I wondered what life would be like…commuting by bicycle through the back streets of the city. Amsterdam is so different to Sydney or America. Everyone here says things in Australia are so big…they are right. Everything here seems tiny..cute..except for the men who are tall and big. My day out got me thinking about life decisions…the what ifs, shouldda…couldda..wouldda… It would be great to be able to rewind and forward life like a DVD. What if I came to Amsterdam? What if I stayed in Sydney with DG? What if we came together? Tomorrow I am visiting a friend in Lieden, about 30 minutes away. She’s Dutch but wants to move to Australia almost as much as I want to move to Amsterdam. The grass is always greener on the other side.

• Netherlands Domiantrix

One of my best straight couple friends is getting married on Friday. I have known them for about two years having worked with them previously. In many ways they are total opposites: she’s the practical Japanese and he’s the Latino Colombian. They met while studying English in Australia. They have a very stormy relationship but deep down I know they care and love each other very much. Their wedding like their relationship is a mix of cultures, languages and customs...some of which I'm sure will be lost in translation. His family has arrived from Colombia. Her family also made the trip from Japan. There are three official languages: English, Spanish and Japanese but the flavour is totally Australian. Even the hen’s night was unconventional…a gay hen’s night.

• Sugar Babies

Double Dutch? It is when you use a condom and the pill at the same time! I have fallen in love again….not with a tall Dutch man but with this lovely city. I spent most of the day yesterday walking the many cobble streets, stopping to see the views from the various canals and walking my way around parking lots of full bicycles. I kept wondering what my life would be like here….could I see myself living here in six months? Could I get used to the darkness and the cold? I also kept thinking about how nice it would be to be here with DG…to have someone special to share the adventure. Amsterdam is a very compact city with lots of history and beautiful architecture. Every corner reveals a different scene. And there seems to be every imaginable scene here…everything from Marijuana cafes, Indonesian food, a Sex Museum and live sex shows…gay and straight.

Yesterday I visited the Universiteit van Amsterdam, the institution where I have been offered a place to study in September. There are various campuses through the city, most of them in the city centre. The International Relations Faculty is only a few streets from the central train station, the heart of the city centre. It is a very modern building with a very European clean design. The students seem to be from all over the world. The campus is small but it seems every student owns a bicycle. I spoke to one of the advisers there about housing and employment options. The average rent for a student room is €500 ($850AUD). The prospects of employment as a student are not that great…I could perhaps become a Spanish teacher.

• Kinky Personal Ads

I am somewhat cynical when it comes to marriage. It could be that my parents never believed in the concept of marriage…or the fact that they had three marriage type relationships each. Marriages are not what they used to…My grandparents are still married..but my parent’s generation is full of broken marriages. In Australia, there were 688,658 divorced people in 1991. Now, that figure is around 1,099, 391. Today, less of us are getting married. The big M word is mortgage and not marriage. In Australia, one out of five marriages ends in divorce within 10 years and more than one in three ends within 20 years. Nearly 60 percent of divorces are initiated by women. In 2005, 16 percent of divorcing couples had been married less than five years. All couples hope that it will not happen to them. Do I see myself walking down the aisle....hmmm...I am trying to be less cynical about it, post DG. But I am confident my friends will be together for a very long time….I hope they never forget their special day on Friday…and the reasons why fate brought them together.

• Single Girls from Snapchat