A European Road Trip!!

Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium

I love road trips!  You jump in a car with a few friends and drive some sort of long distance to somewhere that you all want to go.  For American's, road trips usually involve crossing the state, or maybe going to the next state over.  If your lucky, maybe you'll even reach the other side of America.  But you usually stay in America.  Here in Europe, countries are more like states.  There's no border crossing and no needing a passport or visa.  So the road trip I went on last weekend didn't involve crossing a state, it involved driving through three different countries.  We started in Germany, went to The Netherlands then to Belgium and back to Germany.  Here is the story of our trip:

Before I came to Germany, my dad asked me "Are you going to drive in Germany?" I couldn't think of a reason I would, so I said no.  But about a week ago some friends and  I decided to go on a road trip.  My friends Liandri and Michelle from South Africa and I decided that we would spend the weekend in Amsterdam and a day in Belgium.  I was the best choice for a driver because America drives on the same side of the road as Germany while South Africa doesn't.  So we rented a car and got ready to headed.

Thursday:

Liandri, Michelle and I at Hard Rock

Thursday at a little after noon we took off.  That day we drove from Bremen, Germany to Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  This was the first time in my life I had driven in another country.  I found that driving between countries is interesting because the second you cross the border the language, culture and laws change.  And here in Europe there are no customs or anything to go through, so you may not even realize you crossed the border till you see signs in another language.
We got to Amsterdam in the late afternoon and decided that we would go to dinner in the city.  Amsterdam is probably the largest city I have ever driven in and to add to that it was a major holiday weekend.  There were people trying to cross every where, and cars going all directions.  It was also the first time I had to deal with trams while driving, and figuring out when I can drive over the tram line and when I can't.  But I figured it out and we survived to eat dinner at Hard Rock Cafe!  We also got to spend the afternoon exploring the city.

Friday:

Getting ready to go into the Ice Bar!

Friday was our big tourist/spending money day.  First we went to a place called Keukenof.  It is a park outside of Amsterdam that has many many beautiful flowers.  We walked around it for an hour or two.  After that we went into Amsterdam to try and figure out what museums/tourist attractions we wanted to go to.  We ended up deciding on Madame Tussauds and the Ice bar.  We also went looking for orange shirts to buy for Queens Day.
The Ice Bar was really interesting.  Everything in it was made out of ice and they had some cool ice statues.

Me in Madame Tussauds being
rescued by Spiderman!!

The cups were even made out of ice!  Madame Tussauds was also very interesting.  If you have never been to one, it is a museum of wax figures.  Interestingly, when you walk in the first person you see is Barack Obama.  When I saw him, he looked so real that I thought "Oh my gosh Obama!!".  The museum wants to charge you 11 Euros to take a picture with him, so even though I wanted a picture I did not take one.  I did sneak one of him though :D.  The rest of the museum was really interesting.  It started with a wax history of Holland (The Netherlands).  Then it goes on to a haunted area where they try and scare you and people jump out at you.  This wasn't very enjoyable for me because within the first minute of it a girl turned around to run out and stepped on/bruised the side of my leg.  After the haunted area, it goes on to a bunch of wax figurines of famous people.  They had JFK, Bush Sr, Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and many many more people.  Most of them you could tell weren't real just because they weren't moving, but a few I had to look at three or four times just to make sure they were actually wax!
That day we also ate cotton candy, walked around the city and bought orange shirts for the holiday on Saturday!  That night we went back to the house we were staying at and had a barbecue, which was delicious!

Ready for Queens Day!!

Saturday:
Saturday was the big holiday, Queens Day.  Queens Day is the day that The Netherlands celebrates their Queens birthday.  It's actually the Queens mom's birthday, but the Queens birthday is in winter so they do not want to celebrate it then.  In the morning we watched the news coverage of the holiday and found that on this day the royal family plays a bunch of games while people watch.  Also on this day, everyone decks out in orange. The reason for this is that way back in the line the royal family is from a place called Orange.

Our Dutch tour guides enjoying
the music!

In the early afternoon we went into town with the guy that we were staying with to meet up with a few of his friends.  We, of course, were all wearing orange.  We started out by going to an outdoor concert.  All of the most popular Dutch bands were there.  They sang some English and some Dutch songs.  There were thousands of orange people there!

Orange people on boats!

After watching the concert for a while we left to walk around the city.  We found a place to sit along the canal and watch the boat parade.  There were thousands of boats in the canals, all with many drunk orange people on board.  They had DJ's and bars on many of the boats.  Some of the boats had themes, for example there was a tennis boat.  We watched the boats for a couple of hours.  Then we again walked around the city and went to find food.  Our Dutch friends took us on a tour, and even showed us the area that Anne Frank's house is in.  We walked along some street shops.  A tradition on this holiday is for kids to take their toys and sell them on the side of the streets.  There were little shops everywhere with toys and clothes for sale.  We worked our way back to the concert and watched a DJ play for a while.  Then we decided to head home.  Queens Day was really interesting because there were so many people.  You would look ahead at the street and see a sea of orange people ahead.  Many(or maybe most...) of them were drunk/drinking, which made things interesting.  And people will shot beer at each other, or silly string.  They also throw things around and play little games on each other.

Sunday:

Eating our Belgium Waffles!

Sunday was the day we headed back to Germany.  But we made a stop in Belgium first (No, Belgium is not on the way to Bremen, but it was a nice stop anyways!).  In Belgium we went to a chocolate museum where we learned about the history of chocolate and learned how to make chocolate, and went on a canal tour!  We also ate Belgium Waffles and walked around the city.  We were in Brugges, Belgium.  Brugges is a really beautiful city and I want to go back and spend more time there.  In order to drive into Brugges, you have to drive through a castle entrance!  The whole city is very old and the streets and city center are really beautiful.

On a boat in the canal!

After Brugges we headed home to Bremen.  This meant driving back through The Netherlands and then on to Germany.  So in one day I drove through three countries and over 800 kilometers.  We left Amsterdam at 7:30 am and didn't get home until 1:30 am.  It was kind of a crazy day!  But it was fun.  We got lost a few times and took some wrong turns off the highway, but we had a GPS that figured it all out for us!


Overall it was a great trip!  I am hoping to go on more road trips around Europe, it seems like a really cheap and fun way to travel, and allows you to see a lot of different places!

Prayer Requests:
-I had a kind of rough first week back after two straight weeks of travel.  I didn't get a lot of sleep and had a lot of stress from homework and what not.  I also did not eat very well because I had no food at my house.  Please pray for me as I readjust to normal life.
-I would like more opportunities to travel and am already planing more trips with my friends.  Please pray for wisdom for us as we plan and safety as we travel!
-Pray for continued improvement in my relationship with my landlady.
-I have also been feeling kind of lonely lately.  I think it is because I got used to constantly being around people while traveling, but now am sometimes home alone.  Please pray for me that I will find good things to do with my time.


Praises:
-Praise God that the Euro-Dollar exchange rate has been improving!!
-Praise God for keeping me safe over the last two weeks as I traveled!
-Praise God that my relationship with my landlady has been improving!
-Praise God that I had many opportunities to travel over Easter Break!
-Praise God that I am starting to adjust back to the not traveling life!