New Layout

Hey everyone. I changed the format of my blog a little so let me know if you have any problems reading this. I was playing around with stuff today and I messed something up so my pictures weren't showing up. Somehow I managed to figure out the HTML code to fix the width of the blog, but I am not sure if I screwed anything up or not...Oh well, I live in a castle.

More Lists and Funny Dutch Emails

So in my previous post I listed all the cities I have been to so far. In that list I have been to 8 different countries so far...

1. United States (I know sort of cheap to count, but oh well)
2. The Netherlands (Well, Venlo, Nijmegen, Arcen, Venray, Amsterdam)
3. Germany (Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt)
4. Austria (Salzburg, Vienna)
5. Belgium (Brussels)
6. England (London)
7. Ireland (Dublin)
8. Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow)

Coming up...

9. Hungary (Budapest)
10. Czech Republic (Prague)
11. France (Paris)
12. Maybe Spain (Barcelona)

Also I have been thinking lately about all the things that the Castle/Europe has that Boston/The US does not...

1. Free Laundry
2. Free printing
3. Stroopwaffels (Google them. They are incredible)
4. Dulcia Meijers
5. No drinking age (Ok there is one, but its not enforced)
6. Lots of vacation (My friend Josefine just had 2 weeks off for "Fall Break"
7. A castle (Ok so I guess there probably are those in the US, but none that I have ever lived in)
8. Hubert Simons

Speaking of Hubert, we got yet another funny email from him today. Well it is more gross than funny, but I still felt the need to share it.

The little rooms with the white bowls are called toilets. Someone on the third floor in the VB apparently doesn't know, because he/she is urinating in the trashcan and in a bottle!!!!!

Yup. This is probably not helping the Herpes outbreak...Oh well, I live in a castle.

Halfway Done Already??

I can't believe it, but I have already been living in Europe for over a month and a half. Midterms were this past week, which means we are halfway through with this program. It's crazy. Only yesterday I was at the Cape freaking out about having too much stuff in my bags. This past weekend there was a big mix up and I ended up staying back in Well again and half the weekend I was pissed off because I felt like I was wasting a weekend. However I sat down and made a list of every city I have been to in the past month and a half, and it is sort of insane.

1. Well, The Netherlands
2. Venlo, The Netherlands
3. Cologne/Koln, Germany
4. Salzburg, Austria
5. Vienna, Austria
6. Düsseldorf, Germany
7. Brussels, Belgium
8. London, England
9. Dublin, Ireland
10. Edinburgh, Scotland
11. Glasgow, Scotland
12. Nijmegen, The Netherlands
13. Arcen The Netherlands
14. Frankfurt, Germany
15. Venray, The Netherlands
16. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

That is 16 different cities so far. I don't think I will go to quite as many cities in this second leg of my travels, but I will without a doubt make it to 20. After seeing that, I didn't feel too bad about staying behind again this weekend.

The weekend started Thursday night. I was helping Blake out with a monologue for a few hours. He was trying to learn a monologue for an audition so I was helping him by giving him pointers and he was helping me because I was practicing giving direction and critique. Friday was his birthday, so I planned to have a small party at midnight for him. So at around 11:45 I told him I had to go get something from our room. I rand and got this cake we bought at the bakery in town, as well as a sign that said "Happy Birthday" in Dutch (Or at least I think it said that). I also had my computer and got Nick, Brittney and Tyler to come on skype so it was almost like they were there with us, even if they were 6 hours behind back in Boston. We lit candles on the cake, but they got a little out of control and basically turned into a torch. Luckily we were on the brick bridge of the inner moat, so there was no fire hazard. However Chester Lee (The Assistant Director of the Castle) came out and looked very confused and almost pissed off. Oh well. No harm done. Blake came out and was very happy and I hope at least a little surprised.


A picture of the cake post-torching.

The next morning I woke up and felt sort of depressed. Everyone in my room had gone to Paris for the weekend and I was all alone. I got up, listened to some music and tried to enjoy being alone for the first time in over a month. I hung out with Lily, Michelle and Caroline and was starting to feel a little better. We basically just sat around and watch DVDs all day long. Then around 8 we decided to go out and get a nice dinner. We got on the bus and went to Venray which is not even 15 minutes away from here. We found a really nice restaurant and I was able to have real steak which was a nice treat. I ended up spending a little more than I normally pay for dinner, but I figured I didn't do anything all day, I could spend 20 euros on a nice dinner and a drink.

