Hallo! Goedemorgen vanuit Nederland!
Hello! Good morning from the Netherlands!
So Day 1 was mostly our travel day and getting settled in day. We arrived in Amsterdam at 7am their time, midnight our time. The flight was great and seemed to literally fly by, before we knew it we were flying over the UK with an hour and a half to go. Once we arrived in Amsterdam's airport: Schiphol, it took us no time to find the baggage claim, collect our luggage and pass through customs. The train station was easy enough to understand, we told the lady behind the counter one way pass to Zwolle and she told us where to go, which train, and the soonest one we could catch. Now, once on the train the culture shock began to kick in because from that point on mostly everything said or written was only in Dutch. However it was easy enough to figure out based on the times and seeing the city name pop up as one of the stops. Once we arrived in Zwolle's train station it was also very easy to locate the bus area and wait until my SUN,
Students United in the Netherlands, mentor there to pick up Charla and myself. Lise, my mentor, was very helpful all day and spoke English pretty much fluently. She directed us straight to Delta Wonen, our housing organization, and helped translate parts that were not so easy for them to get across to us. After we had paid and signed our agreements, she then helped us locate and move into our apartment. (we were very lucky that any building higher than either 3-4 floors must have an elevator....yeah...we're on the 9th floor). Our apartment is great, definitely giant steps up from the Platteville dorms. We have a great view overlooking a park (no cemetery in sight haha), a kitchenette, and our own bathroom with shower. After we pretty much "dumped out" our suitcases, we changed and Lise showed us a nearby Supermarket, and then also helped translate and pick out some very good Dutch snacks and close to American substitutes. We then parted ways at the apartment and Charla and I went to work on unpacking and making our first meal in the new country. (by now it was 14:00 and we had been up for almost 20+ hours and hadn't eaten since on the plane). We stayed up as late as we could, made plans with a friend our our that studied abroad at Platteville last semester, and finally crashed around 1am (after being up for 30+ hours).
Day 2
You would think after being awake for such a long time, we'd get a good night's sleep...well....yes and no. We slept for almost 15 hours, however it was on and off because on of us (that being me) cannot stand that rock hard mattress and couldn't get a decent sleep out of it for more than a few hours at a time. Needless to say we both finally got up and out of bed around 14:00 (yes I am trying to get used to military time here) and checked to see what we could all do before our friend came to take us to "the city center" aka downtown to sightsee/tour, grab some dinner, and a drink at a bar. :) (pictures soon to be attached). Now I'm a picky eater, and so far I have tried everything our friend bought us, and I have to say it was zeer goed,
very good. And I am also not really a beer drinker, but the 2 types of Belgian beer we had last night were goed as well. It's a very laid-back setting to be sitting at a table in the big square casually drinking a few rounds of beer with friends...nothing like the way we drink back home, or at least so far. We sat, talked, and drank for a while before he drove us back to our apartment close to 23:00 and ready for bed.
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Kroket, reminded us of a deep fried roll
of soup maybe? It was very good! |
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Doner, a type of meat we ate at a Turkish
restaurant. |
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| My roommate and I having some Belgian beer downtown. |
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| The train we took to Zwolle |
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They reminded me a little of the subways in NYC,
but nicer. hahaha |
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Airplane we took from Chicago to Amsterdam; KLM Dutch Airlines. I highly recommend them, the food was
great and very nice crew. |
