Some of the best times of my life!

I'm not quite sure why today everything is causing me to remark "It's just like when I lived in Europe", but for some reason that moment of my life is on my mind.  I moved to Vlissingen, the Netherlands my senior year in college in August 2005 with my best friend, Selia.  We were the only 2 Americans who were participating in this particular study abroad program.  It was the greatest adventure.  We spent every weekend traveling Europe, visiting our foreign friends' families in their countries, and living unforgettable moments like Oktoberfest in Munich.  I'll need to write up about each of the travels individually or you would be reading this for hours.  Today though, I have some favorite moments of being in Vlissingen that I want to write to remember.

This experience was so amazing and I couldn't have hoped to spend it with anyone other than Selia!
We had a wonderful time together and got even closer than before! 
This is on the beach right aroud the corner from our house!

1. The Adventure Getting to Vlissingen
Selia and I decided to spend 10 days traveling London and Brussels before heading to Vlissingen where we would attend school.  We had a blast introducing ourselves to life in another land.  We had some exciting run ins with locals who loved us, couldn't stand us, showed us the uniqueness of their area.  We felt jet lag (in fact we slept until about 1 the first day we arrived to London), we ate new food (including Indian food in London that made me extremely sick), and we met new friends in Brussels who we spent the evening with taste testing platters of Belgium beers in the city center.  At the end of our 10 days, we headed to the Netherlands to meet our new friends, find our new school, and move in to our new home with our new roommates.  We arrived at the dock and jumped on a bus to take us to Vlissingen, but somehow missed our stop and ended up in Domsburg, the Netherlands.  Oops!  But it ended up being exciting and very worth it.  We couldn't find a hotel or a place to stay, but luckily a kind local on the street instructed us to go down a road where a bed and breakfast probably had an opening.  It did!  That meant we got to sleep in a tiny room together with a gorgeous windmill right out our window. Just the way you would picture the Netherlands! In the morning, we had breakfast with a German couple who slept in the room next to us and the owner served a delicious spread and mingled with us as well.  We rented bikes and roamed all around the coastal city, stopping to take photos of quaint cottages, beach restaurants, and indulge in the gelato.  We had a blast!  Off to Vlissingen we go. 

The windmill outside our room

2.  The Meet the Study Abroad Students Day/Night
We arrived to Vlissingen and found our campus.  It was a tiny little campus, much like a highschool.  We went through all of our check in, including our house assignment.  We bought bikes because that or walking were the way that most navigated through this small city.  We found our house, which was about 1.5 miles from our school.  We arrived to a 3 story house which had rooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen on each floor, except the top which was more like a large, finished attic.  Our floor had 4 rooms and the attic room shared a kitchen and bathroom with us.



Selia and I in front of our flat

  Selia, me, a Spanish guy named Ricardo, a Chinese girl named Rebecca, and a Polish guy named Michal were who resided on our floor.  We had quite the mix!  My room was HUGE!  Each room had a twin bed in it, mine had a desk and a huge "dining room table".  That's what we ended up using it as most of the time for our family dinners at least.  We excitedly settled in and went back to campus to get some classes set up and meet the others! 

Roomies!  Marina, Selia, me, Michal, Rebecca. 
Marina was our roomie until Ricardo moved in

Our roommate, Ricardo

Immediately, we met a very enthusiastic, chatty Canadian named Michyl.  Selia initially was overwhelmed by her bubbliness and I loved her right away!  In the end, the 3 of us became inseperable and still see eachother at least once a year!  We talked about all the interesting people we met and couldn't wait to get to know them all!  That night the campus had a dinner for us so we could get to know one another.  It was unforgettable!  You take about 50 people from all over the world and put them together and conversation sure is fun!!  Add in dinner, a few drinks, and a dance floor and things get exciting!  We danced the night away with our new Canadian friend, Gencer and Lena who were our new friends from Germany, our Spanish roommate, Ricardo, and many others!  We loved everyone we met!  Whewwww....that was just the first night!

We just met this wonderful crew and now are great friends!  Ricardo, Lise, me, G, Selia, Wade on the beach right by our house.

