Holland, Belgium, and Sweden begins...

Hey there, people I know! Totally awesome of you to keep checking in, when I’ve been so remiss in posting blog updates. Not as remiss as I could have been, of course – I’ve been posting links to my “real real blogs” (as I call them) whenever they go up on Pink Pangea, this ultra-sweet women’s-traveling website I’ve been writing for.  Those blogs, you’ll probably notice, are from my travels earlier on this trip – I’ve been waiting until they get posted on Pink to link them here, and Pink is a little slow, as it turns out. However, I assume you’ve been enjoying them as you’ve so patiently waited for me to get around to sending you a real real update (I respectfully recommend reading them if you haven’t, if only because you might find it interesting to see how my writing “voice” changes depending on who my audience is). So here it is, complete with pictures – see, I DO love you!

 (Me, loving you guys, Amsterdam)

Um… brief pause while I scroll back and see when I last wrote an update for you kids, and how much I have to cover in this one… maybe you should listen to a little music and grab a snack, I recommend a cheese-on-cheese sandwich…ok, there we go. 

So, last time I wrote I was hanging out with my amazingly cool friend Rian in Holland! Spoiler alert – when my next blog gets posted on Pink, you’ll find out that I attended a big gay festival which involved dancing on a canal – and I actually mean on a canal, because they built a platform spanning the canal to dance on, and put the DJ on a floating platform of his own. It was epic – pink boas were obtained, beautiful men and women were all around (did you know that the Dutch, after the Maasai in E Africa, are the tallest people in the world?), and it was all organized by one of Rian’s good friends! We also attended this great musical event called Student Fest in the university town of Leiden. 3 musical performances occurred in the gardens of student houses, the outdoor version of an event that occurs in student dorm rooms during the winter. Hundreds of people mill about drinking beer, dancing, and watching small musical groups perform in intimate spaces. It was good fun, hanging out with more of Rian’s friends currently attending university in this town.  We visited Rian’s family in a small village in the north of Holland called “Hair” in Dutch; and went to Den Haag and Amsterdam, a trip which included a rather exciting boat ride courtesy of her uncle, a grey-haired retired dancer who has a penchant for speeding through the “lake” in the center of Amsterdam, a penchant that got us stopped once by a police boat… and nearly a second time less than 10 minutes later. We ended up really wet and a little cold, but with happy spirits as we wandered around Amsterdam a little more, finding free raspberries to spice up our next few breakfasts and having a warm dinner in a delicious Turkish-ish restaurant.  The day I left, Rian was also leaving, heading to a music festival on a small island with her best friend. Well, she was supposed to anyway… but due to my leaving, we got a little intoxicated the evening before, and she didn’t quite make it to the island that day, hangover be damned J. It was amazing to spend so much time with my most-favorite Dutchie, and with a little luck and a lot of planning, she’ll be visiting Malawi before I leave next year! 

 (Rian and I, being cool, in a shoe, Amsterdam)

 (Cute boat, Amsterdam. I want one.)

 (People. Gay festival. On water.)

Moving on… was hard. Not because I minded leaving Rian (which I did, but we both had our own adventures to pursue, and being seasoned travelers we toughed it out), but because I’m cheap.  Yep, friends, I don’t like spending money, especially when I’m not making any. So, I spent a few horribly unproductive hours trying to organize the cheapest possible combination of flights, trains, and busses to get to some country whereupon my departure to Sweden a few days later would also be the cheapest possible.  It got to be 11pm the night before I left, and I hadn’t yet booked anything – so I closed my eyes and pushed a button that resulted in my visiting Belgium! Seeing as that I hadn’t ever been to Belgium, this turned out to be a good decision – and I only had 3 days to kill, so seeing as that Belgium was right next door it also proved to be a rather practical decision. 

