I woke this fine morn to realize that my month of being an "I'm going to kick caffeine" monstrosity had been for naught. I should mention, in my correspondence with my Dutch supervising teacher, I had been warned that I might want to kick my caffeine habit because the coffee at Marnix wasn't very good. So, given that my crippling addiction had gotten a little out of hand, I spent Christmas break as a complete terror, irritable with caffeine withdrawals. The headaches stopped soon after Christmas, and I was proud to say I no longer needed coffee to start the day. Well, in the wake of jet lag, I tried the so called "garbage coffee" at school and quickly discovered that I've been drinking "garbage coffee" all of college. Unrefined American taste buds for the win, again. It probably goes without saying that it was a slippery slope from there...
So, back to the present, it didn't take long to realize that the splitting headache I had throbbing behind my right eye was just a side effect of my weekend caffeine come down. Luckily I didn't have to push through the pain very long. Walking around with a pocket full of US dollars hasn't been doing me a great deal of good - who would've guessed?? So this morning I made the trek to Arnhem, the closest train station with a currency exchange. I spent the majority of my bus ride eavesdropping on a pair speaking in English, the girl was Dutch but I believe the boy was a Scot or Brit. I debated the whole time whether or not I should say something, but felt awkward and decided they were probably on a date. As much as I love playing "the blocker - third wheel extraordinaire" I decided to let them be. When I arrived at the station it was still a little early to go do my transaction, but I did happen to find an old friend of mine: Starbucks. I popped in, made a fool of myself trying to use my chip card and flusteredly (yep, I did just make that word up. It seemed most appropriate), used cash instead, and sat down to enjoy my grande latte and muffin. My plan was to people watch until, of all the tables that were open, the oddest couple dropped into the table next to mine (conveniently blocking the window). She was small, black and fairly cute. He was tall, dressed like a Roswell-ian hoodrat, had more hair on his neck than I have ever seen on a young-ish man, and seemed to have trouble with opening his eyes all the way. Needless to say I was very perplexed at the match. I did some (probably not so) sly people watching until they started being really PDA canoodle-y. Like, really? It's Sunday morning. Enough of that nonsense. So I focused my attention on the copy of Stormbreaker downloaded to my phone as I nursed my soup bowl sized coffee. Turns out, in Europe, a grande size coffee actually means grande sized, not just "barely bigger than small".
After I watched my new friend, Hairy, spit something into the dregs of his coffee and I had finished off my own, I walked down to the currency exchange where I had, in my infinite wisdom and understanding of the Dutch language, accidentally reserved 160 US dollars for myself instead of 160 dollars worth of euros. whoops. But the lady behind the desk was very understanding and we got it straightened out, no harm, no foul.
After that little adventure, I headed back to Renkum. My host family had offered to take me to Doorwerth Castle so we all piled in the car and wove through neighborhoods and farmland until a large castle lay before us. wowzers. I can't recount many of the details concerning the history of this structure because the tour was in Dutch, but I can say that it was a piece of history far older than anything America has to offer. We explored room to room, stopping to watch the actors dressed up in traditional Middle Age garb and try on some knights armor for ourselves. Once we had covered the castle's interior, we meandered a little around the castle grounds and took in the vast amount of greenery surrounding the grounds.
 |
| Doorwerth Castle |
 |
| In front of the castle |
 |
| Janne and I get ready for a joust |
No comments:
Post a Comment