Freakishly Happy

Okay, so we were getting ready to celebrate Queens Day, right??

So we went to a little town outside of Utrecht to Michiel's old Student House, and met up with his former roommates.  The cooked us a fabulous traditional Dutch meal with mashed potatoes and endives and sausages (veg burger for me.) 
I now have a theory that when the germanic tribes were running around all of the layed back, fun loving memebers of the tribe moved north to the Netherlands where they could plant tulips, build dams, and eat those really good dutch pastries we have in Iowa called pillow puffs, leaving everyone else behind in Germany and Austria. 
In other words, Michiel's friends were all delightful and charming.  I learned a lot of really interesting things about the Netherlands, ie. they have a REAL Santa Claus who is chosen to be the country's Santa Claus for 5 to 6 years before he retires and a new Santa Claus is found.  I also hung out with two guys who'd actually met Santa's somewhat sinister helper Zwarte Piet (black Pete), who puts the very bad children into his sack and takes them to Spain.  I'm thinking this is an empty threat, because how fantastic would it be in the middle of winter in the Netherlands to be carted off to somewhere warm in Spain??? 

After dinner we headed into Utrecht to join the festivities.  The town was absolutely packed.    Every bar was over croweded.  We went to an Irish pub for awhile that is normally quite quiet, but for Queens Day was crammed with people.  
After hanging out there and enjoying some good Dutch Bier we moved on to another club.  We had to wait in line for quiet some time, but didn't mind too much.  Steffan and Dylan got out their trusty mobile phone-mp3 player- camera things, and started playing music for us, and even though we could barely move we boogied a bit until we got inside.

Getting inside the door was much akin to being birthed.  Either Dylan or Steffan grabbed my hand and we were sort of squeezed through the crowed of people before emerging somewhat flustered inside the door.   We met up with Jan, Gaya, Wilhelm, Avout and Michiel who were already inside, but had to wait for John and Dylan/Steffan (I can't remember who I entered with (Michiel, forgive me for slaughtering the spellings of your friend's names )). 
The music, drinks and company was good, and we stayed at the club until 6 am. 
Getting home was rather interesting, as most everyone had whooped it up that evening in honor of the Queen.  I however was doing pretty well, as beer gives me wicked heart burn and I'd passed mine off on to others throughout the night. 
It was beginning to get light out when we finally got to the train station after several misunderstandings and misdirection.  When our group was finally all back together we decided to take taxis back to the student house.  John, Michiel Eelka and I all got into a taxi together, leaving Wilhelm, Steffan and Dylan to get into the next one. 
We got back to their city, but there was a misunderstanding with the cabby, who would only take us as far as the train station, and we had to walk about 15 minutes back to the house, and arrived at the same time as Wilhelm, Dylan and Steffan who were a bit put out that we'd left them (especially as they were the more drunken of the two groups).
We all went our separate ways, and John and I crashed in the spare room.
The next morning I woke up and felt like heavy disinfectant was the only thing that would get the wretched bar taste out of my mouth. 
I went out into the common room and ate toasties (grilled cheese the is made by smashing the crap out of a sandwich in a sandwich machine, but tastes quite good), and hung out., discussed politics and argued with Steffan about racial diversity and acceptance. 
Wilhelm put in a Dutch movie (and even downloaded subtitles for me, very nice), Fest Hard (the Fat and the Furious), which was entertaining but strange.

After the movie we gave everyone the three kiss salute (the women there really must have incredible lip muscles from kissing EVERYONE three times, the men there really have it easy only having to kiss the women) and went back to Utrecht to see what we could see. 
Normally Queen’s Day is the only day throughout the year that the Dutch can sell anything they want to, so it is like a MASSIVE garage sale sans the garages.  We got there late though, and the rain that morning had put a damper on things, so almost everything was gone already.  We went back to Rotterdam, picked up some Chinese food and tried to regain our bearings.  I took a LONG shower to try to get the smoky smell from the bar out of my hair, and when I finally felt human again, I went out and hung out with the guys and read a great book, “The Curious Incident of A Dog in the Garden.” and went to bed.

The next morning we all woke up late, but as usual I woke up later than most.  As it was Michiel’s birthday and his mother and brother and their respective boyfriend and girlfriend were coming over, we helped him clean, grocery shop and make dinner.  Dinner was very good, and his family was very pleasant. After dinner John and I went on a date to give Michiel and his family some time alone.  We went to the cinema in downtown Rotterdam.  Initially we had no idea what to see so we picked Final Destination III.  After sitting through a half an hour of previews and about 12 minutes of the movie we had to leave because I was too freaked out.  I don’t do scary movies.
So we went to something a little more my pace.  Ice Age II.  It was cute, but I was a bit frightened at how the movie was chopped up into 2.5 minute short films, because this means that the average attention span of a 7 year old is getting shorter and shorter and shor…
Anyway..
So the next morning we packed up and headed back down south so that I could go to classes on Tuesday. Bah!

It was really great hanging out with Michiel.  He was a fantastic host and it was great to see him again.