LEIDEN
Rembrandt was born in this city ! And the synthetic helium also ! With a big university, this is one of the biggest student city !
The morning of my arrival my host Tim just cancelled my couch request : he was in hospital... PANIC !! What was I supposed to sleep this night ?
Well fortunatly, the fate was with me : I had send a request to Eva few days before and she was not be able to host me (exams and work) but she changed her mind few days after Tim accepted me. So I contacted her, explaining the situation and she accepted my request ! It was so nice of her !
The only thing was that she has to work until 22pm so I had to wait for her. It was not a problem, but 22pm, 22:30pm, 23:00pm... I had my hudge backpack, my heavy frontpack and a groceries bag in my hand with two or three bottles... Impossible to walked with all that under the heavy rain and the windy weather... That was the first time that I really thinked about sleeping in the station ! Well, why not, I’m a backpacker, I was a scout... (I've sleeped outside for a week in february for an animation formation... It was my firt camping experience.) few hours in a station should not killed me ! But fortunatly, she arrived around 23:30 on her bike ! (It was a kind of saviour arrival !) She was sorry for me because she was thinking that I had a good time in a bar or something...
Her home wasn’t so far and we almost immediatly got along very well !
She quickly propose me to join the sweet 16th birthday dinner of her young sister the next day ! I was very flattered to be invited only after about a hour of discussion.
After a good night on her couch (It was the storm outside... Windy and rainy has hell) I had the pleasure to cook her a mushroom omelette (she says that she didn’t know how to make it !) after that nice start, she took the time to bring me into very beautiful historic places in Leiden !
The birthday dinner with her family was very nice ! I really liked her mother and her sister because we have a kind of same approach with nature and self-sufficiency !
After this nice afternoon-evening (You have to know that Dutch people in general they dine at 18 :00 ! And for this event we began to drink and eat around 16:30 ! ). We leaved Eva’s family around 20 :45, after a beautifull couscous and about 4 glasses of wine.... I liked also her grand-parents : they where only speak dutch, but when we leaved , I’m pretty sure that her grand-pa proposed me to sleep on their own couch the next time !
On the way we stopped at her boyfriend’s work (a bar). She wanted to spend few hours with him before he turns 26 years old at midnight !
Well... One thing after an other... few glasses later, we moved to the next bar with all Bart’s collegues (who where also Eva’s collegues when she was working there so they knows eachothers as a big family.) where their were live music with open mic.
I have to say that they never let me with an empty glass. Sometimes I even had two glasses of wine... they even offered me bitterbals (fried dutch speciality) because they were quite shocked that I have still not tasted it after 5 years of return trips in The Netherlands. After 2 hours of wine (well a little bit more if you include the dinner), I just wanted to be on the stage... SO WEIRD. I have did not done that since my eighteens ! But it was the perfect moment to get back on the horse ! It was a kind of gift for the drinks they offered me and that really nice night I passed.
I’ve leaved Leiden with my first Netherland’s headache !
Well done guys, and thank you !