This just keeps getting better!

The fun started on Friday so that's where I'll start...

Lukusz and I had made plans to meet at the Den Haag central station. I thought it would be good to meet there so that I wouldn't get lost trying to find the show. Wellll, we met as planned but that doesn't mean WE didn't get lost! We must have gotten on and off 4 different trams and I swear we walked past the same gas station 3 times! hahaha. Next time I'll be the navigator ;)
The band we were going to see wasn't scheduled to play till late but I thought for sure by the time we got there we would have missed the first band...WRONG. (mental note: everything starts late here!!) My first European squat experience was quite nice! The place had a big room where the bands played, with a drink bar and a snack bar, couches and cute dogs running around. It also had a vegan cafe with a bunch of literature, fliers, boardgames, plenty of people smoking various things and more cute dogs. We got warm beverages and yummy marzipan and hung out there most of the night. All in all my birthday-eve was awesome!! Except that I forgot my camera! :(

Now for Saturday...

I woke up to an awesome birthday breakfast (I've actually decided that I'm gonna try to keep this tradition going). Robbert, Ineke, Morten, Timo, and Caroline presented me with a 40% off train discount card, a bag of dutch licorice, The Book of Peoples of the World (I had mentioned that I had seen it and liked it at the book store, Ineke remembered), and an awesome apple pie home made by Ineke and Timo! Oh! and I can't forget the card that Caroline made for me and the streamers :) Thanks guys!

My plan for Amsterdam- I was going to get there early, sight see and wait for Ty to call me when they got to the venue. Well, after I found an english People Weekly :) he called me but our connection was horrible so I hung up, figuring I would just meet up with him later at the show. Jump to 3 minutes later, I'm walking down a random street and who do I see?...Ty, Josh, and Matt x2! So we walked and walked and walked for a couple hours. Crossed over dozens of canals, almost got hit by trams, cars and bikes, walked past the Ann Frank house, and browsed Albert Heijn.


We had to be back at the show by 6:30 for dinner at "Jo's", the restaurant in the venue. We stole Alkaline Trio's table :), ate a shit load of food and drank juice.

Stampot...Josh is so Dutch!!

We hung out in the Bway Calls backstage room thing through most of the show. The room was shared with the guys from The Tenement Kids from Utrecht. At first they were super quiet and I thought for sure they just hated Americans but by later in the night they totally opened up and we were all talking about everything from The Fest!! (we're great recruiters), Dutch love and weed! After the show we; hung out in Alkaline Trio's SUPER AMAZING tour bus complete with Gray Goose on TAP hahaha (wish I could have gotten a pic for Kenny but that would have been way too super-fanish) and THREE lounges, visited the Red Light district x3 while listening to Matt Skiba's personal stories on that topic. lol.




We ate Oliebollen, Poffertjes, pizza and fallafel :)...and a few of the boys ate some "muffins"...

Happy boys getting ready to be even happier!

And lastly, made "agreements" with Tomas about "forcing" a certain band to play his AMAZING definitely-worth-it festival!! So this is my promised effort...come on boys!!

Anyway, after saying goodbye to the boys and then figuring out that Amsterdam Centraal was randomly closed, taking a bus to the AIRPORT, waiting and waiting, training to Rotterdam, biking home, I finally got to sleep at 7am to wake up at 4, take a shower and get ready for my birthday dinner!!

Sunday...

Sometime last week Robbert and Ineke had told me they wanted to take me out for my birthday. :) They asked me where I would want to go but seeing that everything here is new to me and that I would love to experience any new place, I told them I really didn't have any ideas and that they should choose.
They could have chosen some crazy seafood restaurant or fake mexican food but instead they chose Olivia's, and I couldn't have been more happy...sooo good! I got the yummy veggie lasagna, REALLY good! But it gets better! For desert I had an Orange Chocolate, Cinnamon nut, and Figg cream homemade ice cream trio :) I'm pretty sure there couldn't have been a better birthday dessert!!




And then to make things even better...on Monday these came...

Thanks mom!! :)

So, I'm across an ocean from all of my friends, family and anyone and everyone I've known longer than a month but by some crazy miracle I had an AMAZING birthday weekend, I still can't even believe it.