"Everywhere is illogical, here it's just the most."

4.9.2010

That's what Troy said to me, when I explained him my adventures of finding the train station. Basically, I had to buy myself a discount card at the station, and I wasn't completely sure how to get there from school. I took a short cut, and later found myself in a place, which looked like the country side with a lot of fields. Of course I didn't have the map either, so I tried to just bike forward and find a sign pointing to the center. Luckily I did after 20 min (which is a lot of minutes back there), but in the end I just found myself from the place I started from.

Once again I left school, and almost took another short cut, but turned back to the "main road", and finally found the station. Tired, sweaty I went to the service desk. They gave me papers to fill and asked me to move to the side, because of the long line. Then I realized the papers were in Dutch. PFF. I managed to fill most of the parts, but one was a bit tricky, and apparently that was for the bank account number. A Dutch one, which I didn't have yet. I was told that you have to have one in order to get the train discount card.

Being in the middle of nowhere and doing paperwork in a foreign language just to realize how annoying the system can be abroad. There you need a bank account for many things, in some cases so they could take money from you if you forget to cancel your order or something. I'm used to paying for something once and that's it. Less annoying.

Since I wasn't able to get the discount card, me and Troy had to pay full price (3 persons can travel with the discount with you) to get to see the famous windmills. Kinderdijk, one of my favorite places in Holland, and the weather was perfect! We saw how it was inside a windmill (recommend) and took a short boat trip (better to rent a bike).

protected by unesco

this is how they kept themselves warm back then

                                                       yes troy farah likes to photoshop

We had no clue, which direction we were supposed to walk to the bus stop, but as usual you have to just go forward. On the way a man stopped us for a long conversation about Christianity and how he prefers to use "The Netherlands" instead of "Holland". According to him the first means more of humble people and the latter hollow. Nice lad, he gave us pretty windmill cards. The houses we passed by had nice views of the windmills, must be fun to live there, probably in a windmill too.

When you meet new people and you have those silent moments, it's most of the time really awkward. But with Troy it wasn't, that's why I think he was the perfect travel mate for that trip. And he took some mighty great photos with and old camera, including my longtime blog picture (sorry forgot to credit that, was just too excited to have it here). Cheers!

We decided to have a look at Dordrecht the city, where we had to take the train. Only for a while, and I already liked  the city! It still is one of my favorite cities in Holland, even though the Dutc like to joke that the closer you are to Dordrecht the worst, or something. And by accident I noticed that Oceansize was going to play a gig there!

while waiting for the bus to dordrecht

like

Back in Breda the red hair weekend (gingers' gathering) was starting with a movie in the park. The movie Perfume was baaad. And it was cold and they had to start the movie 3 times due to technical problems. Dont' watch it.

Top 5 Songs of the Erasmus

These are the songs, which were part of making my exchange year in Holland special;

5. The Dutchies love to sing-a-long to this and play air instruments. Some hated those moments, some loved it. Everytime I hear it, I think of them. The only difference is that I voluntarily start to play it.



4. Thanks to my dear Italian flat mate Alice, I got to know that a crazy little thing called "happy melancholia" existed. This song and video makes you want to travel. And to pursue that exact feeling and settle for it.



3. This is what I sang, when Maria's boyfriend Felix left back to Germany back in December. And since then it had been the song to sing everytime someone was leaving (together with "My Heart Will Go On"). This summer Judit revealed that she was actually scared that Maria would have started to cry in the edit suite. LOL.



2. A robbery, shooting and frightened woman= me and Judit's theme song. Especially the "OMG, OMG, MG" part. Warning this might get stuck in your head many hours, days, months...



And NUMERO UNO, the song, which without Holland wouldn't have been the same is..



..the song, which made everyone glad that they don't study hotel management.

Sandcastles

7.8.2011

Today we visited the sandcastle here in Lappeenranta, a city close to the Russian border. Every summer they build something out of sand according to the theme of the year by the biggest lake in Finland, Saimaa. It's also the 4th biggest lake in Europe. It's my third time to visit, and here are pictures from every year.

2009, fairytales

2010, dinosaurs & pre-historical age

2011, circus

NED-FIN

During the weekend we got to know that Finland has these teams in its 2014 World Cup qualification group; Georgia, Belarus umm oh yes France and Spain. My dad said for sure they will be eliminated again, but at least we have interesting games now. Last year we had an interesting game, that was against my host country Holland, and me and Henna along with my Dutch exchange student Jurrien went to watch it in Rotterdam September 7th.

litti-peukku=litmanen thumb

I'm not a fan of Rotterdam, but being there for the first time was amazing with the "skyscrapers" when I got used to the typical Dutch buildings. The reason why the city looks the different is because it was demolished completely during the second world war, and now they wanted to rebuilt it into a modern look.

harbor city

The Dutch won 2-1 only with one goal, which was a penalty, and everyone says that Finland deserved to win. We sat amongst the Dutch fans, and they just laughed at us when we went crazy as Finland scored.

ei omaan maaliin=not into our own goal

an italian fan of finland harrassing henna

Big dislikes were that Dirk Kuyt one of my favorite Liverpool players got injured a day before the match, and before that Liverpool legend Sami Hyypiä got his first red card ever on the previous match. And Finnish legend Jari Litmanen, who many Dutch love (he played in the Dutch league in the 90's) didn't even get to play.
 How unlucky I was.

kuyt :(

 Likes on the other hand were that I went to my first big football match, I saw Wesley Sneijder and legendary Ruud van Nistelroy. And Dutch class was cancelled for the evening, so I didn't miss a lesson already on my first week of school. Also the Finns were much louder throughout the whole game.

sneijder

ruud!

took a white towel, since i didn't have anything else