Pole F*cking Sana

Pole sana literally means "very sorry," but it is also used very commonly for expressing sympathy and in both cases today warrented many pole sanas.
Yesterday I left CCS and boarded my plane, the whole time I was worried about how they would react to the masai spears in my bag, luckily nothing happened and tomorrow I'll be shipping them home. When I got to the check in desk I couldn't seem to find the boarding pass that I had spent half of the day trying to print out, but thankfully the woman at the desk didn't even ask for any codes or anything, she just looked at my passport and then printed out my boarding pass.
During the flight I talked to a man in his 60s who had quite the story to tell. He apparently moved from the Netherlands to Kenya when he was 18 because at that time it was compulsory for every Dutch citizen to serve two years in the military. Apparently he told them that he ws going to make toruble for them so it would just be better for everyone if he just was sent away and so he ended up volunteering in Kenya and he fell in love with the country. He also fell in love with a woman there but she ended up using his Dutch citizenship to somehow run off to Canada, I'm not exactly sure how that works but I didn't feel like pressing the subject. Anyway, he found another woman he fell in love with and married in Tanzania and they had several children together before she tragically died, again I don't know how because I didn't want to press the subject. This man was certainly a seasoned traveler and I gave him my email when we got off the plane because he said that there might be a place for me to stay in Amsterdam at his son's friends place.
So then for the next few hours I sat around with the other volunteers who had the same flight as me, they were all waiting for their connections and I was in no rush. It wasn't until about two hours after we had gotten off the plane that it occured to me that maybe I should go pick up my checked luggage (i.e. my humongous backpack) but I also felt that since it had already been two hours that another two hours couldn't hurt that much. I was glad to relax and just have some last minute chats with my friends before they left to be seen again at an unknown time. Then I finally go to pick up my backpack, it obviously wasn't going to be on the conveyor belt by this point so I just went up to the service desk to pick it up from storage. But then they couldn't find it, after a few minutes of stressfully searching around the baggage claim room to see if it was lying around anywhere I began to fill out the form for where they should send my backpack when they finally find it. I had just one more line of information to fill out when suddenly one of the attendants popped out of no where with my backpack, I was so immensly relieved, it turns out that it was just hidden behind some other luggage.
So I've finally got my backpack strapped on and I'm ready to start my Eurotrip. I take a train into Amsterdam Central Station and then I'm lost. Dutch public transit for the most part is totally void of English directions. After a few minutes of wondering around, not sure what I was doing and frequently refering to my euro hostels guide book, I find a info booth where I'm able to buy a tram ticket. I follow the directions and get off at the proper stop for my first attempt at finding a hostel for the night, but it turns out those directions where a little hard to follow once I got off the tram. It wasn't much of the fault of the book, it's just that there aren't too many street signs here and so it was hard to figure out which street I was walking down exactly. After walking in circles a few times I finally come to a place that I had stopped at before but for some reason didn't think it was the one I was looking for, which it turns out it was. The hostel is freaking awesome and I'll be enjoying the next three days here.
Then I got some directions from the person at the desk in the hostel on where to get my camera fixed. They directed me to a really nice, professional place, but unfortunately they themselves don't do repairs and they would have to send my camera to the Fujifilm base in the Netherlands, which they predicted could take from two weeks to two months. Fortunatly, they directed me to a place that does their own repairs and could possibly repair it sooner.
So today was crazy, but I was lucky on multiple occasions and I'm excited and optimistic for what is to come. I've already met two Slovaks who have invited me to come visit them in Slovania, which I think I might just take them up on.