison, I decided to use the same method to find a place to stay in Moscow. Which turned out not to be as easy as I thought. I sent about 100 emails to Muscovites, only about 20 people replied, and as for those ready to let me in, only 3, and even they needed to think about it, etc., etc. PS So there you have it, Russia:) http://www.craigslist.org/ http://www.couchsurfing.org/