Study abroad Students dinner

3.  Family Dinner Nights
Definitely a VERY favorite living in Europe.  Our house would take turns cooking meals from our country.  We had some delicious nights!  One that sticks out the most  was when Rebecca, our roommate from China cooked.  She made a very unique spread including sea food with eyes still on them.  Some of it was delicious and some was too much for me! :)  But it was wonderful hearing the ways they cooked, what were their favorites, and really just spending time with the roomies.  This expanded to our close friends and family dinners became get togethers at eachother's houses.  I loved that because it opened the meals up to even more cultures.  Lise and Farid, our friends from France cooked, G made Turkish tea often, and the list goes on and on.  Of course all of our meal gatherings were topped with some delish wine!  It was a favorite past time of ours there.  And why wouldn't it be?  Wine was cheaper then water in Europe!!  Perfect reason to bring on it's deliciousness.  I'll never forget the conversations we shared over such interesting meals. 

Nina, Michyl, Lena, another German girl and I gathered for dinner.  All are Germans but Michyl and I

4.  Sven and Our Beach Dinner Spot
Vlissingen was a beach village.  We could walk to the beach in about 3 minutes.  Selia and I spent several mornings running on the beach to get ourselves going.  It was beautiful because it was such a small town that not many people were ever on the beach.  We arrived in August when we could still take advantage of the perfect weather but even as the winter turned, we found ways to make sure we took in all that beach side living had to offer.  Michyl, Selia, and I often went to a little restaurant across from the water that had quite the European romantic flair called Stefano's.  It helped that the waitor was very dreamy !  :)  We were sure to sit in his section each and every time.  His name was Sven and he had shoulder length thick wavy hair, accompanied by bulging muscles and a thick accent.  Overall, the scenery-both of the water and waitor, food, good wine, and great conversation made this a place that we continued returning to night and night again.  We even took my Mom there when she came to visit- she had to be exposed to Sven! ;)  I have so many wonderful memories there.

Our trusty 3some at our usual beach spot

Dinner at Stefano's with a larger group!  LOVE Nina

Good convo with Lena

5. Cafe-ing
Why is it that food is always one of the toppers of any of my favorite lists?  Yes, I LOVE to eat and try new flavors but I also love the social side of eating.  The 3 of us girls made the word cafeing a verb.  We often went cafeing after school, before a night out, as a shopping break, or during trips where we wanted to take a moment to take in our surroundings.  Cafeing usually meant enjoying a cappuccino together.  OOOOO the Illy coffee that Vlissingen served in coffee bowls basically made my mouth water every time.  Even in the cold winter that we experienced, the coffee could always be had!  It made the perfect break for any situation.  Our city center was pretty small and was made up of store after store.  On the weekends, the flower markets and veggie markets were set up and made it quite a neat setting to sit and cafe.  Because Vlissingen was so small, most people congregated here during their free time.  It was literally a 1 minute walk from our flat.  So, we spent a lot of time at the cafes.  Our other study abroad friends would be passing by and stop and have coffee with us or chat briefly on their way to whatever they were shopping for.  Again, it made it so easy to chat with and get to know all of our fellow foreigners.  Cafeing also though could mean french fries and mayonnaise or a pot of mussels shared.  These were some of the food choices we often indulged in. 

Coffee served in Martini glasses! :)

french fries and mayo---yum!

Roads around our city center

City Center: the bars and restaurants part

City center: the shopping part

When we didn't make it to a cafe, we cafe'd on the benches in the city center :)

6.  Lise's Speech
Many of us were enrolled in a business class with this Professor who was merciless when it came to presentations- and everyone was required to research and present on the subject he gave.  This made the best of speakers shake in their boots.  He was so tough, that he would critique us in front of our whole class, most of the time cutting down every aspect of the research and presenting.  THEN he would ask questions that were so tough that I swear only an EXPERT would be able to answer.  Maybe that was his point, maybe he wanted to see that we had spent grueling hours learning every detail there was to know.  Needless to say, after his critiques and grades, many students found themselves presenting a second time in hopes of raising their grade.  Lise was one of them.  I like her moment specifically because she was so nervous out in front of Hogeschool Zeeland, our college, before her presentation that she asked for wine.  We took her up on it and sat on a bench in the middle of the morning and drank wine with her before her presentation.  :)  We had a blast making her more comfortable by laughing at this crazy Professor and reliving tough words he told each of us.  She did great in her 2nd presentation and her grade sky rocketed!  Pretty cool that is not illegal to do in the Netherlands.  Or is it?

Relaxed yet Lise? 

