Impressions of the Netherlands

Roxi and I have been back from Europe for a month now and as our time in the Netherlands fades into memory, and we embark on our next adventure, I wanted to finish the blog post that I started in my mind shortly after our arrival overseas. In all honesty, I've been physically writing this post for more than two weeks and I really probably should have broken it up into multiple entries, but this felt like the best way to wrap-up our Dutch experience (except for the videos I'm still in the process of editing). We've been working very hard on our move to Memphis, TN and as a result, my blogging has really suffered. I really urge all readers to follow me on Twitter as I'm finding it much easier to micro-blog than sit down and write a full post at this particular time in my life. Anyway, without further ado, my impressions of Holland are:

1. The cost of living is really high in Europe even in a small city like Enschede. Say what you will about the value of the US dollar, but you can buy a whole lot more with it in the States than you can buy with a euro in the Netherlands. It doesn't completely translate to all EU countries because things in Paris seemed to be cheaper than things in Holland, but then again things in Dublin were even more expensive!

2. It took us a while to find affordable bikes (see #1) but once we did, I loved having them. Bicycles are the principle form of transportation for a lot of people in the Netherlands so the roads and trains have been designed to accommodate them. The bike lanes are extremely well designed, maintained and span most city streets. The only problem is that motorcycles are also allowed to use the lanes which to me defeats the entire purpose of having a separate path. It was very stressful to be riding along on your bike, minding your own business, when a motorcycle or scooter would roll up behind you and expect you to immediately get out of the way. Any form of transportation that requires a license plate should not be allowed to use paths specifically made for un-licensed bicycles!

3. The best place to visit in Europe for an American who only speaks one language has got to be the Netherlands. Everyone there speaks English so well that we abandoned our plans to learn Dutch due to a loss of motivation. I have to hand it to the Dutch, and a lot of Europeans for that matter. Despite what they might think of their English language skills, most speak our language more fluently than I will ever be able to speak any of theirs.

4. Dutch food is bland. Being from Cajun country probably stacks a lot of things against Holland right away, but in all honesty, I don't like really particularly spicy food. However, Dutch food is so bland, I used more Tony Chachere's and Slap Ya Mama in the seven months we were there than I've used over all the other years of my life combined.

5. For the most part, I liked not having a car. I was actually surprised by how many cars there were in Holland. Rail and bus travel is pretty convenient but not as efficient as having a car, especially in such a small country. I would like to think that rail travel would be possible in the US some day but only if they managed to run trains on schedule like the they do in the Netherlands.

6. I've always loved French Fries very much, especially with an enormous amount of Heinz ketchup. The fries in the Netherlands and around Europe are fantastic! However, in Holland, they eat them with mayonnaise. I don't even like putting mayo on my sandwiches let alone dipping fries in them. Ketchup was available but you usually have to pay for it and you hardly get any for the price. Then again, there's also curry sauce which is surprisingly good on a fresh batch of French fries.

7. The Dutch are very helpful people, but most of the ones that we met didn't seem as interested in become friends with foreigners. We were at an international school and we found that most of our friends were people from other countries. It seemed that the Dutch preferred to mostly be friends with other Dutch people. There are of course exceptions, but we really only had a few Dutch friends.

8. The Dutch have a much different idea of personal space than Americans. I didn't become fluent in Dutch but I was familiar with enough to know that when people ran into me at the market, they never said anything to apologize or excuse themselves. Not only that but I found that people waited too close to me in line and I was usually being stared at on the bus or train. I know there are cultural differences, but it's really hard to handle when someone tries to walk through you in a crowd.

9. Behold the power of cheese! I never knew that Dutch cheese would be so good when I found out that we would be traveling there. Not only do they have great cheese, but I learned that Gouda comes from the city of the same name! And it doesn't stop there. Some of our favorites from the cheese shops at the market were the pesto, walnut and tomato-basil cheeses. Worse yet, despite the higher cost of living (see #1) fine cheese was much cheaper in Holland than you can find it here in the States. I will miss the abundant cheese very much.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but those are the main things that come to mind as I've brainstormed this post. If I think of anything else, I'll certainly amend this blog, but honestly, I will probably be too busy with our impending move to Memphis to add anything anytime soon. All in all, I had a good time in Holland, although I am very happy to be back in the United States. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, but I think the most important thing I learned is that I am an American boy through and through!

