#7 - Welcome to my office!

Interlaken, Switzerland.

Daaaaaaang.

Yeah, so. Kelly and I decided to do our own thing in Switzerland this weekend, but since I had to see a show for a class, we couldn't leave until Friday morning. This meant traveling from 8AM to 6PM, consequentially cutting out a lot of time in Interlaken. Thankfully, unless you're partaking in one of the many high-adrenaline, blood-pumping, why-in-God's-name-am-I-doing-this extreme sports, there's not a lot to do. So, Friday night, we found our hostel (the Funny Farm...classy naming, I know) where we were greeted by an ENORMOUS SAINT BERNARD. Yes, the hostels in Switzerland have dogs. Particularly large dogs. Yes, I spent a lot of time in the public lobby of a highly populated hostel baby-talking and practically rolling around with a big, hairy, smelly dog. I talked about that Saint Bernard a whole lot while we were there. After putting down our stuff and silently deciding that our Iowan roommates were, frankly, boring, we headed to the Thai restaurant right down the street (Saint Bernard? A Thai restaurant? Interlaken is practically Lynchburg, VA) for dinner. Mmmmmmm. After that, we attempted to play card games with the 36-carded deck the generous bartender at the hostel had given us, and then we went upstairs and studied for mid-terms until approximately 10:45.

Then, Saturday, we got up fairly early and walked around the shops. I looked for an antique bookstore everywhere, feeling that since I was in the Swiss Alps, maybe I could find a copy of Heidi for my mother; alas, there are not many bookstores in Interlaken, and the ones that do are mostly too small to carry any copies of the novel. We got a quick lunch at the Thai restaurant (YES it was that good) and then met up with our skydiving group.

Yeah, skydiving.

It was pretty phenomenal. We flew to 13,000 feet, I sat on the stairs of an open plane and my instructor barrel-rolled us into the sky over the Swiss Alps. Free-fall for approximately 53 seconds, where I made no sounds--just grinned like an idiot--and the parachute was pulled at 4,000 feet. After that was about 5-7 minutes of airtime, where my ruggedly handsome Australian instructor Mick did as many tricks (aka spinning around a LOT) as he could to try and frighten me. He couldn't. But he did tell me, in the midst of our 4,000 feet-high conversation, that before he skydove for a living, he used to work in an underground coal mine. How's that for poignancy?

To see the rest of my Interlaken pictures--and there aren't that many--go here!

#6 - How many visits does it take to become a Belgian Citizen?

Because by the end of April, I will have been to Belgium three times. 

Two friends and I decided to make it an easy weekend and go to Belgium, relatively close to us here in the Netherlands. We were going to hit up Brussels on Friday and spend the night, then on Saturday, head to Antwerp. We didn't really do anything in either city besides just walking around and eating at various times. I sent Stefan Van Bragt, a Belgian family friend, an email before our trip, and he put us in touch with his daughter, Isabelle (the last time I saw her was maaaaaybe when I was under the age of ten). She and her boyfriend, Thom, were nice enough to meet us in Antwerp, where they both go to university, and show us around! 

The one thing I took pictures of in either city was this open-air, totally legal, graffiti park. Instead of boring you with more text (SHUT UP KIRIN SHUT UP), I'll just post a few of those pictures.

Above: Kelly SMIRKING.

I'm pretty sure this is one of the best pictures I've ever taken.

If you want to see the rest of my graffiti pictures, go here!

#3 - Richten en Schieten!

First day of classes here in the marvelous Netherlands...

...and my only class of the day was cancelled. HIEPERDEPIEP HOERA!

So, instead of furthering my incredibly expensive education, I walked around the Castle grounds with Rosie. We set out with the intention of taking pictures, and after taking approximately three inside pictures, decided the 40-degree weather was too nice to waste. Hopefully, inside pictures will be taken at some point, but here are a few!

YEAH THIS IS WHERE I LIVE WHAT?!

And then Rosie decided to take me to NARNIA. No joke. Narnia is in the backyard of the Castle. Unfortunately, it's a "VERBODEN" area. So Rosie and I oh-so-secretly ninja'd our way across this lovely bridge/dam area:

TO NARNIA. For the sake of keeping it mildly secret, I'll only tease you with one picture, and then you can jealously imagine how awesome the rest of it must've been. I'm glad I got there once and photo-documented it before we all received a reminder via email that the outer grounds of the Castle were off-limits. SUCCESS.


Anyone that wants to see more pictures of Narnia, or the Castle in general, follow this link! The pictures came out pretty well, thanks to my incredibly generous father letting me whisk his much nicer Canon off to Europe with me!