Tuesday Travel Blog: Paris

Posted on May 14, 2013 by visitingmissouri

I’ll start with a mandatory Eiffel tower picture

As you’ve all seen last Friday, miss Missouri came to town. Or, as she would see it, to Europe. Even though the Netherlands has been voted most picturesque country in the whole world* time and time again**, she feels too much contained in the 16,000 square miles that is my home country. So, as Americans do, we went to France (and she went to London while I was in class; I’m really committed). More specifically, we went to Paris. Early morning, we got in the high speed train, only to arrive in Paris three hours later. As we spent half the night not printing our tickets and had a mere four hours of sleep, those three hours were spent sleeping by miss Missouri and her dad (who joined us for the trip), and studying by me (again; commited).

Once we arrived, we went to our hotel in the middle of Indiatown. Nothing French yet. We had seen nobody walking around with the mandatory paper shopping bag including baguette, we had not seen even one part of the Eiffel tower, and every street corner had Bollywood music playing. We checked in at our hotel and started walking. Actually, we didn’t stop walking until we were at the edge of our beds and ready to fall in. The weather was beautiful, and I was thrilled to explore a new city. For some reason, it’s never the bigger moments I remember. For me, Paris wasn’t exploring the Eiffel tower and seeing the sun set over the city. It was sitting at the bank of a river, looking at Japanese tourists in a boat floating by, while having lunch in the shade of a tree. It’s the joy of being in a metro and seeing how daily life in Paris looks the same as in any other city, but with the small differences that make it fun to be part of. It’s walking along huge boulevards that make you imagine what life was in the high days of French grandeur. Climbing stairs that are just a tiny bit too long, but make up for it with the view in the end. It’s the little book stores along the river, that create a different atmosphere (and they know it, too). I was in Paris for only one afternoon and a little bit of evening, but there’s something about walking in a new city that never gets old.

*Not an actual contest
**Not an actual statistic

Reader Appreciation Day

Posted on February 12, 2013 by visitingmissouri

As you may have seen last Friday, I threw a bit of a blog party, calling out three fellow bloggers to join in my happiness. In fact, even those people I didn’t call out were appreciated a lot more than any other day. Some days go by where I really couldn’t care less about my readers. It’s at those days that I refuse to write. Wait, that’s not true. I value the readership on this blog every single day. So why throw a reader appreciation day?

The banner that you can’t read says ‘customer appreciation day (my photo skills are the reason I don’t believe in the idea that a picture can be a thousand words).

Because it’s American, that’s why. The picture above shows a small town in Illinois that my train went through. It announces an upcoming customer appreciation day. I don’t know what they actually did on that day. Probably not aligning cars and trucks, because that’s more of a daily routine job. It’s one of those things that does make you wonder why there’s a special day for that. Like Mother’s Day, it seems just to serve a commercial want. Even worse, somewhere in the back of your head you suddenly feel okay ignoring your mother for the rest of the year. You did bring her breakfast in bed, after all. So, you won’t see me on customer appreciation day. I want to feel special every day.

What do you appreciate?

Travel Tuesday: Gobble Gobble Gobble (Part II)

Posted on November 30, 2012 by visitingmissouri

Because it’s part II, this still counts as Tuesday. For Part I, click on the words ‘Part I‘.

I had seen American tourists before. They are notorious for a lot of things, but when they visit Europe, one thing stands out: they see more of it in a week than most Europeans do in a lifetime. After coming back from Turkey, I realized I was becoming one of them. I had spent 9 days in the country and seen three cities and a major tourist attraction that wasn’t close to any of them. Travelling inTurkey is food for travel tales, though.

Not to be confused with turkey travel food.

When we arrived in Antalya, a city on the Mediterranean sea, the internet guide I printed out told us to take the bus, a luxury coach-style tourist bus operated by the local government. We sat down and waited for the bus to leave. Of course, it didn’t. The driver came in and started a game of charades, making clear the bus wouldn’t leave. He pointed at the municipality bus in front of us while gently pushing us outside. That bus drove away while we were halfway through the door, so he pushed us back in our seats, got his keys and started the bus. The man was going for a bus chase through the streets of a Turkish city. I fastened my seat belt and got my camera ready. This is the stuff good stories are made of (that, or small newspaper messages telling of a tragic accident with an engaged Dutch-American couple driven off a cliff by a crazy driver in pursuit of an early day off work). The bus wouldn’t start, though, so he now pushed us in a taxi cab that drove us to our hotel.