Back in the USA

Roxi, her cat Jupiter and I spent the past two days traveling back to the United States and as of last night we are back! We ended a hectic two weeks of hosting visitors and traveling back and forth across the Netherlands with one final train trip from Enschede to Dusseldorf on Sunday and two flights on Monday. Our trip to Dusseldorf was no problem and Jupiter was extremely well behaved although not exactly excited to spend four hours in her cat carrier. Little did she know that it was only the beginning! Roxi and I enjoyed a leisurely dinner at our hotel in Dusseldorf on Sunday night while Jupiter recovered from her trip by hiding under the bed. After that we were all pretty tired so we went to bed to prepare ourselves for the coming long day.

On Sunday we arrived very early at the airport knowing that it would take a little extra time to buy Jupiter's plane ticket. Thankfully we had allowed for a lot of extra time because we learned upon check-in that not one, but two of our four bags to be checked were over the weight limit. (I'm not sure how we ended up with so much stuff in only seven months in Europe!) Rather than pay an exorbitant 400 euros in over-sized luggage fees, Roxi and the check-in agent convinced me to let Roxi go to a luggage store in the airport and buy an extra bag to spread out our luggage weight. She found a large, cheap and sturdy duffel bag that we were able to use to get all of our checked luggage under the individual weight limits and save hundreds of euros. We still had to pay for the extra checked bag, but it could have been so much more expensive.

After that, we really didn't have too much time to go through passport control and security, which always takes a little longer with a cat. Before we knew it, we were boarding our flight bound for Chicago. For most of our time in the airport, Roxi had kept one of the pet carrier's windows open so that Jupiter could stick her head out to look around and survey the overwhelming situation. There were no problems until Jupiter got on the plane when she decided to make a break for it! Catching her was not as easy as her last escape on our trip over to Europe, but after chasing her up and down aisles and under rows of seats, we cornered her at one of the bulkheads and got her back into her carrier. My brother Garrett will have to make us a new movie poster as a sequel to the "Cats on a Plane" parody he made in January.



Jupiter was very well behaved for the remainder of our trip, but Roxi and I both felt so terrible for her since she was obviously not happy. But Jupiter is a trooper and she sat quietly during the nine hours of our flight to Chicago. Upon arrival in Chicago, we had to go through the usual immigration and customs. At the immigration desk, the border agent was even nice enough to stamp Jupiter's pet passport! Next we picked up our bags to take through customs but found out that we had to make a visit to the CDC desk so that they could clear Jupiter through customs. This was the part that I had been dreading. I had of course done my homework and had taken care of getting all of her immigration paperwork filled out by the vet in Hengelo, but I was worried that there might be something that I had missed that would result in Jupiter being quarantined or worse. Of course, things were much easier than that. I was prepared to give the documentation to the CDC officer but she told me she didn't needed it and simply entered a brief note in a logbook and stamped our customs form. I only hope that they would have used more scrutiny if we were not American citizens, otherwise what's the point of even having importation restrictions?

We rechecked our bags after customs and set out to find our gate for the final flight to Houston. We had just enough time during our layover to clear immigration and customs and make it to our next gate with about twenty minutes to spare. It really couldn't have worked out better after our long flight to Chicago. We boarded the flight and Jupiter continued to behave well but she was starting to get restless. I couldn't blame her after the more than fifteen hours she had already spent in the cat carrier. I can only imagine that she was probably thinking that she would spend the rest of her life in that carrier!

We arrived right on time in Houston where my parents were waiting for us. Of course not everything can go just right; two of our five bags didn't make it back from Chicago, but we were promised that we should have them some time this morning. No problem though. We were just glad to be done with the day of traveling and ready to let Jupiter out of the carrier back at my parents' apartment. We thought she might spend several hours hiding under the bed, but she happily got out and explored the apartment. Unfortunately for her, she has another four hour stay in the carrier scheduled for today when we drive back to Lafayette, but after everything she's already been through, it should be nothing for her!

