Thoughts.com Blogs - Utrecht rocks my world (Dec 1, 2007)

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Utrecht rocks my world (Dec 1, 2007)

Despite those who doubted me, apparently I do have the capacity to leave the country and end up where I intended. I’m in the foyer of Strowis, the hostel I stayed in last night, enjoying probably some of the only free internet I’ll see for the next twelve months.

My flights were long and vaguely painful...the Melbourne-Singapore one was actually rather turbulent, and I didn’t help myself by watching the little screen that shows you what you’re flying over (it was dark, otherwise I would have looked out the window). Most of the turbulence was over the South China Sea and the Timor Sea, and I was doing a very good job of convincing myself that I was going to be falling to a watery grave. Changi Airport was mildly scary, too, no one at the security smiled there, unlike in Melbourne, where everyone in security was very friendly. And the people in front of me at security were being totally grilled by the immigration people, and it was all very much like Border Security.

So, anyway, by the time I got to Schipol I’d been awake for about thirty six hours, having played Nintendo for the majority of the Singapore-Amsterdam flight. Then I wandered around in circles looking for a train ticket jigger that had an English option (I later realised that they in fact ALL had English options) and then wandered in circles trying to work out which train would take me to Utrecht without having to change trains - I was fairly sure I wasn’t up to the mental challenge of changing trains at that stage. Finally found one, had a quick word with Dee when I was on the platform, but then my phone cut out, and I haven’t been able to get onto her since. Fingers crossed she shows up at Strowis to pick me up...=S The trip to Utrecht was pretty easy, I got to see my first two Dutch windmills (....yay?) as well has plenty of sheep and a bunch of canals. Then when I got to Utrecht, I was somehow supposed to find my way out of Utrecht Centraal to find the hostel, but I couldn’t find the piece of paper with the map to Strowis, (I found it this morning...I am super intelligent) so I just kind of wandered around with a fifteen kilo pack looking rather dishevelled and smelling kind of similar. I eventually just picked up a cab, rather than spend another five hours being terribly lost.

So Utrecht is beautiful...absolutely gorgeous. I’ll put up my photos that I took yesterday when I find an internet cafe that will let me. One day I’ll live here. Maybe first I’ll learn some Dutch, something like that. Though I didn’t really spend that much time exploring, I was completely exhausted and I crashed at about 2.30pm local, slept straight through til about 2.30am, and then spent about five hours staring at the ceiling in the dark. So I’m wrecked again already, and it’s only 9.40am. How I love jetlag.

Anyway, I better go, I don’t want to hog the free computer.