City Life in Holland...

The city of Groningen was pretty cool and definitely a good time. It was similar to Copenhagen in the sense that you could walk around it and not get lost. We arrived on Monday afternoon, but all kinda crashed Monday night cause we were tired from all the travelling. Tuesday night we decided was the night we were going to go out. Unfortunately though, Tuesday night in Groningen is the one night basically noone goes out. Bridget and I ended up wandering around trying to find someplace, anyplace that was "hopping" and ended up at McDonalds. Did you know they ahve Rolo McFlurry's here in Europe. They are SO good and the US needs to get them and start selling them. I think i might have to write a letter to McDonalds when I get home and tell them about it...seriously, they are that worth it. Anyways, so yeah we ended up at McDonalds with about 10 other guys who were obviously speaking Dutch. Sometimes when you are around another language for so long you wanna be able to speak another language, any language as long as it isn't your mother-tongue. So, Bridget and I decided we would pretend we talked Danish. However, the languages are similiar enough that I think the guys might have just thought we were stupid... which is fine, we were just having fun haha. Anyhow after mcdonald's we found ourselves at this one bar where there were about 30 guys and only our American Girls. It might have been somehting like a frat group or something, or a gay bar... either way it was good time for us. The guy were soo funny-loved to dance and chat and dance some more. They would compete with each other and bust out these crazy moves, it was so funny. One of the guys randomly lifted me in the air and was swinging me around, seriously i thought i was going to hit the ceiling.... it was a cue to move on haha. We headed down the block to this other bar that supposively was a pretty good dance club. When we walked in everyone was gathered around the bar and noone was on the dance floor. So there Bridget and I go, sober, out into the middle of this dancefloor and start dancing. everyone was looking at us and some of the girls at the bar were mocking us and our dance moves. We figured.. if worse came to worse and someone came up to us... we could just pretend to be completely drunk that way if we were dancing bad we wouldnt be looking too much like fools, but we figured we just stay tehre and keep dancing. afterall they were playing almost ALL american songs. After about 40 minutes of us up there dancing all alone in the middle of the bar, the rest of our girls showed up, which of course got more people out on the dance floor. That night, that Tuesday night will go down in history as the night Bridget and Melissa "got the party started" in Groningen! --On our way home we met these two Dutch guys who wanted to bring us back for Toastes (apparently later I found out Toastes usually have grass in them, so its a good thing we didnt go back with them haha- I guess sometimes they do, not always, but anyhow...) They came back to the hotel with us and sat in the lobby trying to teach us some Dutch words. Unfortunately, we had a 3 hour lecture the next morning and I wanted to get at least close to 4 hours of sleep beforehand, so i crashed pretty quickly. We were going to meet them the next day for lunch on our free time, but they ended up having work, so that was that. It was cool to talk with them though and correct some of the pre-conceived beliefs they had about Americans as well as learning more abotu Holland and Europe.

Iamsterdam~ Amsterdam was a bit different. Tallot (our teacher) warned us that Amsterdam was VERY easy to get lost in. We were given a map (that just cut off our hotel, so it wasn't very much help at all). Of course within 20 minutes we had completely turned ourselves around and couldn't find the restaurant we were supposed to meet the rest of the group in. Seriously, Amsterdam is very confusing. Every corner you turn looks exactly like the previous one you came from and tehre are little harbors everywhere. The maps don't even help much because the street names change so much. What a different city then Copenhagen this is. It's funny in a way and interesting how different cities are from each other all of europe, makes me want to see the different cities in the US more now too. But yeah, point made... very confusing. Thursday night Hanna took a train to see me. It was so good to have a familiar face around for once. I was so drained by that point from being around all girls for the whole week that I had really needed to get away from them. The two of us met up with the teachers in my program and one of the teachers in the EUP Program and had a couple drinks at one of the Irish Pubs, then we headed off on our own. We ended up staying in one bar all night, which was fine I am not usually a big drinker anyways. It was a good choice bar cause we just played pool all night. We challenged a couple guys who were from England and beat them the majority of the time(i think), then we played with two other Dutch guys for the rest of the night(my team won though i hear... don't ask how, cause i have no idea). Did you know in most places in Europe you have to pay to use the toilet? Yea, crazy I hate the idea. As far as I'm concerned... and I tried explaining it to the toilet monitor guy who really hated me at that bar... you can either charge me to put drinks in my stomach or charge me to let the drinks out, but definitely not both. Needless to say, the guy really didn't like me cause I kept coming back without money and still using the toilet. haha ooppps! Late that night we walked down the redlight district but it was after 3am so nothing was really going on, so we went again the next day.

The Redlight district- Such a different culture than in the US. I didn't know if i should feel sorry for the girls in the windows, or if they enjoyed it. I know, they do take it very seriously, for them it is a buisness, but in a way I wanted to just go and talk with one of them. I was kinda interested in how exactly the whole thing works, if they get all the money or have to put some of it down for the people who own the window, etc...

The Anne Frank House.... it was pretty empty and built really into a museum type atmosphere, but something I am glad I made it to see. It is hard to think that she once hid there during such a scary time in history and to think that the streets we walked down were the same streets the Nazi's walked down. It makes you think a lot about history. Reading about things are one thing, walking the paths that history took place on are another...