After relaxing for a little while and getting cleaned up, my parents took Roxi and I out for some margaritas and Tex-Mex food. Although they do have it in the Netherlands, it doesn't really compare to the way they do it here. The first thing that Roxi and I noticed was that we were all given large unsolicited glasses of ice water...two things that you don't get in Europe. In fact, getting tap water almost always takes persistence and "ice water" usually only consists of two or three cubes. Next came the complimentary bountiful baskets of chips and cups of salsa, something else that would come in a smaller quantity and larger cost overseas. Dinner was great and helped me take care of the Tex-Mex craving I've been having. I've realized that the biggest pitfall I will have to try to avoid here in the States is to not let myself overindulge in my various American cravings!

I enjoyed our time in the Netherlands and Europe and it taught me quite about myself. I will miss our home for the past seven months, but right now, I am glad to be back in the USA. In the coming days, I will reflect on our time there but I will always have very fond memories of Enschede and the Netherlands.

A Lesson for Detroit

A colleague of Roxi's has been visiting from Italy for the past few days to present some of his research and make contacts here at the University of Twente. Yesterday, Sergio and I went to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe and the Twentse Welle museum. The Rijksmuseum was enjoyable, especially the collection of paintings by some of the Dutch Masters but I found the Twentse Welle particularly fascinating.

I love history especially when I can learn about it in the places where events occurred. The Twentse Welle traces the history of the Twente region of the Netherlands from the last Ice Age through the present day. I was amazed by the size of the great beasts that once roamed the steppe before the end of the Ice Age as well as the way the earliest human settlers first began to live and work with the available resources in the area.

As the population of the region grew and the Industrial Revolution reached Enschede, the small localized textile businesses experienced rapid expansion culminating in an immense cluster of factories and textile mills during the 1850s. The mills ran for much of the day for almost 100 years producing enormous amounts of fabrics shipped to all corners of the world. And then in the 1950s, just as suddenly as the industry grew, the textile economy of Enschede began to collapse as a result of cheaper production of comparable fabrics in Asia. Almost immediately, factories in the city began to close, unemployment rose dramatically and a twenty-year economic depression hit the region. There were thousands of blue collar workers who only knew how to work machines in the textile mills and those jobs were suddenly all gone.

The school that would become the University of Twente opened in the 1960s and began to train young people of the region in all technological fields. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, with help from the government, technology companies began locating in the area to take advantage of the resources the university and it's graduates. Over subsequent decades, Enschede has experienced a renaissance and become the largest shopping center in the eastern Netherlands. On a weekly basis, visitors from the Twente region as well as Germany come to enjoy all the goods and services the city has to offer.

Even before I left the museum, I recognized many similarities to the auto industry in the United States. It is striking to think that automobile manufacturing has been around for about 100 years in the Detroit area, but the Big Three are now collectively suffering from very large losses brought on by many factors including foreign auto makers producing higher quality cars for lower prices. I sympathize with the blue collar workers who are being forced out of their jobs by downsizing and factory closures, but it seems that the US government is only slowing the inevitable by propping up this failing industry and worse yet, it seems the motivation is more about nostalgia and votes than anything else.

If the federal government is hellbent on spending money in Detroit, it seems that said money would be much better utilized by focusing on emerging industries and innovation as opposed to a business sector that has been uncompetitive in the world market and failing for a very long time. The University of Twente was the catalyst that helped to improve the economic situation in Enschede because of the entrepreneurial mission of the school. Michigan already has two very large state schools, not to mention several smaller ones, that could help in serving such a function. For all the recent talk of change in the US, it is time to put our money where our rhetoric is and actually make some adjustments to an evolving economy. It's time to look to the future, not the past.

And one more lesson that we could all learn from the past. Here is a painting of the Enschede skyline at the height of the textile boom:



A mere one hundred fifty years ago, the skies of Enschede were black with soot spewed from the smokestacks of coal fired textile plants. Today the skies are clear and blue and the only smokestacks are remnants of the abandoned manufacturing plants. The scene was the same across Europe and the United States. The air is visibly cleaner than it was only a century ago. Obviously our air is still polluted and needs further improvement of quality, but we need to keep things in perspective. We should have clean burning fuels and energy sources, but it won't happen overnight without adverse changes to our way of life. Things have changed so much for the better in only a few generations and they will continue to improve as we continue our cycle of development and evolution.

Klompen At Work

Today is the first time that I saw someone in the Netherlands wearing wooden shoes while doing manual labor and not just as part of a costume.

