A Very Dutch Fall Break

While eating dinner a few days before fall break, Luke and I were joined by a friend of ours from Richmond and asked if we had any plans for the upcoming break. We did not and she suggested a trip to the Netherlands, as she had not yet found anyone to go with. An hour or so later, we had finished purchasing tickets which would grant us admission to two ten hour bus rides for only fifty-eight pounds each. The rest of the time before the trip was spent in anticipation, setting up people to stay with through a system called Couchsurfing. Couchsurfing is a website run program in which people offer to host others in their area for a pre-determined amount of time. After class on Friday, we packed up a backpack each and began our journey.

After an uncomfortable overnight bus ride, our first hours were spent in a rainy, freezing early morning Amsterdam climate. We had no place to go in Amsterdam and decided to hop a train out to Leiden, a city southwest of Amsterdam itself. There we met our first Couchsurfing hosts, Jordan and Tommy. After one night with them, during which we slept nine people on the floor of a tiny apartment, we headed out to meet our next hosts; a group of college kids also located in Leiden. We made fast friends with them and three of them are actually coming to London in December. We spent much of the trip with these hosts and our Richmond friend taught all of us how to play ‘kung pow,’ a very fun, yet challenging strategy game. (picture included) The rest of the journey included spending two nights with two different hosts in Utrect, hopping trains, eating delicious food (kebabs), and learning various (and often obscene) Dutch phrases.

This trip was an intriguing lesson in Dutch culture and allowed for all three parties involved to both meet and share stories with people who reside in a culture which is inexplicably different from our own. We learned much about Dutch society and imparted knowledge about much of our own society upon them. An example of this is the fact that we spent hours sharing popular Youtube videos with all our hosts. This fall break was immensely fun and I would encourage anyone interested to vacation to the Netherlands.