In Utrecht

Well after over 20 hours of travel I made it to Utrecht. The trip was long, but on every flight I was in an empty row and that made it very easy to sleep. Philly was uneventful, but Lisbon was a little crazy. The most exciting part was the guy who showed up at my gate wearing at least 10 t-shirts, and 10 pairs of pants. Upon arriving at the gate he proceeded to take off the extra t-shirts, and extra pants and fold them up to put in one of the sweatshirts he was wearing. I guess this was his alternative to packing? I snapped a picture of his folded clothes slyly with the iphone and will put it up sometime.

I arrived in Amsterdam, walked directly to the train station inside the airport, and rode the train to Utrecht. On the train I received help from 2 nice people. The first was a helpful Dutch man I had to ask to make sure I was on the correct train. He assured me that I was on the correct train to Utrecht, and let me know that it was the next stop. He looked a lot like Jack Bauer of the current season of 24 when he dressed up like a German, so I knew it was good information. The next guy I talked to on the train was British. He asked if I saw the football (soccer) game that the US played that day, and since I hadn't he gave me the update. Donavan scored a goal in the 94 minute which allowed the US to win the group.
The most surprising thing about the talk was that he told me he was impressed with the US's soccer team, and said that they totally deserved to win the group even though England was in the group. He enjoyed watching them play "such aggressive attacking football," and thinks they'll go far into the knockout stage now. Let's hope he is right.


Upon arrival in Utrecht Luke and Flick greeted me at the train station and we took the bus to Luke's apartment. Luke and Flick made a great dinner while watching the Australia vs. Serbia soccer game, and I got to meet all of Luke's roommates. After eating we went for a walk along what to me appeared to be a bike path, but Luke and Flick told me it was a borderline road that you could drive on. We saw some old war bunkers, and almost got ran over by a group of dutch bikers, but the walk was very nice. (just the right thing to do after sitting on a plane for the past day!) Today while Luke finishes a paper, I look forward to touring Utrecht with Flick and one of her friends. The adventure has begun, and is going pretty well so far.