Category — Netherlands

The next morning Irene had to get up real early, so I didn’t see her anymore. Good luck at your new job, I am really happy for you that you finally found what you were looking for!

I got up around 9 and had breakfast with Ewoud. We had a really interesting conversation in which we concluded that neither of us had expected 5 years ago that the situation would be turned around 180 degrees. At that time (5 years ago, that is) I was the one with a steady income, a house and a girlfriend and he was the one (almost) without obligations (or money, for that matter ).Anyway, we are both very happy with the situations we are in right now, so that is really funny

After breakfast and “the packing of the bag” it was time for me to say goodbye to the last piece of familiar Dutch ground I’m going to see in a while. I made my way to the highway near Oldenzaal and started hitchhiking. I waited for an hour and a half with no car even slowing down :(. I tried changing my sign from Bremen to Osnabruck (100 Km closer) to no sign at all (after all I just needed to get out of there), without any luck . Out of nowhere it started raining quite heavily and I got soaked. Apparently that worked on people’s feelings, since 5 minutes later I got picked up by a guy that was working in the transport sector. He dropped me off at the truck stop at the German border telling me that 15000 trucks stop there every day. I just sat down with a sign Bremen in my hands (and of course I fell asleep ) I woke up from the sound of a truck horn probably 5 minutes later.

This ride turned out to be really great. It was the first time in my life that I was sitting in a truck, hitchhiking outside of Holland and hitchhiking with a non-Dutch speaking person. To some of you this may seem silly, but I was extremely excited. I continuously felt like screaming! As I said to my dear friend Duke:I feel like a little boy that finally gets his bright red fire truck for Christmas; totally worth the wait!

On top of all this, the truck driver turned out to be a really awesome Greek who actually made me a traditional Greek meal when we stopped at a parking along the way. He finally dropped me off at a truck stop at the edge of Bremen, from where I made my way to the central station.

As I didn’t have the luck of finding a couch in Bremen (started looking way too late because of all the leaving-stress), but I did exchange a couple of emails with Friedjof (a CS-host in Bremen already booked up for these nights) who told me he wanted to meet me for a drink, I decided to call him and ask him for a good hostel to spend the night there. He told me to meet him later at central station, so I did.

We went for a drink and then he offered to take me with him to his house and call a friend of his to see if she might have a place for me to stay. It turned out that there even was a place for me at Friedjof’s house, so I stayed there for the night. I am sleeping in the attic of the house, just under the roof. A perfect cozy place!

On the way to the pub and later to his house, Friedjof told me a bunch of things about Bremen and it all sounded pretty nice. Football without violence-happy hooligans, huh… what?

When I woke up and was sober again, I slowly started packing my stuff to get to the last party in Enschede. I lived in Enschede for 2,5 years so I always enjoy going back there. Sjoerd and Sandra (you guys rock by the way!) woke up and dragged themselves out of bed to say goodbye.

I was supposed to hitchhike, but since I needed to be in Enschede at 2pm, I decided to take a train. I still didn’t arrive before 15:30 but hey, at least I was there My friend Ewoud picked me up from the railway station and when I got to his house, the whole house was full of people. There were some people there that I hadn’t seen in a while so it was very nice. The party ended around 18:30 I think, since Irene just got a new job and needed some well deserved rest. I went to a culinary testing-festival called “Proef&Eet” with Ewoud, Irene and Ewoud’s sister Amber. It was very nice and we tried out all kinds of small dishes. After that, we hung out at Ewoud and Irene’s house and I went to bed not too late (tomorrow is a big day!).

When I woke up (how the hell did I not have a big hangover?!) Diederik, Esther and me had a nice breakfast. We talked, talked, talked and finally said goodbye. Two more people that I will definitely miss!

Off to Utrecht for another party with friends. I decided that I wanted to hitchhike, so I took a bus to the nearest highway entrance and started hitchhiking. I made it to Maarssen in about 4 different cars. Unfortunately I got hopelessly stuck in Maarssen (7 Km from where I needed to be ). After an hour I gave up hitchhiking and started looking for alternative ways to get to the city center. Just when I found a bus stop that actually was in service on Saturday, my friends contacted me to ask where I was. When I told them, they insisted on picking me up, which was extremely nice and very much appreciated.

The party in Utrecht was a lot of fun as always. A reasonable amount of beers and low-intellectual fun later, I went to bed.