After dinner, it was about 11 and we started to try and find the bus that would take us back. However the bus from Well only goes to Venray station which is apparently a half hour walk from the center of Venray. We took another bus then to the center of town. But when we came back, we could not figure out how to get the bus back to Venray station in order to get back to Well. After a few minutes of wandering, we went into this bar to ask them how to get back. At first we thought they were all mocking us because they were drunk and we were stupid Americans. One of them didn't speak English and said something in Dutch then made the rest of them break out into laughter. This other guy translated for us and said, "He said that he has a car and can take you..." Again, we thought they were all drunk and hitting on Michelle and Caroline, but after a few more minutes of us talking to them, we realized that they weren't drunk, just Dutch, and that they were genuinely upset that they didn't know where the bus was. This guy then proceeded to get up and RUN to his car. We were a little weary because of the number one rule of "Don't get in a random person's car or else you get raped and killed."

We were standing on the side of the street all looking at each other thinking "What are we doing." Michelle takes out her camera and takes a picture of the bar and goes "Just for legal documentation..." Then we see this dark car pull around the corner and I was like "Oh crap...This is not a good idea." But then it pulled closer, and we saw it was a station wagon, and for some reason we got in the car.

While in the car, we realize he doesn't speak much English, almost none at all. We did find out his name was Roy (When was the last time a Roy ever did something bad to someone), he was 18 and from Venray. We then asked him, "Have you lived in Venray your whole life?" and he replied "Very nice." That wasn't really what we asked, but...ok...

We pulled up to the train station (Michelle said that she just pictured the train station to just pass by and he pulls the car into a dark alleyway where his friends are waiting to kill us all) and he parked the car. He then got out of the car and we weren't really sure what he was doing. Michelle turned to me and asked, "Does he want us to pay him or something?" In reality, he was just being even nicer, and looked at the bus schedule and told us exactly what bus to get on. He then got back in his car, and drove away. So the lesson is, not all random Dutch people will try and get you in their car and kill you. Some will just take you to the train station and leave.

The next morning we woke up and went to Amsterdam for the day to go to the modern art museum. There is a name to the museum, but it is some weird Dutch word that I can't remember. Anyway, the reason we went was to go see the Andy Warhol exhibit that they had going on. Warhol is one of my favorite artists (Even though half of his stuff is really weird and I don't understand it). They had all his famous works like the Marilyn Monroes and the Campbell's Soup cans. They also had all of his movies that he made that we really really weird. One of them was the Empire State building filmed for 8 hours straight. Another was a guy eating a banana for a half hour, but of course it was very phallic and sexual and weird. Another one was Edie Sedgewick and some guy in a kitchen supposedly having a fight, but she keeps sneezing. Apparently every time she sneezes, its to cue someone off camera to give her her line. People still are not sure if its supposed to show a movie shoot gone disastrously wrong, or if it was all intentional and scripted. Those were kind of weird and I didn't understand them.

The best part was this room of balloons. It was called Silver Clouds. He wanted to show space and movement and also simulate clouds so he filled all these silver balloons up with half helium, half air so that they sort of float all around in the room. Michelle and I spent a while in there playing with the balloons...


Me playing with the balloons


A video of Michelle having some fun.

After the museum we walked around Amsterdam for a few minutes and then got back on the train.



The Sea Palace


Tricky Theater Restaurant...


...And they only serve pancakes...


A Canal


The train station


The snack guy on the train and his awesome backpack

We got back to Venlo and tried to get the bus back to Well, but it just didn't come. We ended up having to wait about an hour for the next bus to come. We got bored.


Michelle danging from the bus station.

We finally got the bus back to Well at around 9, ordered pizza and crashed.

It was another low key weekend, that sort of annoyed me, but I guess it didn't turn out too bad. We are going to Budapest this weekend which will hopefully be really cool. Now I have to get back to the insane amount of work I have to do this week...Oh well, I live in a castle.

What? Ads? Why? Huh?

Calm down. Calm down. Yes. There are ads on this blog now. I signed up for this thing that pays you for letting google put ads on your website. So please help me out and click away! Every time you click on an ad, or search using the google thing to the right, it somehow makes me money (I don't really understand the whole thing but whatever). I also don't physically get money unless I make more that $100 in a month, so PLEASE click away. Even if you don't really want what the ad is for, just click it anyway. And if you are feeling really nice, use my google search thing instead of google.com (I am pretty sure it will do the same exact thing except it will give me money, which lets face it, I need.

