Just over a year earlier, I had posted in this community how I enjoyed walking around Kharkiv, Ukraine and noticing the decorations pop up in the city. Now a year later, life is very different. I went to meet a friend from Ukraine who has started in a restaurant in Amsterdam as a waitress. She was busy working so I had some extra time to go walk around the "popular" streets.
As soon as I saw the lights hanging from atop the short and beautiful buildings of central Amsterdam, it reminded me of the lights in Pavlova Str in Kharkiv. It is very different, yet there are so many things that hit close to home.
Brick bike roads, tiny walk ways, lots of people bustling, and the famous rainy weather - AH, Amsterdam. The weather being a little too cold also reminded me of Kharkiv. One thing I love about Amsterdam that cannot be replicated anywhere else is how easy it is to be invisible. No one cares, no one pays attention to you, it is very relaxing.
Apart from the public-funded decorations, a lot of businesses are also partaking in holiday festivities and decorations. Some are very subtle and have a tiny hint, mostly focusing their decorations on the inside. While some others are very loud and extroverted with their decorations.
If you ever wake up to a horrible hangover and can't figure out where you are, just know that if you find a lot cheese shops and tonnes of bikes just laying there - you might be in the Netherlands. I love the cheese shops - they are bright, beautiful and being a cheese fan adds some level of bias. I am not yet a fan of biking around as much as the Dutchies, but I have to agree that it is extremely convenient here.
Hotel Luxor had a different approach to the decorations. They didn't go too ham on it but made it stand out with their choice of colors and ornaments. The tin soldier reminds me of Roshen. It is a local chocolate brand owned by the ex-president of Ukraine. In their largest showrooms in Kharkiv, they always decorated the outside of the shops with a plethora of the bigger tin soldiers.
After meeting and dining with my friend, I told her goodbye and started heading back. The sun had gone down already and on the way to the station, I came across these lights. The pine tree-shaped yellow lights and the eternal-design lights. If you have seen either mine of Priyan's posts from Kharkiv then you that these are super special. On Gagarina Str in Kharkiv, they used to put up giant lights in these designs.
Affiliate links
Rising Star
Exode
Huobi
Appics
Splinterlands
Actifit
Binance
Ionomy
Cryptex