Biking to Germany

Since we arrived in Enschede, it has been my plan to take a bike ride to Germany just because it is so close. Since the weather has gotten warmer and the rains have stopped, I've been threatening to go on several occasions now. Today was finally the day and it was a great afternoon of bike riding and exploring.

I started my trip at 1:30 in the afternoon by heading to the city center of Enschede. From there, it was uncharted territory. Thankfully, it's easy to get to Germany from the city center as you just follow Gronausestraat all the way.


Heading east towards Germany.


I appreciate the street name that tells you where you are headed.

The bike ride was very pleasant on the clear afternoon and although it was very sunny, it was not overly hot. After making my way through the small town of Glanerbrug, I crossed the German border and entered the outskirts of Gronau.


Leaving Enschede...


...and entering Glanerbrug, the last Dutch town before crossing the German border.


Leaving Glanerbrug crossing the Glanerbeek stream into Germany.


German speed limits in the cities, outside of the cities and on the motorways (in kph course).


Road sign for the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany.


Entering Gronau in the Borken district of Westmunsterland.


"Welcome to the Borken district."

After a short ride through the outskirts of the town, I arrived in the city center about forty-five minutes after leaving our apartment in Enschede covering a little over 10 miles in that time. I spent the next forty-five minutes exploring the city center and surrounding area before heading back home to Enschede.


Once in Germany, Gronausestraat became Enscheder Strasse.


Tower in the city center.


A picture really is worth a thousand words because without this graphic illustration, I might have been inclined to run over several people in Gronau.


St. Anthony Church


St. Anthony: patron saint of pigs.


Gronau Church


Dinkel River


Old building...


...new climbing wall.


Dragon-Cow or Cow-Dragon?


0.6 km to the Netherlands

Vliegenvanger

Although it has cooled off over the last week in Enschede, not long ago it was unseasonably hot here. Having no air conditioner we resorted to leaving our windows and balcony doors open to allow for a breeze to help cool the stuffy apartment. The only problem with this solution was that it allowed lots of very annoying flies to get in and buzz around our heads incessantly twenty-four hours a day. Not knowing where to find flypaper or any other way to deal with them, we just accepted it as a fact of life. Thanks to a friend, we were informed not only about where we might get some flypaper, but also about an ingenious tool called a vliegenvanger (flytrap).

This morning I made a trip into town only to find that on Mondays, most stores don't open until 1:00 in the afternoon. You'd think I'd know this by know after being here for more than six months, but I just don't find the need to go all the way into town very often as we have several nearby grocery stores that open earlier and usually carry everything that we need. Thankfully however, two of the few stores open before noon were the ones that I needed to acquire these important fly exterminating implements.

The flypaper was a welcome find at the first store, but the vliegenvanger was the really exciting purchase. Although called a flytrap, it would be better described as a hand held bug zapper! It's about the size of a racquetball racquet, but instead of strings, it has a fine metal mesh connected to two AA batteries. The metal mesh is electrified by the touch of a button. By now, I'm sure you know where this is going!


A fly's worst nightmare...


"Electronic fly- / wasptrap"


A hand-held bug zapper!

Vliegenvanger In Action:


I defy anyone in PETA to spend a night in our apartment and not want to use this device several times to do away with these annoying pests!

Cologne and Aachen

Today I'm posting videos of me and Roxi's trip with my parents through Cologne and Aachen, Germany. After visiting us in the Netherlands, my parents struck out on their own to see Belgium and France. Roxi and I rendezvoused with them in Cologne were we spent the night. On May 3, we made a full day out of traveling back to Enschede with a stop in Geilenkirchen, my maternal grandmother's homeland. At the beginning of the day, we decided to make an extra stop in Aachen to visit the capital city of Charlemagne's empire.

"From Louisiana to the Lowlands"

Roxi made the paper!!! There is a nice profile in the English section of the campus newspaper, the UT Nieuws, about Roxi and her experience here in the Netherlands. Please follow this link to read the story!

Abraham Ledeboerpark

Roxi and I took advantage of the great weather yesterday afternoon with a bike ride through Abraham Ledeboerpark next to campus. The park consists of a mixture of wooded trails surrounding a central open field with a pond. While riding our bikes around the trails, we stumbled on to some large enclosed areas with deer, goats and sheep in them. We watched some people feed some very tame deer for a while before moving on and feeding some leaves to a couple of goats. It was a very pleasant afternoon and great to find a park so close to us!