Stressfree Weekend

After 10 days of travel last week and midterms this coming week, I decided it was a good idea to just stay local and hang out this weekend. A lot of people had this same idea, so it wasn't too lonely being at the castle and I was able to catch up on a little R&R.

Friday I went to a town called Arcen that is about 10 or 15 minutes away from Well and went to a thermal bath/spa there. It was so relaxing and helped me really unwind. For 11 euros, you got 2.5 hours in the baths and saunas there. You could pay more for massages and stuff like that, which I passed on although it would be really nice to do if I had the money for it. However, there were about 5 or so different baths the size of pools that each had different kinds of jets and water falls. They even had a lazy river. Then on top of that they had about 6 different saunas, each of which had a different aroma in them. I left and every single muscle in my body was so relaxed and it just felt so amazing. The rest of the day I spent watching American TV shows online and eating food I bought at the grocery store.

On Saturday I went to Frankfurt, Germany for a few hours and met my friend Josefine for lunch. Josefine is a year younger than me and when I was a senior in high school, she was a foreign exchange student for the year. I haven't seen her in almost two years, but we have still kept in touch on and off since then. It was so nice to see her again. I left well at around 7am and got a bus to Nijmegen to get an 8:44 train to Frankfurt. The train took about 3.5 hours but it was not bad at all. When I got there around noon, Josefine was waiting for me on the platform. We spent about 2 minutes just hugging each other because we were so excited. She showed me around a little bit and it was really really nice. It wasn't the best place I have been so far, but it was really cute and it was fun to be there with her.


The center of town. Isn't it just SOO German looking?


Some skyscrapers on the Rhine.





Me and Josefine on top of some big mall that overlooks the city.



After walking around for a little bit, Josefine asked me what I wanted for lunch and I told her "Something really German...Like bratwurst." So we found a place that had cheap food (Only 2.20 euros for a bratwurst). It was delicious.


Me with the bratwurst.

After we ate and did some people watching, we decided to find a place where I could try this apple wine that Josefine kept talking about. It was like apple juice, but with alcohol. We sat at this bar/cafe place and just talked for about an hour. We had a really nice conversation about the differences in American and German cultures. We talked about what the Germans think of the Americans. Before I knew it, it was time for me to catch my train at 4pm back to Nijmegen. We said goodbye and I got back on the train again.

I was able to eavesdrop on some really dumb American girls who were sitting behind me, but other than that it was pretty uneventful. All the trains came when they were supposed to. One ran 10 minutes late, but in reality we got there at the same exact point it was supposed to come. I felt like this was good test to see if I am able to travel alone, and I believe I passed. There were a few times when I was a little unsure about what was going on, but I just trusted my instincts and it turned out to be right. After our travel break to Prague, I am going to Paris by myself and I was a little nervous about it at first. However after this weekend, I feel up to doing it. It is a little scary being on a train, surrounded by people all speaking a different language, with everything written in another language (I could not figure out how to lock the door to the bathroom on the train because everything was in German or Dutch, I'm still not sure. So I basically just peed really quick and hoped no one came in) crossing the border of a foreign country into another foreign country in which you know neither of the languages at all, but oh well, I live in a castle.

Welcome to My Home.

Brenda Dickson was a soap star in the 80s. I think she was on the Young and the Restless. She ended up going crazy and while in court because she was being evicted from her house, she hilled Hitler. Suffice to say, she is crazy. Back in the 80s she made this video that showed people her home, and it is so weird and crazy, but so funny at the same time...



Watch that video and then you will understand this next video. This is the only thing Blake and I did when we were in Glasgow. We wanted to make a video to show people how weird our room was and Blake ended up doing a Brenda Dickson impression. We were really tired and giddy at this point, so we kept laughing and having to do things over again. It's sort of silly, but you need to see this weird bathroom we had in our hotel/hostel/pod.



So yeah Glasgow was really boring...but oh well, I live in a castle.

Funny Dutch Emails

As you all know, the professors and staff here at Kasteel Well are mostly Dutch. Every now and then we receive mass emails from one or more of the staff members here and the language barrier between them and us always provides for hilarity. Here are two emails. The first is from a few weeks ago from Chester Lee. He is the Assistant Director of the castle program and teaches a class called Inter-cultural Communications. One day they had a guest lecturer who was a prostitute and this was the bio Chester Lee wrote about her...

