Hello! This year’s ridiculous adventure took me to Belgium and Germany for three and a half weeks, wherein I saw a great many things, ate a lot of food, drank a lot of alcohol (by my standards), and took a lot of pictures (nearly 3,500, plus 500 from Tharash, though I’ve narrowed it down to about half of that (these are just mine and have not been edited in any way)), so these posts are going to be very, very long as usual. But here we go. I kept a careful journal on my phone to refresh my memory, so I’m arranging things by day like in my notes.

Day 0

My flight out was not ridiculously early in the morning at around 9am, but when it got rescheduled to an hour later, I was happy because the earlier time still meant getting up at 6am. I was also happy because I had gone through some Shenanigans trying to schedule my flights to not have a stupid short turn-around (Air Canada: “an 80 minute stopover in Toronto sounds okay, right?”), and if there had been such a short turn-around, I would definitely have missed my next flight, but as it was I had nothing to worry about. (Canadian airlines are so unreliable for scheduling.) I got a muffin and some orange juice from an airport café for breakfast. I taped my mask to my face just like for the metal concert, but I forgot that I had to show my face at least briefly when boarding; the stewardess was quite nice and told me I didn’t have to take it all off, and told me sympathetically “that looked like it hurt” when I peeled it half off to show her my face matches my passport. It didn’t hurt that much, tbh, and I was quite pleased with how sticky the medical tape remained through the trip; it was still pretty sticky when I arrived in Amsterdam many hours later having removed it several more times.

The first flight was Victoria-Montreal, and it made my knees quite tired from having no room to stretch at all. The woman beside me brought her own popcorn for watching a movie on her phone, and another woman in the row in front of me had her laptop out, watching a movie from the in-flight entertainment starring Willem Dafoe, trying to escape from what I thought was an art museum (hey I was pretty close!). It seemed incredibly boring and seemed way longer than 105 minutes. I listened to Dire Straits to distract myself.

In Montreal, I first noticed how expensive airport food is. So I had a Greek salad with a bag of chips for the salt and another bottle of juice, instead of a full actual meal. I could afford a full meal, I saved up for this vacation, but thrifty habits die hard and it didn’t seem worth it when I wasn’t even anywhere interesting. : P In the search for food-that-was-not-too-expensive, I came across a display about the first European immigrants/settlers to Montreal, who were obviously French but apparently came in Dutch ships called fluyts. So I thought that was neat!

The second flight I had better leg room, which was nice. I wasn’t planning to eat, but the hot dinner provided smelled so good I had it anyway; it was pasta. I found an hour-long video of long shots of Amsterdam canals filmed early on a fall morning, which was pretty chill and nearly put me to sleep as best as I can sleep on an airplane (which is not actually sleeping, it’s much too loud, though I did put my provided blanket over my head to make a half-hearted attempt a few times). I did skip breakfast, though. I’d only just had dinner! The sunrise was pretty neat, seeing it come up. This plane didn’t have window shutters, but fancy polarization screens that could increase or decrease opacity. I didn’t get a close look at them, I was in the middle section away from any windows. I did notice, on that flight and every other flight, that the seat backs where the pocket is are very thin, so anyone messing around with the pocket behind me feels like they’re poking me right in the back.

Day 1

My right ear pressurized on landing, so much it didn’t depressurize properly for hours, which was quite uncomfortable. On my walk through to the exit, I made note of the Tony’s Chocolonely shop! But I didn’t stop there, I wanted to get out to meet Janny as quickly as possible. There was a bit of a mishap in communication when the luggage from my plane was sent to a different carousel than was listed on the carousels; the airport had to make an announcement before most of us passengers noticed. Meanwhile I was trying to figure out if I had to declare to customs the smoked salmon I had brought for everyone, but then I saw the part where it said I had to declare if it was over a significant amount of money, and it was not, so I walked through – just when Janny had gone to take a quick walk from where she was waiting for me. I couldn’t figure out how to text her European number from my North American phone, so I used Google Chat to let her know where I was. She gave me a hug! And then bought me a cream cheese/lettuce bun sandwich since I hadn’t eaten in a bit.

The train under Schiphol was very busy, so busy there was an assertive attendant helping people squeeze onto the trains. But most people got off at Centraal, and then it was nice and empty until Diemen. Diemen station has been redesigned! No longer does one have to cross the train tracks at level. There is a tunnel for all modes of transportation to go underneath, with stairs, ramps, and elevators for people to get to the train station. It’s quite lovely. The station has a decorative wall now made of… I think it was coconut husk? Anyway we had lunch; Jaap had been to the market and among other things brought home some raw herring, which made me very happy as I love raw herring. I finished my bun. I think I had a nap after that. For dinner, Jaap made an amazing fish stew called waterzooi, with three kinds of fish.

