Nederland - Vrijdag (Friday)

Well, I am safely back from the Netherlands and I'm taking a bit of a computer break. Going without a computer/internet access for days feels a bit odd! Thought I'd start writing about my little trip to the Netherlands a little bit at a time. But to give you a brief summary - I got to see lots of people that I haven't seen for 4 years and it was lurvely and Delft is still a great place!

I flew from Edinburgh to Amsterdam on Friday morning. This was the day after all the explosions in London, so there were some extra security announcements at the Edinburgh Airport that you make you feel a bit 'odd' about it all. Nevertheless, I had an uneventful trip. We were 20 minutes late departing, but our pilot sped along and we ended up landing about 10 minutes early!

I got a stamp in my passport, no questions asked, and I was on my way to find Cindy in Schiphol airport - we had arranged to meet near the car rental shop inside the airport, which turned out to be an easy place to meet someone.

From Schiphol we went directly to Delft to meet up with my friend Yana...I bought my tickets in Dutch - so apparently I still remembered enough to function there. I was very proud because the ticket lady answered me in Dutch - and that is always a sign that you are being understood and that you've convinced them that you can speak the language. Understanding the reponse was actually more difficult. :)

We had to switch trains in Den Haag (The Hague), which meant I had to really rack my brains to remember all the details about the Dutch train system. It slowly started coming back to me, little by little. Getting off at the Delft train station felt really familiar, but slightly strange at the same time - you see all these little details that you had forgotten and you wonder if they had always been there.

Cindy and I were to meet my friend Yana at her office at the university, so Cindy got a mini-tour of Delft as we made our way to Yana's building (I still remembered a bit of a short cut). Yana greeted us out in the hall (it was hard to mistake two loud english-speaking voices) then took us on a tour of the TU Delft botanical gardens (wherein Yana picked some leaves off the trees for dinner...) and her office building. We also went out for ice cream (to the delight of a certain cousin of mine! ;) ).

Shortly thereafter, Yana's boyfriend (who is Dutch - Yana is Ukrainian) picked us up with his car and took us back to their place where they proceeded to make a very nice meal for us. The rest of the evening was spent talking and convincing Yana to give us a bit of concert on the piano. I was also allowed to bang away on the keys for a moment - though I really have to learn more than the first line of O Canada. It gets old after the first few times you play it! ;)

Anywho, I will write about the following days in the near future...