I started humming Paul McCartney songs as a clever reference, but things clearly didn’t work out.

Another story developed when we were heading to the airport. As we were more acquainted with Turkish travelling, we knew what minibus to get and we were well on our way. Nothing could stop us from catching our flight, because this minibus was driving us to the airport. It did. On the highway it slowed down a bit, pulled to the side of the road and dropped us off. We could see the airport through the very well secured fence guarding it. There was no road leading to the airport, but there was a taxi driver across the highway. He ran to us, said he’d take us to the airport and we agreed. I thought he was going to get his cab, but instead he made very clear we had to run with him. He made miss Missouri and I hold hands, which makes a lot of sense, because that’s the one thing that makes you immune for high-speed traffic on a busy highway. Don’t try that at home, kids. When we sat in his cab, the driver hadn’t lost any of his craziness. He kept looking at miss Missouri (who was in the back seat, while all the oncoming traffic was not) and started making hand movements while looking at us that can best be ignored. We made it to the airport. Turkey is a safe country, but much like any other safe country, crossing the highway is still crazy.

Crazy I tell you!

What’s your worst traffic story?

How To Get On An Irish Blacklist

Posted on October 23, 2012 by visitingmissouri

Nothing says safety like putting your tooth paste in a little plastic bag. Apparently, flying is a terrorist’s favorite way to travel, so security on airports are a serious business nowadays. Ironically, of course, those terrorists too cheap to fly are being taken out by flying drones that have no passengers in them, but the planes that still take passengers have to be heavily guarded. As I travel more often than I used to, I’m also getting used to the security lines. I wear flip flops when I travel and pants that don’t necessarily need belts, so I take about four seconds to get through.

Get behind us for a 90-minute delay!

However, one fine morning, miss Missouri and I went on a trip together. She had just finished spending a year abroad, so she had to take two suitcases instead of just one. When we were checking our bags, it turned out that you can be extra suitcases with the company we were flying, but no extra weight. We were kindly asked to get the weight to an appropriate level, so we wore as many clothes as humanly possible and stuffed our personal carry-ons with the heavy stuff. We were nobody’s favorite in the line. I had a ball of cheese (size of a small bowling ball) in my carry on and when I notified the Irish TSA officer, he asked me a few questions. I had heard them tons of times.
‘Are there any fluids in your bag?’
‘Did you pack your bag yourself?’
‘Did anyone ask you to take something of theirs?’
I smiled at him and said ‘No, yes and no.’
He looked in my bag, pulled out a bottle of water and looked really angry. In our stress of repacking, we had lost a bottle and this man was not happy finding it.

I just use these to quench my thirst, but according to TSA, they have an explosive secondary function.

Six weeks later, I flew from Chicago to Dublin, where I’d catch my last flight of the day to Amsterdam. My bags were not as full then and I was absolutely sure I knew everything that was in there. A TSA officer asked me three questions, put my bag in the scanner and then pulled me aside. I recognized him. It was exactly the same guy that had found the water bottle. He opened my bag, pulled out my tooth paste and was just silent. Holding the tooth paste right in front of me, he looked at me and said ‘You were here six weeks ago, weren’t you?’

Travel Tale: Budapest

Posted on October 9, 2012 by visitingmissouri

There might be readers who realize they’re not getting their money’s worth on this blog. After all, in the early days you would get two blog posts a week and some Tuesdays were marked ‘Travel Tuesday’. Then, when it was four months since I had visited Missouri for the last time, it became really hard to think of new things to talk about from quite a distance and I chose quality over quantity. This is technically another Travel Tuesday, but without the promise of another post on Friday. I don’t know why I didn’t just pretended my blog was always like this. I guess I’m just really honest and concerned about my readers.

When miss Missouri and I started dating again, we decided to have a long weekend in Budapest (Hungary) together. As we met in Vienna, Budapest was only two hours or so by train and a nice place to hang out. One of the things we wanted to do, was visit a church together, so Sunday morning came around and we hopped on the urban train to get to church. The international church of Budapest was not in the nicest neighborhood and because I didn’t know exactly where it was, we were at least an hour early. As it was Sunday morning and we didn’t have a real breakfast yet, we decided to find a place to get some coffee.

These pictures of Budapest are homemade, but pretty random. Also, that’s not me in the picture.