Konninginnedag

Today is Konninginnedag (Queen's Day) in the Netherlands. It is a national holiday celebrating the birthday of Queen Beatrix. Her birthday is actually on January 31 but she chose to keep Queen's Day on April 30, her mother Queen Juliana's birthday, because of the more favorable weather for parades and outdoor celebrations.

Here in Enschede, Queen's Day festivities began at 9 AM in the the city center with a speech by the mayor followed by a toast of oranjebitter (a type of orange brandy) and music. The celebration was planned to last until 9 PM this evening.

The queen and the royal family traditionally visit two towns every Queen's Day for a parade. This year however, the parade in Apeldoorn was marred by a car that careened through barricades and a crowd of people, narrowly missing an open bus carrying the royal family, before crashing into a monument. Twelve people were injured and two have died as a result of the crash. In light of the events, the celebration in Apelodoorn has been canceled.





I'm sure that not all celebrations will be canceled around the Netherlands, but they will surely take on a more subdued tone due to today's events.

UPDATE: The car crash was not an accident. The driver apparently plowed through the crowd on purpose in an attempt to do harm to the royal family. He has since died from his injuries as have two other people bringing the death toll to five.

Batavierenrace

A tent city started to form on the University of Twente campus yesterday and it has grown into a tent metropolis as thousands of students from around the Netherlands and beyond arrived in Enschede in advance of the 37th Batavierenrace this weekend. The race began in Nijmegen last night at midnight and concluded here in Enscede this afternoon. Tonight the participants and others will take part in the largest student party in Europe. It is quite a site to see, so much so that my parents decided to stay in Enschede one more night before continuing their vacation in Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands.







UPDATE: 1:00 AM: We just got back from the big party (although it is still going on and will be for until at least 8 AM) and we had a great time! We drank a fair amount of beer, saw a band play some Dutch music and did some people watching. A great time was had by all! Who would have thought that when my parents came to visit us, they would get to see the largest gardens in the world and the largest student party in Europe?!

Ain't Technlogy Great?!?

Yesterday afternoon, we took a train with my parents to Enschede to show them our home away from home. After getting them checked into their hotel, we went into town to show them around and get some dinner. Before moving to Enschede in January, I searched the Internet for a web cam of the city so I could get an idea of the weather we could look forward to upon our arrival. I managed to find this camera trained on a sculpture in the city center. While walking through the city with my parents yesterday, my dad called my brother Garrett in Irvine, California and asked him to check the web cam and look for us. He took a screen shot of it, emailed it to us right away and we got this unique group photo (we're the four people waving at the camera).



Isn't the Internet amazing?!?

Turkish Cultural Night

With so many international students on campus, there are very frequent cultural events put on by the various student associations here at the University of Twente. This evening we went attended Turkish Cultural Night hosted by the Turkish Student Association. Before the dinner and entertainment, Roxi and I made our way around the room looking at all the pictures of the multitude of environments in the country. I suppose I should have assumed that there would be skiing in Turkey because there are mountains, but it never really occurred to me before. There are also of course beautiful beaches on the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Besides the natural wonders, there is so much history in the country dating back to Greek and Roman times in addition to the Seljuq, Ottoman and modern Turkish cultures. It really appears to be a very culturally rich nation.

Dinner was fantastic and it was followed up by some traditional Turkish dancing. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for the entire event, but we certainly enjoyed what we saw. We decided that we must visit Turkey as soon as possible because it looks to be a simply beautiful country.


Another of my obligatory pictures of food.

Fietsen!

After three months in the Netherlands we have finally acquired the most popular mode of transportation in the nation: fietsen (bicycles). I've been the holdout because of how expensive bikes are here. Since there are more of them than cars in the Netherlands, I guess it stands to reason that they are more expensive than in the States but I've found some of the prices outrageous!

When we had trouble finding a bike for under 300 Euros (almost $400!) a few months ago, I was worried that we might never find bikes within our budget. Granted it's been more than ten years since I entered a cycling shop in College Station, TX and purchased a brand new Trek mountain bike for about $250, but have prices really gone up that much? We started asking around about used bikes and were told that they were scarce this time of year but my frugality (read: cheapness) would not let me buy a bike for more than 100 Euros (our neighbors put that idea in my head). Lo and behold, this afternoon we found two used bikes in decent condition and got them both for 250 Euros, still 50 Euros more than I wanted to spend, but I can live with it because Roxi loves her bike so much.