After dinner, we called Tharash on video to say hello and talk a little bit about plans, and then I went to look for children’s books. I was hoping to get some extra Dutch practice in during this part of the trip, and although I found myself really shy about actually using it in front of native speakers, and only actually formed complete sentences a handful of times, they were very encouraging. Often Jaap would say his sentences twice, once in Dutch and once in English, like giving me verbal subtitles! I was happy to catch a lot more than I would have previously, though it’s still a little frustrating that I’ve been doing Duolingo for more than 6 months and I still don’t know very much. But then I don’t do Duolingo that hard because if I do more, I will get tired of it. Anyway, I found the perfect book to read; it’s called Martje en Martijn, and it’s a collection of simple two-page stories about two small children and often a duck, and it’s written in present tense which is pretty much the only one I know right now.

Day 2

There was muesli for breakfast, with yogurt, though I’m not really used to putting yogurt on my breakfast so throughout the trip I feel like I never quite put the right amount for the muesli/granola. I read more of the children’s book in the garden, which was so peaceful. It was not really hot out, and actually the temperature didn’t get above 25 Celcius wherever I went for the entirety of the trip (which I’m thankful for, hearing what I did about Spain’s heatwave!), but I was wearing shorts anyway; Jaap thought it was funny and said I was like a Shetland girl.

After a lunch of sandwiches, Janny took me on the bus and the tram downtown to the Van Gogh Museum; at the tram stop she told me about a small ‘hidden church‘ (Catholics were not well-liked in Dutch history, and their churches had to look like regular buildings by law) in that part of Diemen which had been slated for demolition but a history advocacy group had saved and turned into a venue for music concerts; Jaap now is president of the society, I think.

In the tunnel under the Rijksmuseum, there were some buskers playing tunes like Pirates of the Caribbean and Vivaldi’s Winter. I think the sample video below is Game of Thrones or something? They were still playing there when we came back through a couple hours later.

We’d decided to do this museum visit together a while back, and it’s so busy that it requires tickets for a timeslot to be purchased ahead of time; a couple ahead of us had accidentally bought tickets for a week from that day, and so they couldn’t go in. It was still quite busy. We got the audio guide for extra information. The temporary exhibit was about Van Gogh’s last months in a town called Auvers-sur-Oise. It was a bit heavy, especially when I was jet-lagged and on my hormone cycle, so I didn’t go to see the last bit that was about his actual death because I was getting very emotional. But then we went to browse the rest of the museum, and found the bookstore on the top floor where I bought postcards of all my favourite paintings. The ships at Saintes Maries painting looks way better in person or on the postcard than it does in the wikipedia picture…

We walked for a bit around the neighbourhood outside the Rijksmuseum, because I’d suggested I wanted to see what Amsterdam was like to walk around, and it was just as it appears in Not Just Bikes videos which made me very happy. The streets felt cozy and pleasant. We had some ice cream (I had mango flavour), we saw a building that had once held a circus and now a theatre, we crossed the Amstel ‘Skinny Bridge‘, and then headed back. Janny met some acquaintances on the tram back and chatted with them until they got off.

We watched the Tour de France live when we returned, and that day the breakaway just barely won! One of the people in the breakaway was a bit upset because he felt he had put in most of the work and then one of the other guys crossed the finish line first. Jaap was painting a painting of a ship for someone whose parents had met after WWII because of said ship (her father was on the ship and met her mother’s father there, leading to the father meeting the mother). He made his great-aunt’s IndoDutch food for dinner, which had quite a story behind it as well but I’m a little hazy on it after all this time. For dessert we had strawberries and Greek yogurt.

Day 3

I woke up at 4am; it did take me quite a while to adjust to the time zone in this direction. I didn’t feel like attempting to sleep again so instead I read the Battlemech book my brother had given me. It’s a pretty bad book but it passed the time, and ebooks don’t use much phone battery. I was ready to go quite early, but it took some time to settle on the books I was going to borrow. Eventually I settled on the Martje en Martijn book, an Asterix book about the Belgians, a Nijntje book about snow, and the Dutch version of Winnie-the-Pooh, which I ended up not really trying as it was quite advanced language for where I’m currently at. Janny accompanied me to Amsterdam Centraal, and since we were a bit early for the IC train, we went to a bookstore and I bought a Nijntje book about a flute. The Nijntje books might be in past tense which I haven’t learned yet, but they’re the only ones I completely finished since they’re so short. : P

The train to Noorderkempen was a bit late (I sat next to a Spanish lady and that was the one and only time I used Google Translate to talk to someone on the trip, if only to let her know I was getting off at the next stop), but it was still in time that I could catch the bus with Tharash! He took me to one of his favourite bakeries where I had an amazing lunch with a cup of cappuccino and a goat cheese, honey, bacon, and pine nut sandwich on great fresh bread. After we ate, we walked past the church in that village and a little through its graveyard, and then attempted to take a shortcut to the bus stop which turned into a longcut because I am a talisman for getting lost. After taking the bus to the village he actually lived in, Tharash retrieved his bike and we walked down the street to his house. There was a small monument in a plaza which seems to be for workers in a cigarette factory that used to be there.

