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.