Ghent

After Ghent, we didn’t go anywhere for like a week. There were certainly more touristy things to do in the Low Countries, but like I said before, my main objective was not to be a tourist. But we did discuss things we could see in the future, such as the Maastricht Natural History Museum, in relation to which I learned that the mosasaur is named after the Meuse (Maas) River which was absolutely shocking to me. Also shocking is the controversial history of the first mosasaur skull ever discovered, which French soldiers yoinked in 1794 and the French government has refused to return ever since, citing that someone was paid (though those circumstances are, from what I understand, dubious). Another place might be the historic pump Museum de Cruquius, the largest steam engine in the world, apparently.

So we read books, played games, listened to music, and cooked food, drank alcohol with the food occasionally. We watched the birds at the bird feeders in the mornings, Tharash has four bird feeders on his deck as well as a water dish. I did not get much creative writing done. That’s fine, I was in rest mode. Continue reading →

Part 3: Muiderslot and Madurodam

In this episode, we went to Amsterdam some more, to a nature reserve, to Marken Island, and to Texel Island.

Please note this is a coffeeshop, not a café. What’s the difference, you may ask? You get coffee at a café. At a coffeeshop you get weed. (This was not something either of us knew back then, but we weren’t interested in coffee either so we didn’t go in lol I just took the picture for the shop name)

Continue reading →

Part 2: Vienna

In this episode, I went to the windmill museum Zaanse Schans, my First Ever Real Castle, Muiderslot, and to the tiniest Dutch city, Madurodam.

This is a boardgame called Lionheart and it’s basically Warhammer Lite crossed with chess.

Our next trip was to the Zaanse Schans, a windmill museum on the Zaanse river, the heart of the wind-powered industrial area in days gone by. There are eight restored windmills here, and a number of village buildings

Continue reading →

Back in 2012, I went on my first solo international trip to visit my friend in his home country of the Netherlands. That was also back when I was on facebonk, so naturally I uploaded all my pictures there. I didn’t think of writing a blog post about it.

But I’ve quit faceborg, and the details of this trip really should be here along with all my other trips, so here we go. This having happened an entire decade ago, things are a bit hazy, especially the order that they happened in. Also my old camera was having a few issues, so if you see any weird glitchy things happening in a photo, it’s the camera’s fault. I didn’t take as many pictures as I would now, because I only had a limited memory card. At least I didn’t have disposable film cameras, can you imagine!? Only having 24 (or whatever) pictures before the camera’s full?

I went for 4 weeks in August of 2012. Which is a bit excessive, especially considering it was in the middle of my Master’s degree, but 1) I’d never been to Europe before, and 2) I wanted to spend a lot of time with my cool relatively-new friend. Continue reading →