Still Standing

This post was originally posted in my other blog 5/17/2007

After a long two days, I finally have a chance to write. I just arrived in Holland and man, was it a trip. I would have posted sooner, but my computer was displaying everything in Dutch, so I couldn't even read how to fix the problem. Yeah, we were told we wouldn't really have a problem with a language barrier, but no, everything is in Dutch, and people just assume we speak Dutch. We just nod and smile.

Sam is a good partner to have, although she is just as lost as I am.

We figured out all the flights, that was fine. Trying to haul all our luggage around was hard though. I am pretty sure I could fit in my suitcase.

The trouble really started though when we were in Amsterdam and had to find our way to Wageningen. All we knew was to take a train and then a bus, so we went to the ticket office and bought train tickets. She told us that the train we needed left in less than 10 minutes and that we needed to transfer in Utrecht, so we dashed to the station and as the conductor of the train on our platform if it would get us to Wageningen. He seemed annoyed and told us to get on the next train, so that's what we did. Turns out though, that wasn't the train we wanted either, but by the time we found out, the train was pulling away. Luckily for us, the locals are very nice and helpful. I am pretty sure our whole car knew we were lost and were all trying to help. When we reached a stop that we could transfer, two businessmen walked us to the correct platform so that we wouldn't screw up again.

We got off at our stop but still had to take a bus to the town. The bus driver just yelled at us to get out when it was our stop, and then we were stuck on a street corner. We must have looked completely lost because two people came up to us to help and one happened to be our neighbor. He got us to our rooms, but was very confused when we said we needed keys still. Then he was worried because everything closes here very early and the next day was a holiday, so we rushed over to the administration building, who then sent us to some other place, where we then found out our contact had already picked up our keys and we were supposed to have been meeting him in his office the whole time.

So, we finally met Rene, and he took us to a pub and then a market so we could get food for the next few days because nothing is open over holidays. Then we were on our own again, and by the time we found somewhere to eat and had unpacked, it was bedtime. I slept for a long time, but we got to meet some of our neighbors and looked around the town a bit more today.

Sorry my first post is so long, but this has been quite the adventure.