Petra was born in Canada. She spent a year in the Canadian Armed Forces and has held a series of low-wage jobs while studying, worked in the elementary school system for almost 10 years, worked as an independent sex worker and Professional Dominant for 9 years, earned a BA in fine arts degree, earned a BA in Criminology and Law, almost completed a Sociology MA, had a male partner who used to hit her and a couple that used to love her, had a couple of great female partners too, is an activist, loves dogs, was lead singer in an all-girl band for 6 years, bought a house and then sold a house. Most recently she has relocated to the Netherlands to experience the joys of immigration.

Notice how that is all one sentence. The next email is from Huber, the grounds keeper...

Dear Students,


From now onwards our work-out room is ready for use. It's located at the top of the stairway going to the classrooms in the VB. It will be open at all times, but be aware that classes are going on in the room below; please don't make any noise that would disturb these classes.

For hygienical reasons you are obliged to use a towel ( you need to bring one) on all equipment. If you have any problems with operating the equipment I am most happy to help you, don't hesitate to call(ext 217)
Please put back all equipment after you're done.

pump up your mussels!!!

Huber

If you could see Hubert, you would realize how funny that last statement is. Even if you don't know him at all, just picture a Dutch man with gray hair saying "Pump up your mussels." Finally the last one was received last night from Rob Duckers who...I'm not really sure what his title is, but he is pretty high up in the rankings...

Dear Students,

As you all undoubtedly will have noticed, last Monday morning, the fire-alarm went off. The reason for this was that someone left their grilled-cheese-sandwich unattended in the toasting-machines and left it there to burn, causing the alarm to go off. Unfortunately, this is already the second time this semester that this has happened.

This morning, we got a call from the fire-department, warning us that such - in a sense false - alarms could seriously jeopardize our fire-safety-certificate. If the fire-department refuses to further certify our alarm-system due to multiple false alarms, it means that we will have to go through great expense to install another fire detection system, plus our insurance premiums go up, for no good reason. That is why it is of the utmost importance to avoid these kinds of unnecessary alarms.

Therefore, NEVER leave your sandwich unattended it the toasting machines, but get them out before they burn. If we get one more false alarm, we’ll have no other choice but to take the machines out of the dining hall and not have people use them. So please act responsibly.

I count on the cooperation of you all. Thank you in advance.

Rob Dückers

It is a very serious subject, but just the fact that there was an email sent to 80 students about a grilled cheese sandwich makes me laugh a lot. But here's the kicker...The person who burned the grilled cheese was Blake and it wasn't a grilled cheese, it was a piece of toast. Dutch people are silly. Oh well, I live in a castle.

Connecting with my Family Roots

If you are just starting to read this, scroll down two entries and make sure you read them in order. The first blog for this trip is "And There's No Place Like London" and then "On the Streets of Dublin" and then this one. Or I mean, you can read them out of order and it probably won't make any differnce, but I myself would want to read about someone's travels in sequential order.

Blake and I arrived in Edinburgh from Dublin around 8:40. We got off the plane, got our bag and went to go through customs. Or at least we thought we were going to go through customs. We got there, went to the door for people with nothing to declare, turned the corner and saw absolutely no one. Usually there is someone at a booth to stamp your passport or at least someone standing there watching you walk by. No. There was not a single soul around. Basically I could have smuggled anything into that country and they would not have noticed...

We found a bus that took us close to our hostel and got there around 9:40. It was a pretty nice place that was really cheap. We settled in, and then I was feeling dehydrated so we were gonna go find somewhere to get a bottle of water and walk around a little. As we were leaving our room, the door SLAMMED shut, and my middle finger got caught in it. I looked down and I was bleeding. I went to the bathroom to wash it off, and I felt like I was going to pass out. I think it was a combination of seeing the blood and not having a lot to drink that day. I ran back to our room and layed down for about 20 minutes until I felt better while Blake got me a glass of tap water. By that point, we were so tired, that we just decided to sit around and talk.


They really do play the bagpipes in kilts (Or at least they make American tourists think they do...)

