Global Tales from Two Young Travelers

Belgium and Holland

By Emily Reisch and Jon Minor

We had an interesting journey from Krakow, Poland, to Antwerp, Belgium. During the long wait at the border between Poland and Germany, our bus driver put in a movie for us to watch. It was an American movie dubbed in Polish. It was not dubbed like we expected though. A single male voice did all of the dubbing, and lucky for us, the English voices could be heard faintly under the dubbed voice so we could enjoy the film.

We were on a tight schedule to arrive in Antwerp where we were to meet up with our friend Esther. Unfortunately, we arrived to Antwerp two and a half hours later than scheduled, but Esther and her father, Hank, were still waiting for us. We only had a short period of time to spend with Esther that day, as she was leaving to do volunteer work with underprivileged kids for a couple of weeks. After relaxing and having dinner with their family, we said goodbye to our friend, and Hank took us into the city. We ended up taking a walking tour of Antwerp, with Hank as our personal tour guide. Because he’d lived and studied there for many years, he was able to give us a lot of insight that we would have otherwise missed.

Antwerp is known as the diamond capital of the world. Not because of production, but because of the volume moved through the city. We figured we had better at least peek into a few of the shops. Who knows – maybe we’d find something nice for the right price.

After loading up on delicious, dark Belgian chocolate, we caught a train to The Hague, the Netherlands, where we would meet our friend Birgit to hang out for a couple of days.

It was really an adjustment for us to jump on a train for an hour and end up in another country. After meeting with Birgit, we took a nice walk along the beach while reminiscing about fun times in Jönköping.

Birgit accompanied us to Amsterdam the next day. We went to the Van Gogh museum and had a picnic in the park. At the end of our day we took a train to Heemskerk to meet our friend Inge and her family.

Our first full day in Heemskerk gave us a good chance to really feel Dutch. We took bikes for a long ride through the dunes to the beach where we swam in the North Sea and played Kubb, a Swedish game involving knocking blocks of wood over.

We had a traditional Dutch meal with Inge and her family before riding bikes to a neighboring village to go to a movie. It took a bit to get used to all the bike riding, but it is much easier than fighting the congested traffic of the highly populated little country.

Our last full day in Amsterdam was marked by a visit to the Anne Frank house. Another highly visited landmark, we were lucky to arrive just as it was opening and beat the crowd. Our visit was markedly different from visiting the concentration camps – suddenly, there was the face of a little girl associated with the suffering of WWII.

We then spent some time absorbing the culture of the bustling city, just walking around, admiring the dark green canals and tall, narrow houses. The architecture is very “old European” and extremely congested. Entire blocks of buildings never see breaks. The city is built into a circle, following the canals.

Inge and her father dropped us off at the airport where we caught a flight to Liverpool, England. The low cost airlines of Europe are a budget travelers dream. Our tickets were only around $50 each.

After landing in Liverpool, we knew the last couple days of our trip would fly by. We took a bus on to Sheffield where we met up with our friends, Rosie and Rob. We spent one night with them before getting on another bus bound for London. We spent several hours at the airport tugging our massive amount of luggage behind us. Fortunately, our flight was on time, and we were on our way back to the United States.

Somewhat exhausted after our seven month journey, it was a relief to be heading home to our friends and family. It was also very difficult to be leaving all of our new friends and experiences. We knew that most things were going to be the same when we arrived home, but we have changed. It was time for us to deal with the reverse culture shock of coming home.