The ride back from town was wonderful in this delightful springtime weather. And the bike lanes are so well planned out in this city, it's no wonder so many people choose cycles as the primary means of getting around town. After getting home and installing our bike locks and my new bell (!), we took a ride around areas on and off campus that we haven't seen yet. It was a great afternoon and we look forward to more exploring on this long holiday weekend and beyond!








One of many Shetland ponies we saw at a farm just off campus.


A free range chicken farm across the road from the Shetland ponies.

Cajun Gumbo in Far Away Holland

Roxi has been wanting to make chicken and sausage gumbo for a couple of weeks now, but I have been reluctant since I don't have to ingredients I'm used to here in the Netherlands. I'll let you in on a little secret....neither of us have ever made a roux before and usually rely on a pre-made jar or powder. But there is a first time for everything! With some tips and pointers from Roxi's dad, we set to it at about noon on Saturday. We don't exactly have the perfect stove and pots for making roux, but we improvised as best we could. It was a slow process because I have always heard that the trick to making a good roux is to cook is slowly enough that is doesn't burn otherwise your gumbo will taste burned. So with the gas heat as low as it could go, I slowly poured the flour into the heating oil as Roxi kept it moving to avoid sticking to the pan. For about three hours we alternated the stirring as the color slowly began to change. Finally after barely increasing the heat, the roux rather quickly changed from a light tan to a very dark brown.


The perfect chocolate color of the finished dark roux.

So as long as it took, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be to make a roux from scratch. From there on it was relatively easy as Roxi and I are used to making gumbo from this step forward. The only other trouble we had was with the size of our cooking pot. It wasn't exactly big enough for all of our chicken and sausage, but we made it work with a little finesse! The end result was perfect and Roxi and I agreed it'll be homemade roux from here on out for us! It's just funny that it took us being five thousand miles away from Cajun country to try our first roux from scratch. But you do what you have to do if you want that taste of home away from home!


Picture perfect gumbo with a side of Dutch style potato salad to make for a perfect international dinner!

Enschede to Dublin via Amseterdam

On the evening of Friday March 21, Roxi and I left Enschede by train bound for Amsterdam where we spent the night before flying to Dublin the next morning. We stayed at an interesting experiment of a place in Amsterdam called the Qbic Hotel. It is supposedly a hotel where the staff is invisible, i.e. you check yourself in and out at a machine and if you want food, you buy it from the vending machines in the dining area. It is only an experiment though because when we arrived we were greeted, albeit by a lone staff person, who proceeded to check us in and direct us to our room. As the hotel's name implies, our room was a cube with very limited amenities. It was a clean but sparse room, so much so, that there wasn't even a window to the outside world, only a mirror claiming that "You are the view!" It was all a little too trendy for Roxi and a little too spartan for me. But it was cheap and couldn't have had more convenient access to the train to the airport that we would take early the next morning.

We arrived rather late in the evening, but it being Amsterdam, we figured things would surely be hopping in the city center. Indeed they were. After a short tram ride to Dam Square, we set out to our new favorite restaurant, The Golden Chopsticks, which we learned about during Leah and O'Neil's visit a few weeks ago. After a very filling dinner of steamed oysters, spicy chicken and crunchy pork, we raced to catch the last tram of the evening back to the south side of the city. Unfortunately we missed it by few minutes and found ourselves with about forty minutes to kill before the night bus started at 1:00 AM. From our bus stop, we found the nearest bar and had a couple of Jupiler beers while waiting. They were very refreshing, but being as full as we were from dinner, we both felt very stuffed as we made our way back to the bus stop thirty minutes later.

Neither of us slept great that night. I never sleep well the night before an early morning flight, especially when I'm in a hotel. To make matters worse, there was no clock, let alone one with an alarm, in our room. There wasn't even a phone where I could set up a wake up call! I talked to the lady at "reception" and she said we could request a wake up knock on our door. So with that I went to a restless sleep. I woke up several times and checked my iPod clock only to find that it had been an hour or so. Finally, 6:00 AM rolled around and I got up and showered to make myself more alert. I got Roxi up about thirty minutes later and by 7:00 we were checking out and on our way to Schiphol Airport.

