I arrived in the Eindhoven airport wearing my santa hat so that my friend Wouter could find me (amongst the throngs of people at the tiny airport... not really). It was so nice to be back with a friend from the Camino. He let me be a tourist and see Zaans Schaans and Amsterdam. Don't worry, I saw windmills, wooden shoes, and the red light district. We also visited the Anne Frank museum which was very interesting. We finished the day off with all you can eat sushi. Wow. The next days we did a bit more local sightseeing and relaxing. We ate pancakes, hamburgers, stroopwafelen, and chocolates. I fell in love with the sheep on the Dutch countryside. I watched Despicable Me 1 and 2, so now I'm minutely more caught up on popular culture. We even made a day trip to visit Danielle! I didn't think I would see her until spring, but then I realized I was literally 1.5 hours away from her. We drove to Olne, Belgium to pick her up and then went to Maastricht, Holland and tried many Dutch foods at the christmas market (herring, oliebollen, pea soup). Then, we made our way to Liége, Belgium, so that Danielle could show us around her city. I did indeed eat a Belgian waffle. The christmas market was absolutely packed with people, but we escaped the crowds by going on the ferris wheel. Then, we had some hot wine (quite odd, and lovely, to share a drink with the little sister for the first time) and escaped the city in search of Belgian fries. On the way back to Danielle's house, we stopped at a shop for fries (and frikandel). Oh also, Danielle speaks French absolutely brilliantly, it is beautiful. After chatting with her host family for a bit, we said goodbye and headed back to the Netherlands.
It was time to meet up with my other Camino friend, Judith, in Utrecht. Wouter and I drove there in the morning and I managed not to drive him completely insane in our daily parking the car adventure. The three of us had a lovely Camino reunion lunch before we had to say goodbye to Wouter. Judith and I spent the rest of the day romping around Utrecht and accomplishing quite a lot in a single afternoon. We visited the Camino de Santiago information office just because no pilgrim can resist anything to do with the Camino. We climbed the Dom Tower, which is 465 steps. Since Judith was a history major and used to be a Dom Tower tour guide, she was the most knowledgable personal guide ever. We also ate super hipster dutch yogurt. I found Celestial Seasonings tea in an organic food shop and barely contained my excitement. We finished the day off with baking christmas cookies, which, might I say, were absolute perfection, then making falafel pita for dinner and indulging in some Gilmore Girls. Judith so kindly woke up early in the morning to walk me to the train station. After running to various platforms (the train changed platforms twice) and another goodbye, I was off to Germany.
Phil, my friend from college who is from Germany, was flying home for Christmas and we planned for me to take a train arriving around the same time as his flight. Downsides to not having a phone... when your train gets delayed 90 minutes and you have no way to contact the person meeting you at the train station. In the end, we managed. Thanks to some airport WiFi, Phil found me and we took a train from Frankfurt to Türkismüle, where his dad picked us up at the train station. I spent Christmas and New Year's Eve with Phil and his family in the tiny town of Gusenburg. I do not speak any German, which meant I was pretty clueless and awkward most of the time, but that did not prevent me from having a lovely winter break with Phil, his sister, and parents. I got to go to a German christmas market in Trier, where I had glühwein (hot wine) and flammkuchen (some kind of flat bread pizza thing). And yes, there were many white twinkly lights, just as I had wished for. Christmas in Germany is kind of a three-day affair. Christmas eve we had a family lunch (and we had Schnitzel!), went to church, and then opened presents in the evening. Christmas morning we slept in and had lunch together and then went to Phil's Grandma's house for the afternoon. For me, it was a bit of a long afternoon, since I didn't understand a single thing, but there were yummy cakes and even thought I didn't understand them, the people were all nice. The day after christmas is also a holiday, the 2nd day of christmas, but I don't actually remember what we did. Ah, perhaps it was hiking day. Nope, it was Phil and Briannah go to Traben-Trarbach day. In that valley town, they have a very unique and elaborate christmas market where there are about 4-6 markets that are all underground in wine cellars. That of course entailed me gawking at beautiful crafts and eating lots of amazing food. Hiking day was the day to follow... We went hiking with another family on a forest path in the area. It ended up being about a 5 hour hike, which was a bit longer than I had imagined, but it was so nice to go walking again. The other family was also really friendly so it ended up being a good time. Phil's dog Sydney, and the other family's dog, succeeded in becoming entirely covered in mud, and we also ended up pretty muddy too. We attempted to de-mud ourselves and the dogs before piling into the car to eat turkish food (which for me meant eating an entire pizza).
Though the tiny town of Gusenburg is lovely, we did do some venturing out. One day Phil and I drove to Luxembourg. What an odd place, well the city at least, because that's what we visited. Like any true city, finding parking is a small nightmare. On the bright side, when you do finally find yourself parked, it is a truly relieving feeling. The city is full of extremely expensive shops (like Gucci, Louis Vitton etc.). There are clothing stores called "Swimming Pool" and "Honey Mustard". It's as if they just chose the first English word that they found in the dictionary. We ate some authentic Luxembourg Chinese buffet for lunch. Since it was cold and rainy and I, as always, was craving ice cream, we found a café that had ice cream. The city is an interesting mix of old historic Europe with super weird modern architecture with banking and real estate offices. They also have an odd mix of languages, as they speak French as well as Luxembourgish (a dialect of German very similar to the dialect they speak in Phil's region), but they can't really decide which language to put signs and menus in, so sometimes it is both or sometimes just one. I understand neither, so nothing much changed for me.
New Year's Eve day we made our way to Frankfurt to meet up with my Camino friend Steffi, who came from Freiburg to meet us. Of course it was again a cold and rainy day, but that didn't stop us from finding ourselves Italian food. Just to bring back the Camino days, I ate an entire Hawaiian pizza. We spent most of the afternoon reminiscing about our adventures and being nostalgic about life on the Camino. Though it goes without being said, ice cream was acquired. While an all to short visit, it was nice to see Steffi on my last day of 2015 and make plans to meet up again in Spring. Since Phil and I had some time, we decided to take the train to Mainz before going home for the night. Mainz was pretty dead quiet since it was New Year's Eve and everything was closed. Nonetheless, we did find a sort of classy hipster restaurant that was open and we went for drinks and dessert. Having enjoyed our vegan apple raisin dessert (don't judge, it actually was really good), we headed home. Back at home, we had some more food and drinks. At 11:30, "Dinner for One" came on TV. It is a fabulous British comedy skit from the 90s (or something) that is extremely popular in Germany and everyone watches it on New Year's Eve. Then, as the credits to this random British skit rolled, I attempted to quickly eat 12 grapes (a Spanish tradition), drink champagne and run outside for fireworks. The whole town lights fireworks in the street in front of their houses. And so began 2016. Clearly 2015 had tired me out, and I slept till just past 2pm. Tomorrow, I fly to England to start the next chapter of my study abroad.
Netherlands
Belgium
Germany
Luxembourg
No comments:
Post a Comment