Bad smell

It was a sunny Saturday two weeks ago. In a polder close to Delft.

Official activity was 'boerengolfen' (= farmer golfing), with some studymates. 'Side'-activities were closely related to mud, ditches, fighting, stinky water, sun, beer and hugging some black and white ladies.

Later that day, my teammates from football didn't want me in their car, because the smell hanging around me...

"Ik ben vandaag zo vrolijk, zo vrolijk, zo vrolijk. Ik ben behoorlijk vrolijk, zo vrolijk was ik nooit."

Saturday night I realised I should've been grumpy. At leást grumpy.
But I wasn't. Not at all, actually. Not a single cell in my body.

That morning, when I was trying to leave for a football match, I realised my bike had been stolen during the night...

- I will miss you, my loyal and brave little golden bike, with the old pink peeking through the paint. Thank you for serving me all those years, appreciate it very much. I do hope your new owner will be good for you-

Anyway, it's a complete mistery. Which human being, with brains, would want to have my bike?? It was a complete wreck, a rusty disaster on two wheels. Lately, when I was using my bike, people started to turn their heads. And I think you can say residents of any Dutch city are used to quite something, talking about bikes...
To make things worse, we, at that time, number 1 of the competition, needlessly lost 3-1 from the number two... But I was still happy when the game was over. The trick's probably that sunny fall weather. Or that double lp full of music of Herman van Veen I bought last week, for one euro.

Ooohhh. That sunny fall weather. Persistent for almost two weeks now. It made me bike to, plus through, The Hague, and on through the dunes, to Leiden, yesterday. Crispy leafs crunching under my tires.
Hé, kleine meid op je kinderfiets...

The only thing. Loads and lots, lots (!) of people. At some points they scared me in some way.
It made me long for Canada, where I would have my own forest ; )
Do not get me wrong, I enjoyed being where I was, extremely hard. It's just, some moments the people in this world, myself included, are dissapointing.

Mhmm. Looks like a kind of depressed end of this post. But I'm not, I asure you:
Vandaag ben ik zo vrolijk. Zo vrolijk. Zo vrolijk. Ik ben behoorlijk vrolijk, zo vrolijk was ik nooit! Ik was wel vaker vrolijk, heel vrolijk, heel vrolijk, maar zo behoorlijk vrolijk, was ik tot nog toe nooit.

Question for the reader...

What is the best thing you éver did?

Dutch adventure

Last night, around midnight, I jumped into a train in Breda, the signs told me it would soon set off towards Rotterdam. The train left earlier than it was supposed to and when it did the thought 'maybe something is wrong' popped into my mind. But the thing was moving anyway, and I ended up in Roosendaal, at the Belgium border, hearing that the first train to Rotterdam was leaving around 6 am. What a joke.
Some nice guy from the railway allowed me to sleep in an empty train (which was illegal as he told me and if somebody caught me or kicked me out, I never met him). He advised my to move to first class and he came back to bring me a cup of hot chocolate. It was fun to have my private train, but it felt like sleeping/dozing in public and the benches were small. The train was leaving at 5.20, which made me move back up my feet to second class again. I stood at my frontdoor when the clocks struck seven.

Mhmm. Hot chocolate. The only thing that could've improved it, was making it a large one, from Tim Hortons. Extra sugar.