The next morning we woke up and decided to find the Edinburgh Castle. However on the way there we got distracted by the Scotch Whiskey experience. If we went before noon, we could get a special discount, so we decided to do that before the castle. This of course was even cornier than the Guiness Storehouse and even more like Chocolate World at Hershey Park. Like Chocolate World, this tour had a really horrible ride that you went on that explained the history of Scotch starting in the 1300s. Before the tour started, they gave you a free shot in a specially designed whisky glass. Unlike in America, they explained how to fully explain how to enjoy scotch (The smell, the color, etc).

The Edinburgh castle was only about a minute down the road, and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was on a hill that overlooked the entire city.


Edinburgh Castle






Do you SEE how nice the weather was?!


.


Connecting with my childhood roots













We saw these signs and at first thought nothing of them until...


Castle Well?? Huh? You would have to walk really far to get from Edinburgh Castle to Castel Well...
(The sign was for the water well of the castle but shhh. It's more fun to think they meant Kasteel Well)

We found out why Edinburgh Castle was such a safe fortress...

...They have ADT


Stunning



After a few hours wandering around the castle, we walked around the city for a little bit. There are gift shops EVERYWHERE and they all have little nic nacs with family heritage stuff on them. The best part was every single place had things for Sinclair


Our family Coat of Arms


Our family crest

We had some lunch and then headed over toward the Scotish Parliment. It is in this awkward modern looking building that I personally did not like, but apparently it has won a lot of awards for the architecture.


Blake sitting in Parliment



Again. Look at how beautiful everything is.

On Saturday morning, we woke up, showered and checked out. The day before, we saw this mountains near Parliment that looked like they would be fun to climb. We headed over there, and it was one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. It was honestly like a movie set.













Since I didn't get to spin around in the alps in Austria...

I took the next best thing.




I really have no words to describe any of that, so I am just going to let the pictures do all the talking.


We saw this sign, and were a little confused...


Ah yes...this explained it now.



While at the top of the mountain, we could see the sea, so we decided to try and find out where that was.




We kept saying that we wished we had a car so we could drive around and see the country side and all the cliffs, but he had to settle for that.


This made me laugh

On the walk back from the sea, we found this weird playground with a strange jungle gym type thing...


And of course we played on it...







TK Maxx??




Around 3:30 we got on a bus to take us to Glasgow which took about an hour. When we got there we realized we were staying in one of the strangest places ever. It was a cross between a hostel and a hotel and an apartment and a pod. I can't really explain it, but we recorded a video tour of our room so everyone back home can see it. Once I edit it together, I will put it on youtube and put it on here.

We both were so tired and there was not much to do in Glasgow (It is sort of dirty and modern looking) so we just went to bed really early. The next morning we woke up at 3 and walked to the bus station at 3:30am.

We got a 4:30 bus to the airport that took a half hour. The bus was on time and we got there a few minutes before 5 and our flight was not until 6:55. Perfect. We had two hours to catch our flight. Wrong. Little did we know there are FOUR airports in Glasgow. Being the cheap/shitty airline that it is, Ryanair only flies out of Glasgow Prestwick airport. When they say GLASGOW Prestwick airport, they lie. It is no where near Glasgow. In fact it is about an hour outside of Glasgow. Its basically like if Newark Airport decided to call themselves Newark NYC Airport.

We started freaking out and we asked someone how to get there, and they said the only way to get there would be to take a cab for 50 euros. We found a cab driver who was INSANELY nice and told us he would take us and only charge us 50 euros. It took a half hour to get there and ended up being 60 euros, but he kept his promise and we only had to pay 50. While in the cab he was talking to us and told us a really funny story/joke. I couldn't understand it completely because his accent was really thick but the essence of it was this. We started off by saying how beautiful Scotland is and how nice everyone has been. He said there was this angel that came down and told the Scottish people "I am going to give you this beautiful setting and the nicest people and anything else that you want." Everyone was so surprised and didn't realize why the angel was being so nice until the angel said "Well look who their neighbors are." I still am not really sure if that meant the Irish or the British, but either way, it was funny.

We got to "Glasgow" Pretwick Airport around 5:30. The optimist in me was saying "Oh no one will be there at 5:30am so we won't have any lines to wait on. Nope. We had to wait about 20 minutes to check in, and another 10 minutes or so to get through security. The lines seemed a lot longer than they actually were, and we luckily made this plane.

We arrived at Düsseldorf around 9:30, got a 15 minute cab ride back to the castle and were in our rooms by 10. Everything worked out in the end, but it was very very stressful and exhausting 10 days. Oh well...I live in a castle.