Leeuwarden???

Most tourists from America will probably never make it up to Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, but it was actually a pretty cool town. Side note: Holland and The Netherlands are NOT the same thing I found out. Holland is just a region in The Netherlands that is the most densely populated and visited place in the country.

Anyway, Leeuwarden has canals going through the streets (lit up at night which was cool), a huge market with more people/locals walking around than any other city I’ve been to (it seemed that way at least), it’s a college town so everyone looks young and fit, there's an ice skating rink, a mysterious dark tower/building that looms over the city, and everyone is a freakin tall! The women were kinda like blonde Avatars haha. It was so weird; many of them were as tall or taller than me! It was a cool town for sure, but I doubt I’ll ever come back to the city and wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone, but I was glad to see it regardless.

My first day in Leeuwarden got off to a great start by: a. Skyping with Jenny for ~2 hours, b. Having a huge breakfast feast with Elisabeth. I like the way they do meals in Europe btw. Meal time actually means something to Europeans. They take more time to prepare meals (often with the help of others), there’s lots of variety, and the meals are just longer which encourage people to socialize more. My family has always (and still do) accused me of taking too long to eat at the dinner table to get out of dish duty. J However, having gained a worldly perspective traveling around the last month (I kid I kid), I think I’ve just been expressing the inner European in me all these years, and my family just can’t see it. Haha

So yes, Elisabeth prepared a wonderful breakfast and after cleaning up we took off to see her city via bicycle. The main street was actually super close tho, so we just parked our bikes and walked around. People were everywhere.! It seemed as tho everyone in the small town of ~90k people were out shopping and eating at cafes. We got a “donut” like pastry and sat with our legs hanging over the canal for a bit, then made our way into a café for some tea. Such a relaxing day. I needed it. Belgium was intense/awesome. Haha

The rest of the day was spent hanging out with some of her other friends, almost going ice skating (it was closing in 30 min. when we showed up so we didn’t go), hitting up another café, and having dinner/game night with 2 of her german friends and 2 guys from Romania, who were crazy btw. Oh man, I got so frustrated this night. We tried to play Yahtzee (board game) with everyone, but the Romanian guys were in their own world and spent the entire time either cheating, smashing the dice cup up on the table, or most frustratingly, having no clue how to play the game (despite our best efforts to teach them) and ignoring everything we tried to tell them. Seriously, it was as if I was talking to a monkey (a dumb one at that, sorry).

For those of you who know anything about Yahtzee, you get three rolls then put your score into one of the boxes on your sheet of paper. At one point, Razvan #1 must have rolled at least 12 times in a row, with everyone just watching in silence/awe to what the #&^$ he was doing. He was just picking and choosing certain dice, re-rolling all of them again, moving them around, paying no attention to what he was doing or why he was doing it (so pretty much doing nothing), before I finally had to step in and say something. These guys definitely tested my patience, and won. Haha And then there was the crazy Romanian techno/hip-hop they kept playing, which was fine, but what was worse was that I’m pretty sure the Romanian guys didn’t say one word to the other German girls the entire night, and the German girls didn’t talk to the Romanian guys either. It was such a bizarre atmosphere that only seemed normal due to Elisabeth and I making conversation with everyone.

Anyway, dinner was amazing. Elisabeth made pancakes with ham and cheese, or whatever filling you wanted such as Nutella. Mmmmm….. Thanks again Elisabeth! Everyone eventually left the party around 11pm, and Elisabeth and I just hung out for a bit before going to bed. Strange night. haha