You’ll shoot your eye out, kid (and Utrecht, too)….

It has finally arrived!! My double barrel, Red Ryder, carbine-action, 200-shot range model BB rifle with a compass!! Well, not really. It WAS a generous Christmas gift, just like Ralphy wanted in the movie “A Christmas Story”, so I did feel just like a little kid when I picked it up from the post office and opened up the box today. No, it is not a “b-b” gun, no it’s not an over the shoulder missle launcher, either. You will have to wait and see…but here are a few pictures to keep you guessing in the meantime, until I can get it together:

 

This past weekend we met up with some friends that live in Utrecht, Holland: Nathalie and Jeroen.  I’m sorry that I have NO pictures, but the camera batteries went dead, and I really didn’t feel like sticking the camera in our friends face like a tourist. Sometime we will hang out again, and I promise to take many pictures! I managed to dig up a few photos online, so those should help you get a feel for what I am talking about.

Nathalie is a friend of the family (back in Chicago). I (and the whole family) have known Nathalie for about 15 years now, and somehow we have all managed to keep in touch over the past 15 years. She came over to Chicago for a travelling girls softball tournament and stayed with us, and we have kept in touch ever since then. It’s really great to be able to go visit friends, experience their country and culture, and have somewhere to stay with friends when you travel. Their town is a small city about 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam.

So, on to the trip. We left the house at about 12:30PM, and we arrived in Utrecht around 3:30 PM. I’t a nice, scenic drive starting in Germany (for about 10 minutes of the trip), all the way through Belgium (about 1 and a half hours) of the trip, through most of Holland (the remaining hour and a 20 minutes). The drive is quite relaxing, as the mountains don’t exist once you hit the middle of Belgium. Driving in Germany can be quite tedious and stressful most times, with all of the high mountainous terrain, so it’s nice to take a trip that goes through places like Belgium and Holland that are pretty much completely flat. At points I almost started to fade into thoughts of driving home from trips through Illinois. But, the weird signs, bike paths on every road (city or country areas all have paths - Holland has to be THE BIKE RIDING CAPITAL of the WORLD (see photo I managed to find online of of parked bikes in the town of Utrecht…this is the scene EVERYWHERE you go in Utrecht, with all the bikes parked) , and the sheep, horses and constant streams lakes and ponds in Holland would quickly remind me that we were no where near Illinois. It was a beautiful, sunny day, once we got out of the Rheinland-Pfalz area of Germany (which ALWAYS seems to be cloudy, gloomy, and rainy!). The sun came out once we hit Belgium, and we enjoyed very much the 3 hour trip. Although, the wife was a little ’skiddish’ with my desire to drive up to 100MPH along the way! I’ll say one thing about living and driving over here: you get REALLY ACCUSTOMED to driving REALLY FAST, very quickly!! I love it….and to have flat terrain to cruise, well, let’s just say I tend to have a ‘lead foot’. Hee….he.

Nevertheless, after many “Honey, no faster than 90, please!”s from the wife, we made it safely to Utrecht at about 3:45PM. Picture an “old world” type city (still using cobble stones for streets and walk ways), with a river running through town. Its an incredibly quaint, old, cool town. See the pics I dug up….

   

Nathalie and Jeroen just bought an old house that they are restoring, so we hung out with Nathalie and Fay (their infant) until Jeroen came home from fixing up the house. We had a nice time chatting, showing each other photo’s (the wife brought the laptop with all of our photo’s on it), and just relaxing.

At about 6PM, Jeroen arrived home, and we had a few drinks and some tasty dinner that Nathalie had cooked. It never ceases to amaze me having conversations here with people from other countries. Every time is a learning experience. Travelling the world really is an education all in of itself. We didn’t really talk about anything revolutionary: the Iraq war, the upcoming presidential elections in the US (which they surprisingly follow and know about), about our families and what they were up to, etc. But, I always am happy to glean a new perspective, or just hear the opinions of someone that was raised half way across the earth, about such mundane topics. It totally opens your eye’s as an American. I guess I always kind of had this naive, somewhat arrogant idea that the world revolves around America at all times. Don’t get me wrong, even Nathalie mentioned (without my coaxing) the power that our country still wields, but the world still exists and goes on without constant consideration of what is happening back home. It’s kind of hard to explain in typing this, but it’s so interesting to me to hear someone from another far away land talk about (seemingly ordinary) things. It just gives you a different perspective on the world, life, and what everyone else is going through. That is knowledge and experience that school will never teach….

So, after we had a nice dinner, Nathalie put Fay to bed, the babysitter arrived, and we headed out to a few bars in the city centre. We went to a ‘rip off’ Hard Rock Cafe (can’t seem to remember the name of it right now), as Nathalie called it, that was opened by a formerly famous Dutch rock star. We joked (it was packed, so we only had one drink) there about how his retirement plan was working out quite nicely. It was kind of strange being in Holland and hearing many english speaking people at this club. I guess maybe the ‘rock n’ roll’ sign out side was a beacon to Americans in the night? A few times people said (in English) “Excuse Me” …and I overheard a few other groups talking in English. We had one drink at the bar, a fantastic ‘Wiezbier’ from Belgium called Paulus, and then we left because it was way too crowded.

After that, we walked around the corner, next to the river, down to a bar that had over 250 different types of beer from around Europe. Seeing as how I like to try different beers, it was quite an enjoyable place. Oh, and along the way Jeroen pointed out and joked about a “coffee shop”, where it’s legal to smoke pot. Another interesting local phenomenon that befuddles us ‘Puritanical’ thinking Americans. It was just another example of cultural differences (that made us think) noted along the way.

Anyhow, at the second bar (again I don’t remember the name…NO, I did not stop in the coffee shop! The names were too hard to pronounce in Dutch. :p) we sampled a couple more Belgian biers. Although Germany is the brewmaster here in Europe, it seems like the Belgians are not far behind them. We sampled 2 or 3 fantastic Weiss (wheat) beers, had some great conversations about Jeroen’s trips all around the world, and relaxed until about 1AM. Then we jumped on the train (another nice difference from the horrible, dirty transportation in Chicago!) from Utrecht city centre, and we were home by 1:30AM. We played some ‘Uno’, had another drink, and headed off to bed about 3AM. A good time had by all.

Sunday morning we woke up in Utrecht (once about 7AM, and again at 9AM to Fay crying) finally about 10:30AM, and had some breakfast. I don’t know what it is, whether it’s because things come from so close by here, or just because it’s different, but the eggs, cheese, and milk here are incredible. Me and the wife had a fried egg, some gouda cheese, and some ham on top of white bread. It was incredible. Sounds crazy, but the meat, cheese and eggs here taste so fresh.

After breakfast we cleaned up a bit, packed all the stuff up, and headed out around 1:30PM. It was another beautiful day, so the trip home on the highway was equally nice as the day before.

So, to recap, we passed through 3 countries in 1 day, had some amazing times with good friends from another country, witnessed some priceless cultural/educational happenings, too! All in all it was a great weekend. I feel so fortunate to be able to see different parts of the world, meet new people, take in these incredible experiences, and do it all with such an incredible friend – my wife. These are times I will never forget….

Next up is DUBLIN, IRELAND, where we are going to watch the Super Bowl (on at 12AM here!) with my best friend Gavin and his wife Margaret. He has been living there for about 4 years, and so we try to make it almost (what has become) a tradition for us American Football fans to watch the game together if we can. This year it just happened to work out again! I’ll try to take some pictures next weekend…..promise!

R