And last but not least McDonalds (how much more American can I get?) European McDonalds are surprisingly nice, and for McFlurrys they have one with stroopwaffel! It’s my favorite thing here.
Ooooh, I miss these! Haha.
Dropje voor ‘t zout (by carola_vanlimborgh)
I never did acquire a taste for these.
I feel so loved :)
I am back on American ground!
It’s a crazy feeling, and I’m definitely going to have to do some adjusting—I’ve already caught myself saying dank u wel and talking about Euros—but it feels nice. I’ll miss Middelburg like crazy and even more so the wonderful friends I made while there. But I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and family.
Currently, I am harbored in a Denver hotel, waiting until noon, when I will be picked up and driven 3 1/2 hours to get to Scottsbluff, in Nebraska where my journey will officially be over.
I flew in last night, and thank the stars, all the travel went smoothly. There was one moment in Schiphol’s passport control where they pulled me aside thinking I’d overstayed my legal welcome by 2 months, but as soon as I whipped out my residence permit, all was well. The passport control guy was cute and flirtatious, so that just made it kind of fun.
The trans-Atlantic flight was long—enough for me to read Fahrenheit 451 in its entirety—and full of an inordinate number of infants, but instead of feeling irritated, all I could think was how unbelievably hard it must have been to travel that ungodly long with a tiny baby. The plane wasn’t as swanky as the one that flew me from the States to Holland 4 months ago, which was a little disappointing, but it got me here, safe and on time so I can’t complain.
I don’t even remember much of the 2nd, much shorter flight that got me to Denver. I slept almost the entire way.
And one quick shuttle ride later, I found myself in a hotel room. Definitely much nicer than the Barcelona hostel, the Paris hostel, the Antwerp dive of a hotel, and the Amsterdam room combined. So I enjoyed a long, hot shower, a video call with someone I’ve missed and can’t wait to see, and a good sleep in a big old bed that’s wider than it is long.
The view from my hotel room.
It’s interesting to see mountains after being in the Netherlands for so long.
Carmen, we need this.
“Condomerie”
Amsterdam “souvenirs”
Schiphol airport being festive
I amsterdam
Christmastime in Middelburg
I’m not sure where the idea came from but by evening a few days ago, four of us girls had decided that the plan for the night was to take a bus and then walk a little in order to see the beach one more time before the end of the year.
We planned much better this time, knowing exactly when the last bus would be there. But alas. It was to no avail.
After the bus driver opened the doors and let us out on a random patch of grass we got a little worried. He was actually just trying to be nice by letting us off closer to our destination, but there was something jarringly eerie about being kicked out of a bus in the middle of no where, lit by one single street light.
We pretty quickly figured out where we were and where we needed to go, so we started walking. The walk was lovely, especially going through the dunes with the full moon above us. It was gorgeous.
Thirty minutes of walking later we found ourselves on the beach in the moonlight. It was quite a sight and we had a good time walking around, laughing when a wave came up a lot closer than we expected it to, and just admiring the view.
We had timed the walk there so we knew when we needed to leave to be at the bus stop on time. The walk back was pleasant as well. It got to the point where we were in sight of the bus stop now, with a good seven minutes until the bus was scheduled to arrive. Just then we saw the bus come around the corner. We started running but it was futile. We watched as the bus flew right past the stop and on towards home.
After some debate over what our next course of action was, we came to the unanimous conclusion that we’d have to hoof it and hope for a stranger to take pity on four college girls in the middle of nowhere late at night. We held out our thumbs for every car that past and cursed them as the blew right by. Car after car booked it right past us without slowing. We weren’t getting discouraged though; we were still having a good time. We laughed after a mini cooper went by, thinking about all four of us trying to fit in that one. Another car flew by without slowing and we can see we’re headed toward a well lit intersection. Maybe when they can see us better they’ll be more likely to stop.
A car coming towards us in the other lane slows to a stop and rolls down its window. It’s the mini cooper. Lieneke tells the driver our sad little story in Dutch and I and Helen look around awkwardly, wondering what’s being said. The lady in the mini drives off and Lieneke jumps excitedly. She’s going to drive back a ways and turn around and then pick us up. We’ve been saved.
We walk to the intersection to wait for her and take a look at the signs. We had only walked 1k and there were 6 more to go before Middelburg.
Cramming three of us into the back seat of the mini was quite a task. It was like clowns in a clown car, or sardines, or whatever other idiomatic analogies there are for squishing a lot of people into a tiny space.
Despite being short on personal space, the ride back was nice. We listened to Dutch radio and our rescuer both entertained and terrified us with her slightly reckless driving style that, at some points, had us wondering if this had been the safest option after all.
As she pulled up to our street we offered her many a bedankt and dank u wel and then headed inside to call it a night, laughing in the elevator about our first ever adventure in hitch hiking.