Along a big road stood a small cafe. We were happy to find such a place and dove right in. The interior was very similar to a trucker’s cabin and there was a distinctive smell. Two visitors and the lady at the bar greeted us and we ordered coffee. She looked at us, startled, and then grabbed two whiskey glasses. She plugged in the coffee machine and filled it up with water. The two men also present didn’t stop looking at us. They both had a glaze in their eyes that gave away their drink wasn’t tea. One of them had blood coming out a fresh wound on the bridge of his nose. It was awfully quiet. We both drank our coffee as fast as we could and I was ready to leave right away. The weird atmosphere was starting to really freak me out and I figured I’d rather wait for church at the doorstep than in this joint. As miss Missouri finished her coffee, I was about to walk out, only to discover she was ordering another cup. I was more than a little surprised.

That Museum For Kids And Fun Adults

Posted on May 29, 2012 by visitingmissouri

Saint Louis was never on top of my list of places to go visit. If I were to cross the pond, I’d visit New York, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Miami, Boston… Missouri was never in there. Before I went there, miss Missouri would tell me all the stuff one can do in Saint Louis. After the first point, seeing the Cardinals, there was a long pause. It seemed like my gut feeling was right. Turns out, things aren’t all that bad. There’s not a day I spent in Saint Louis without something to do. Escpecially Forest Park seems stuffed with entertainment, one of them being the Science Center.

Energizer Ball Machine. Like that’s even a thing. Picture happily stolen from Wikipedia.

The Science Center is a lot of fun for kids. You can build bridges of giant building blocks, find out how earthquakes work, pretend you’re a dinosaur and get epileptic from the biggest Energizer Ball Machine (official name) you’ll ever see. I still don’t know what it’s good for. When we went there, schools had just started, so miss Missouri and I took the liberty of actually building the bridge, find out how earthquakes work and half of us even pretented to be a dinosaur. The best part of the museum as a whole, was that it’s free. Not just because I like free stuff, but also because for kids, it’s a really fun way to get a grib on the world around them. Amsterdam has a museum just like that, but that one costs E13,50 per person. That’s quite a difference for two museums that are pretty comparible.

What’s the best museum ever?

I’m visiting Missouri again in August. You’re welcome to provide tips in these comments.

Tuesday Travel Blog: Ireland

Posted on March 27, 2012 by visitingmissouri

I’m very sorry, but as none of you have offered sponsoring a long weekend to Missouri (yet), I sometimes need a little time to come up with fresh and new topics. Time to dig up an old themed Tuesday: the travel blog. Last summer, miss Missouri and I decided to from the Netherlands to the US via Ireland. This isn’t that weird, as Aer Lingus has a lay-over at Dublin and reasonable prices to the States. We just extended the lay-over for a few days.

Summer in Holland had been rainy and miserable, quite frankly. It’s March now, and I’ve had better weather this week than I’ve seen all July. In that perspective, Ireland wasn’t the best getaway. The skies were gray, it was raining about half of the time and even when it was sunny, you still had to wear a sweatshirt. The vacation itself was lovely, but aside from the cuteness that has no place in this blog, Ireland wasn’t all that great. Yes, I said that. We took a tour around the country, starting in Dublin, taking the train to Cork and from there took a bus tour. The bus drove us to the Cliffs of Moher (impressive), one castle ruin (well, it’s a castle ruin), one stronghold that was not a ruin (yet) and quite some public bathrooms. Seeing the Cliffs of Moher was by far the most impressive part. The one thing that keeps coming to mind however, is how Ireland is painted in two colors: green and grey. Green grass, covered in grey stones and finished with a touch of grey sky. I also liked walking around in Cork and Dublin, but neither came close to my favorite cities.

This is actually the Cliffs of Moher AND a castle ruin. I like to spoil my blog readers.

See? Green and grey.

To be fair, before you think you should burn all your plans of going to Ireland, we didn’t get to see Galway (supposedly the most beautiful city) and as it felt like a lay-over, I had Missouri on my mind.

Are you glad I waited with this one until St. Patrick’s Day was over?

What country do you want to visit some day?

Tuesday Travel Blog: Visiting California

Posted on February 14, 2012 by visitingmissouri

When I came to visit Missouri, I first went to California. That may sound like a detour (granted, it is), but Missouri really is the closest I ever get to the family that’s living there. Also, it helped me ease into the US of A, as California is very, very normal. Wait, that last part is not true. Watching my cousin performing excellent in a play, I was being stalked by two iguanas, that belonged to the woman sitting next to me. Also, the iguanas might have been wearing princess accesoires. I have seen more differences between the Midwest and California, besides the weather.