The train ride was only a few minutes and then it was just a matter of finding the Aer Lingus check-in kiosks. I've always heard how busy Schiphol is so I was expecting a DFW or Bush Intercontinental sea of humanity, but it was really not that bad. Check in was very painless and there was no metal detector security line to get into the terminal area, only passport control. It really speeds things up when there is no TSA style bottleneck right from the get go! We did a little walk around the gate area to keep ourselves busy before boarding the flight. Once they opened our flight for boarding, we got in line and at that point went through a more traditional security screening. It worked so well it really makes me wonder why US airports don't adopt a system like this. You still need ID to get into the terminal but you don't have to take your shoes off until you are about to board the plane. It seems like there would be a lot less people missing flights because of security screenings if this were the case in the States. Maybe it wouldn't work in the US but it sure wouldn't hurt to try it seeing as how miserable travel has gotten from just about every airport in the States!

The flight from Amsterdam to Dublin was one hour and ten minutes of ease. It's great to fly internationally in such a short time, but I guess it's no different from flying between neighboring states in the US. We arrived in Dublin, claimed our checked bag and looked for ground transportation to our hotel. After a thirty minute bus ride we arrived at the nearest stop to our hotel and were told by the driver that we had about a ten minute walk. At least twenty minutes later (!) we were sure we were lost. Aparently in Dublin, there are very few numbers on any of the buildings and we hadn't seen a street sign yet. Suddenly, we noticed a sign for Cardiff Lane, our final destination, and sure enough, the Maldron Hotel was just a few yards down the street.

Since our arrival to Dublin was so early, we couldn't check in yet, so we stored our bags at the desk and inquired about some traditional Irish pub food. We got a few suggestions and started walking down Pearse Street looking for a nice lunch. Several blocks down the road we found a pub offering a daily special of fish and chips among other things and decided to give it a go. Roxi decided to go with the special while I went with a beef burger, hoping that it would be better than the burgers I've been having in the Netherlands. Although Roxi's fish wasn't great, my burger was fantastic and much better than the beef that's available in Holland. I also took the opportunity to order my first of many Guinness beers of the trip. After finishing our food, it was still too early to check into the hotel so we had another round of drinks to kill the remaining time. Finally it was nearly 2:00 PM and check-in time.

We made our way back to the hotel, checked in, got settled into our room for the next week and then went swimming! The hotel had a great complimentary health club and spa in the basement. We knew it going in, so we planned ahead and found some swim suits before we left Enschede. It was so relaxing after the late Friday night and the travel on Saturday morning. We spent some time in the steam room, the sauna and the whirlpool. It was really nice except for the steam room which was so musty I felt like I was going to leave with Legionaire's disease. The sauna and whirlpool where very nice and we frequented them on several occasions during our time in Dublin.

After our trip to the spa, we were both pretty relaxed and tired so we decided to take a nap. Several hours later, it was late and we were both pretty content with staying in for the night so we decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant. I had a fancy version of bangers and mash while Roxi opted for vegetarian curry. They were both great and very filling. After dinner, we decided to officially call it a night so that we would be well rested for some sightseeing the next day. We didn't do a lot on our first night in Dublin but with seven more to follow, we certainly needed to get rested!

Dublin

I haven't been blogging for a few days, but that's because Roxi and I are in Dublin, Ireland! Roxi is attending a week-long school/conference that she was invited to take part in by her adviser in Enschede, and I came along to see Dublin because this might be my one and only trip here. We arrived Saturday morning and I've been doing a lot of sightseeing since then while Roxi has been giving and attending presentations. I don't have my trusty computer with me otherwise I'd post some photos now, but they will be coming sometime after we return to Enschede on Saturday. Check back this weekend for stories and photos as well as my weekly thoughts on LOST.

St. Patrick's Day in Enschede

We had our first St. Patrick's Day abroad and it was pretty fun! We went to a local Irish Pub with a couple of couples of our neighbors and had a really fun time. We drank some Guinness and met a random Dutch gentleman buy the name of Rob. All in all it was a great warm up for Roxi and my trip to Dublin on Saturday!