My Mini European Trip

Yes I know this post is very late and now my posts are out of order, but I am just now getting around to writing this one, and I need to follow through and finish this blog, so here it goes:

From day 1 I told people that my goal was to make as many friends during study abroad as possibly, that way after the semester ended I could travel around Europe visiting them
That led to the joke where if I met someone and (A) had no interest visiting their country or (B) already had a friend from their country, then I wouldn’t try to be their friend. Don’t worry. That isn’t true…

Anywho, thus was born the plan for my mini trip around Europe.

So instead of flying home with my family on Jan 1st, I purchased a flight home on Jan 10th. Effectively forcing myself to go through with this plan since I was legally kicked out of my dorm room starting Jan 1.

So after talking to people this became the plan: visit Flo in Germany, Leanne (my hockey teammate) in Amsterdam, and Ife (she’s a friend from Berkeley for those who do not know but she was out in Europe with family) in Brussels. Unfortunately last minute there was a change in plan and Ife could no longer host me. So I quickly rearranged plans so that I could go back and spend my last couple of days with Adam in Glasgow.

First: Germany. Jan 2-5

Such a great time. What was nice about it was that I felt I had already seen lots of Germany from visiting Dario, so this was more of an opportunity to just hang out with a friend. He showed me around Berlin and I got to see all the tourists sights, but we also spent one night meeting up with his high school friends, another night meeting up with Irvan, my high school/Berkeley friend, and then our entire last day relaxing and binge watching the entire season of the Netflix show Dark (originally in German but watched in English for me)

Amsterdam. Jan 5-6

The day was basically “fit as much of Amsterdam/the Netherlands into 24 hours as possible”. My teammate Leanne from my hockey team at Edinburgh is from the Netherlands and during some of our socials we talked about visiting. So when it came time to take this trip, I contacted her!

We started our day at the Rijksmuseum where we saw a lot of beautiful art, especially many priceless Remembrants. We then wandered the streets of the city, going to Damsquare and the Bijenkorf. For lunch we got fries and a Kroket which is a delicious deep fried gooey ball of no one knows. And even though we couldn’t get into it (it had to be booked a couple days in advance) we walked by and I got to see the Anne Frank House.

After exploring the city for 6 hours we trained back to her families house where they fed us dinner and I got to meet her parents, brother, and sister (who currently has a scholarship to play hockey in the states in North Carolina). oh, and their cat, who I am obsessed with, I mean, just look at him!

One of the stereotypes about Dutch is that they love their cheese. I found this to be soooo true. At dinner with her family they were asking me how I feel about american cheese, and in order to show me that ours is not good, their dad casually walked up to their fridge, and pulled out like 6 wheels of cheese, and we spent the night eating delicious cheese.

Brussels Jan 6

I trained from Leiden in the morning, and arrived in Amsterdam around 12. Ife also arrived at that time and we were so excited to see each other.

We first went on a guided tour of the old town. Honestly, in terms of the actual city, Brussels was my favorite out of all the cities. So many of the buildings were gorgeous, especially in their architecture.

Afterwards we grabbed food, walked around the Christmas market which was spread throughout the city. One of the coolest parts was a “northern lights show” where they played music and shined lights on all the buildings of their main square

At the end of the night we headed towards a bar which many friends had recommended. After being hit on 3 times by men from all over who deemed Ife “the prettiest” and me “pretty” or as I believe I heard it, she was called “a Queen”, we said our goodbyes 😂

I knew I had to take the train to the airport. However, I was misinformed as to how far away the airport was. So instead of the 30 min I expected it to take, it took 1.5 hrs to get to the airport. This led to the most stressful airport experience as I arrived, had to check my bag, and get through security to my gate all with less than 30 min before the gate closed. (Meanwhile Ife got terrible food poisoning! A whole other story!)

Luckily, no one was at the airport and I made it onto the flight
The flight took off from Brussels at 10:30 pm and arrived 2 hours later in Edinburgh. I headed home and spent the night in Kate’s room (sorry Rachel)

Finally: Glasgow Jan 7-9

I got to Adams around 2. we didn’t do anything the first day other than hang out with each other. And then that night he got his friends from high school all together and we went out for a drink. It was fun getting to know them. They tried telling embarrassing stories about Adam for my entertainment (unfortunately they didn’t do too good of a job)

The next day was our last day together, so we went into Glasgow and walked around the more historic parts of the city, walking out into a necropolis which provided a stunning view of the city, and into a massive cathedral

Saying goodbye the next day was hard. It was my final goodbye, not only to him, but the country I had fallen in love with.

I made the most of my time in Scotland. I honestly cannot think of any way I could have maximized the time I had there any more than I had. Whether or not I ever make it back, whether or not I even get to see my lemons again, I will always look back on these months with a smile on my face. and not a shy smile, but with a huge grinning smile as I think of the stupid fun crazy time I had

My flight home was at noon Jan 10th, in order to hear about how I royally screwed up and could have spent a whole extra day PLUS saved like 40 pounds, read here!