I visited Brussels and Ghent in Belgium, but we’re going to skip any boring details because of a much more interesting story (in my opinion).  It began one evening as I sipped my first coffee of the day at a café in Brussels and wrote some of you postcards. Sitting alone at a table in a courtyard adjacent to the main mussel-selling district of Brussels (my plan for dinner), I was looking around aimlessly when an extremely tall man came up and asked, in French, if he could sit at my table. Agreeing, I continued to write postcards, assuming that since I was one at a table for four, it was only polite to share my table. However, as happens, we started chatting, and it was then that I met Jeroen de Ridder, floral-artist extraordinaire, member of a random Belgian band, inhabitant of a town with two (no three, no four) castles, friends with Two Many DJs, and owner of 8 cases of a very exclusive Belgian trappist beer called Westvleteren. Interesting side story -- the monastery that brews this beer only sells 30 cases of it a day, and to get a case you have to call (like a thousand times), and if you happen to get through, can only order one case, the make-up of which is determined by the monastery (there are 3 different types of beer), as is the day and time you must arrive to collect your case (if you’re not there next Thursday at 3pm, too bad). Additionally, you must provide your license plate number to the monastery, in order to ensure that you don’t get more than one case per month.  A side story to a side story – just the evening before, while Rian and I drank copiously at the café she works at, her coworker Paul had expounded the qualities of this rare and delicious brew to great length – so funny that I was now hearing about it for a second time in 2 days. Anyway, back to the facts, Jereon clearly had been working on his collection for a while -- but this was all a side note as we chatted about Belgian food and beers and such. I learned he was a Couchsurfing host, and was rather bummed I hadn’t been able to stay in his small village and see the castles – I love castles --but seeing as I didn’t know I was coming to Brussels prior to 11pm the night before, it had been impossible to organize a hosting situation. Anyhow, we decided to have dinner together and keep chatting, as he knew the best place for mussels on the nearby street. Due to my luck (I’m like a rabbit’s foot, but you don’t have to keep me in your pocket or rub me, both of which would be weird), we managed to get the last table in the place without waiting, which was awesome because these mussels were out of this world. A few beers at a few sweet local bars later and I had made a new best friend and plans to visit his village the next day so that I wouldn’t have to miss the castles after all!

Now, let’s be honest – Jereon was full of stories chock-full of outrageous facts and experiences, and I’m quite sure they weren’t all true (if they were, he’s probably the coolest person I’ve ever met). However, I have pretty good sketchy-dar (that’s like radar for sketchiness), and he didn’t set mine off at all. So the next evening I arrived by train in his village, and we spent a few fun-packed hours exploring the gorgeous countryside, listening to music, and partaking in this most-exclusive and extremely delicious beer. We laughed at each other’s traveling stories, and on the way back to the train station Jereon gave me a bottle of Westvleteren as a gift from one traveller to another. It was a wonderful chance encounter, which happen quite frequently as I travel. All you need is a smile and an empty chair at your table, and who knows who you could meet?

 (Sweet Graffiti in Brussels, for WTK)

(Castle, because I love castles, in Ghent)

 (Seriously gigantic church)

Onward, to page 3 of blogging, we arrive in my potentially favorite country ever – Sweden! After a night of no sleep (I had chosen to spend the evening in the train station rather than getting a hostel, because my flight left at 7am and I had to be at the airport early anyway – remember, cheap), I flew Ryanair to Sweden (an experience I don’t necessarily suggest), and arrived in Stockholm to be greeted by one of the 3 Swedes I traveled with last year through Africa! Per, the Swede who lost his passport in Egypt and had to return home for a while, spent 5 days showing me around his city and guaranteeing that I had a good time doing traditionally Swedish things. Things like eating meatballs for dinner at Ikea, where, to my amazement, they employ people to lounge in bedroom gear on Ikea beds or in outdoor attire on Ikea patio furniture – YES, you get PAID to relax all day in a bathrobe and sunglasses.  (Side note – I think Ikea in foreign countries should rent Swedes to others to complete tasks with Swedish efficiency – tasks like assembling your Ikea furniture – and then to stand around and look pretty. They would call it Rent-a-Svensk. It would be a hit). Where was I… oh right, things like eating meatballs and watching a season and a half of the American TV series the Big Bang Theory and attending a Flogging Molly concert at an amusement park and taking a boat to a small island (the archipelago of which Stockholm is part contains upwards of 3000 islands) and, of course, exploring Stockholm.  My departure came too soon, but I was off to a town further north, Garsas, for an Africa reunion of epic proportions…

(Changing of the guards at the Palace in Stockholm)

 (Church-type thing on one of Stockholm's tiny islands)

(This rabbit looks innocent. Sure it does...)

 (Really, really nice district in Stockholm)

Whew. I need to stop there. I’m going to write another blog, maybe tomorrow, about the party that has since ensued in Garsas, so do check it out. But this post is definitely long enough.  Take it easy, and as they say in Sweden: "Denn här skottkärra är skit."

‘Til 5 minutes from now, and/or next time, this is 

W(orld) T(raveler) S(cott)

signing off