I was excited to see his apartment since I’ve only seen it in pictures and a bit of video calling. It’s got some quirks, like the door to his balcony is one of those fancy European windows that opens sideways or also tilts inward, depending which way you turn the handle, which is really great for a balcony door, or the fact that the toilet is in a totally different room than the shower, which I guess is for space (and also thinking about it, it’s pretty good for hygiene, isn’t it?). The beanbag chair is very difficult to get out of, and I don’t just mean because it’s comfortable. I looked at all his books, and he showed me in particular his Discworld Mapp book, which was great fun. We made okonomiyaki for dinner, because I had previously sent him a big box of Japanese foodstuffs to try to facilitate his quest to make ramen at home (real ramen, not instant) but he wasn’t sure what to do with the bonito flakes so we made a giant okonomiyaki in order to put bonito flakes on top. It didn’t turn out great, since we’d both never made it before, but it was okay; tasty enough. We had leftover batter so we saved it for the next day.

Day 4

I woke up at 4am again, and eventually went back to sleep, but I was still unsatisfied when I eventually got up at a normal time. I misplaced my beloved hat under my stack of books, so I wasted a bunch of time looking for it anywhere but there when we went out, and we ran for the bus with me without a hat. Or at least Tharash ran, and I wheezed partway. He goes for long runs in the countryside fairly frequently, and while I am a stubborn walker, I have no speed endurance at all. But we caught the bus to Antwerp.

The old city is magnificent. The first thing you see coming up from the subway is the cathedral. Once you walk past that, you see the town hall. We were going a little further than that, to a place called the Vleeshuis (‘flesh-house’, or butchers’ guild house), which has been turned into a musical museum. It was great fun for me! Not just because they have many examples of strange and unusual medieval instruments, but because I could give extra history tidbits to Tharash about the things that I knew, which made it more interesting for him. : D In the basement there was a whole set-up showing how a church/carillon bell-making workshop worked, as well as a brass instrument workshop and an oldfashioned dance hall. The online guidebook had some audio samples for some of the instruments! Which made that the best guidebook we used on the trip, clearly.

After that, we went to the castle, since it was just a little further. From the top of the new segment that houses the tourist info centre, you can get an okay view of the old city. But it’s a pretty small castle so we didn’t spend a lot of time there. We went to a fry shop and got fries with “Andalousesaus” and some vegetarian bitterballen for lunch – the bitterballen tasted great to me, since I don’t remember what they’re like normally (I’ve had them, but it’s been too long), but Tharash said they definitely tasted different to the non-vegetarian ones. Then we went to a waffleshop (under a hotel/B&B where his parents had once stayed…?) and had some Liège waffles and omg they were heavenly. I had whipped cream on mine and he had chocolate sauce. I swear, Liège waffles are the best dessert in the world. The waffleshop had transparent plastic chairs so I did take the opportunity to take a picture of my own seated butt because apparently I’m 12 years old in the head and it amused me to do so.

The cathedral was so big! There was so much stuff to look at inside it, including a display of when each segment was built over its 200-year construction period. You could even go into the crypt and see remains of the even older church that had been on the location before they built the cathedral there, although the crypt smelled kind of funny.

The last place we visited was the printing press museum. We had thought it would be closing soon and we’d just browse the gift shop and I’d visit on my next visit to Belgium, but then it was open a bit longer than that, so we went to see it! It was maybe a bit long for the amount of energy we had left; my favourite part was of course a room with a bunch of printing presses set up and the desks with all the tiny type bits. In a different room was a guy demonstrating how the press worked, and he explained that one press could print 2,500 pages in one day. From that printing house, they turned out a bit more than one book a week, I believe. The publisher family’s magnum opus was a copy of the Bible in five languages – Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Latin, for serious scholars. It’s eight huge leatherbound volumes. I was also interested in the old maps that they had, showing how Europeans progressed in their knowledge of the world’s geography, and also the woodcuts – those woodcut plates are absolute works of art. They also published hymnals with neumes.

We missed the bus home that would take us in 30 minutes, because I got distracted by an advertisement at the exact moment we should have been waving to signal the bus to pick us up, so we had to take the 60 minute-journey bus. But there was a really nice lady also waiting at the bus stop for that bus, and she asked us about our trip and showed us her cats. Back home, we had pasta salad that Tharash had made for a barbecue earlier in the week, and cooked the other okonomiyaki, and drank some fruit beers, and we called his parents.

Tharash was a bit jittery after dinner while packing; for him the trip hadn’t yet started and he was getting pre-trip nerves. We had a minor problem with the Treinreiswinkel (train travel store), because he had bought tickets for both of us for the trip, but they had somehow glitched on sending me mine. Tharash sent them an email for help, but since it was the weekend it wasn’t likely they would respond in time. However, the local train had a BOGO deal on, so we decided that we would use that for our trip to Bruges the next day, and hopefully the help desk would send me a new link for my ticket before we moved on from there. (It really is a shame the Treinreiswinkel isn’t a physical store anymore; they had been super helpful when we went to Vienna in 2012.)

The Treinreiswinkel ticket we got was one that allowed us to travel for any 7 out of the 30 days following activation, and on a travel day you could travel whenever and wherever you wanted, provided you put the trip into the app so that it could generate a QR code ticket in case you got checked by a ticket conductor. It was a pretty good deal!

Hey if you were involved in this trip and remember things different than me, let me know!

Bruges