First of all, the amount of Toyota Priuses is a lot bigger on the west coast than in the Midwest. You may think I’m stating the obvious, but there’s really a different type of car around. I am told half of all cars in Missouri is the size of a pick-up truck and although I never counted any, I cannot help but see it could be true. California has big cars and pick-up trucks alright, but the overall feel of the highway is pretty different. I wasn’t around for long enough to get a full impression of the people there, but there absolutely is a vibe around California that Missouri doesn’t have. One of the reasons the tagline of this blog names Missouri as the ‘real America’, is that I never got that feeling in California. It just isn’t. It did have awesome weather though, unlike Missouri. I’ll be back one day, but Missouri is on top of the list.

Have you ever imagined dressing up an iguana as a princess?

What do you think are the odds of such a iguana turning into a princess as soon as I kiss it?

Having Visited Missouri, I’ll be back!

Posted on February 7, 2012 by visitingmissouri

Remember last time I was mid-air, wrote you a blog post and scheduled it in February? Yeah, that was fun (wait, no). Well, surprise! I’m mid-air right now heading back from Saint Louis, Missouri to Leiden, The Netherlands. I’ll be talking about my arrival and the culture shock on Friday probably, just like I did last time. While visiting Missouri, I have prepared a lot of exciting things to do and show for the coming months, one of them will be introduced in a bit. As I was the only one liking my monthly recaps, I have decided to replace them for a video blog once a while. Hope you’re as excited as I am. At least you’ll get to hear my funny accent.

It’s weird to go back. I have tried to take a lot more pictures than I did last summer, I’ll try to capture my adventures in my coming blog posts, but I cannot describe in either of them the feeling I get when I’m driving on the highway and a semi-truck passes me, painted in all kinds of colors. The way Walmart feels at midnight if you’re used to grocery shops that close at 9pm. How people wonder whether my shoes are comfortable, because all they normally wear is white tennis shoes. The fact that you cannot drive for five minutes or more without seeing an American flag SOMEWHERE. Billboards that scream political messages that make you feel utterly uncomfortable. Signs telling you to leave your gun in the car. How Starbucks employees cannot pronounce my first name right, but keep trying. How people here want to hear from you, even if they see you for just for a few minutes. I’d suggest trying all the differences for yourself. Send me an email when you’re coming over and I’ll show you around. Until August, I’ll be happily blogging along. See you on Friday, folks!

Help me schedule next August: what should I be doing?

Also, I have taken the bold step of creating a Facebook page. You can express your likes by channeling them into the button on your right. Please.

Because Missouri Has Small Towns Too

Posted on January 27, 2012 by visitingmissouri

If you have read my blog more than once, you might have noticed how ‘visiting Missouri’ does not mean I drive through the whole state. For those of you who are celebrity spotters, when I am visiting Missouri, I will most likely be around Saint Louis. I do know, however, that rural Missouri has its own perks. Every time I get out of the city and off the highway, I notice myself take picture after picture, because the Missouri landscape is plain beautiful once you get off that highway. One of the smaller towns I visited, was Hermann. In many ways, it was different from what I’m used to.

Market Street, aka Main Street

First of all, the size of the town was different (as is often the case when talking about ‘smaller towns’). Highway 19 changes into main street (Market street, in this case) and is crossed by 1st to 12th street. What I quickly learned, is that a smaller town comes with even more pick-up trucks than a normal Missouri highway. Which is quite an accomplishment. The people had more beards, less sense of fashion and were overall nice. Sometimes exhaustingly chatty, but always nice. I had lunch in a Saucage House that, in line with the German heritage of the town, made and sold Bratwursts. Also, if you shot a deer but weren’t man enough to skin it, they did that too. The lady who owned the place showed us around, having us taste every single type of Bratwurst they sold. There was one type introduced with the words: ‘It tastes like pepperoni pizza, without the crust.’ Those who know me (or even met me once) will recognize that’s a phrase that will want me to marry you.

2nd Street. Now multiply by 12 and there's all of Hermann.

The small town was fun to walk around in, although there wasn’t really much to do besides the wineries. Getting a feel of the realer Missouri was pretty special, and although I cannot imagine myself living in a town that is half trailerpark (we weren’t sure, but I don’t want to live in a house where people are guessing whether it’s a trailer or not) and half bad roads. There is a unique feel to those towns and it is lots of fun to stroll their streets.

Now that's a cute place to live. Or, you know, somewhere else.

What’s the biggest stereotype I could’ve thrown in there?

What kind of town do you live in?

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Visiting Missouri: A Dutchman's view on the Real America

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