7.  Halloween- American Style
Halloween was approaching and after asking many of our foreign friends what they were going to be for Halloween, we realized that Europe doesn't do Halloween NEARLY like North America.  We took that as a great opportunity to expose our friends to the holiday in the spookiest, most done up way we could.  We invited allll of the foreigners to our house on Halloween night with the stipulation that they must be dressed up.  :)  We explained to them how most people dress up and told them to just get creative.  It was a blast hearing their questions and ideas about what to dress like.  The 3 of us girls went searching for the largest pumpkin we could find so we could carve out a jack-o-lantern to place in our kitchen for a spooky effect.  We found a pumpkin patch outside the city so our friend who had a car drove us out to load our massive pumpkin.  He actually had to do the honors because of how huge it was.  We had our friend Gencer make a CD with spooky Halloween songs, we mada a witch's brew drink, roasted pumpkin seeds, and hung scary decorations from the stair wells and lined them with flickering candles.  Our friend Sandra, from Spain came over to learn how to carve the pumpkin.  Her and I took on the task and had a great time giggling over the messiness of the project.  She asked if she could wear her "fancy dress" to the party?  The answer of course was YES! :)  Dress up!  When it was party time, we had people arrive in all different home made outfits including bussiness men, a tooth fairy, a gypsy, cowgirl, D&G model and many other creative costumes!  It was such a fun night and everyone had a great time!  The party was so great that the cops showed up to quiet us down and unfortunately, since they had to make a house call, Selia and I had our names taken down in the little black book.  That was our warning! :)

Homemade costumes and with our GINORMOUS pumpkin!

A model?, a cowgirl, a businessman, and a soldier

8.  The Bike Theft
When we arrived to the Netherlands we were informed that the biggest crime here was bike thefts.  We witnessed it happening to people in our classes and knew it was true.  But it hadn't happened to us.....Until....
Selia and I were preparing for one of our dinner party nights that we were hosting, we were having a great time drinking wine and preparing the food.  We realized we needed to run to the grocery store right down the street from us for some of the ingrediants we had forgotten.  This was just a quick bike ride away.   On this day, we set out the same way.   We bought our groceries and began walking back to our flat.  Our dinner party went wonderfully!  The next morning we were headed to school and when I walked downstairs I realized my bike was not there!!  I immediately ran up and told Selia it had been stolen.  She didn't believe it and came down to look, when she realized HERS too was missing!!  We were victims of the most prevalant crime.  We laughed about it and told Everyone how we were bikeless and joked about finding the culprit.  A day went by and we were all still talking about it.  Late in that afternoon, our friend Wade came walking quickly down the street towards us yelling that he had found the bike thief- he had just left the grocery store!  We started running to him and at that moment, it hit me!
Wade began describing the fight he had with the "bike thief" and I was watching my friends' reactions and started rolling with laughter.  I remembered that Selia and I had ridden our bikes to the store to pick up the ingrediants, but being too bogged down, walked home.  WE had parked our bikes there, locked up, and just forgotten that we had done that.  Why we forgot neither of us knows?  But, we found it hilarious that our bikes were safe and sound right where we left it.  We didn't live that down for the longest time, especially because we had made such a big deal about the crime! :)  A moment to remember.

Happily loving on our bikes

Spent many hours with our bikes

Reunited after the "theft"- it feels so good!!

9.  PannekoekenBoot Tour
A group of us decided to take a pancake boat ride that allowed us to eat as many pancakes as we could in the hour long boat ride.  Amongst us, we were having a competition to see who could eat the most.  We had the most wonderful time stuffing ourselves with delicious pancakes while taking in the scene that Rotterdam had to offer.  Shayne, our Canadian friend won the competition!  After our hour of indulgence, we shopped through the larger city and compared finds amongst us.  We took the train home that night and recalled the unique experience. 

The pancakes in all of their glory!

The boat

Lena's boyfriend, Lena, me, Michyl, Selia, G, Shayne

Pancake Champion!  Way to go Shayne!

10.  Biking On Nights Out
What a blast it was biking to friends' houses for parties, bars, dinners, etc.  We rode our bikes everywhere and sometimes that was the greatest part of the night.  We were dressed up, wearing heels, and riding a BIKE with wind destroying our air and coldness giving us quite a red glow from the chill.  One night biking to a bar, we found an old 70's looking van and used that as a great photo opp.  We laughed harder at that then anything in the night.  I will never forget being pulled over on my bike by a police officer.  He told me I had to walk my bike the rest of the way home because I didn't have a front headlight, if he saw me on it, I would receive a ticket.  We had many friends receive biking incident tickets.  It was quite hilarious each and every time it happened! 

These were just some of my very favorites of my time in Vlissingen, but there are many memories that will never be forgotten!!  Thank you Europe for the life long memories!