Tilly's Travels

In reality a nine passenger van isn't built for nine passengers.  You have to consider the 10 grocery bags of road snacks, one backpack per person (plus the high maintenance girl with two bags and an extra large purse), two racks of beer, a bag of wine, case of water, and of course my hot pink neck pillow.  Riding for nearly 10 hours to Amsterdam in this situation was tricky, annoying, and a blast.  We were all near killing one another, but managed to avert any real confrontations.  Our group was composed of seven Edelweiss employees and two Germans - the Germans, Michele (pronounced Mikayla) and Ruben (Alice's boyfriend), were easily one of the funniest parts about the trip. I don't think I've ever laughed so much trying to communicate with anyone.  Lucky for Ruben, Alice speaks great German and was able to relay information, but I'm pretty sure she liked the confusion and would let situations play themselves out until someone asked for help.  One lesson learned from this trip was smaller groups are probably better.  It is almost impossible to coordinate and cater to everyone in the group.  Lack of cell phones also made this difficult and fear of losing anyone was always a problem. 

Our "group leader" was Kyle Tilly.  Kyle would like to open his own travel company sometime in the near future, so we used this to make fun of him the entire trip.  Anything that went wrong, which it did a lot, we would say "Tilly's Travels: we're lost again" and take a picture of the scenario. "Tilly's Travels: Where the F*** is the van?!?" "Tilly's Travels: Where 20 somethings go for a mediocre trip" "Tilly's Travels: I'm glad I wasted my savings on this trip!!" etc. etc. etc.  Needless to say, Kyle was ready to kill us by day two.  Tilly also used broken English and an accent with no known origin whenever speaking to locals or the Germans with us.  At one point Michele was about to pee in a bottle in the back of the van so I yelled up to Kyle "pissin machen!"  (translates into make piss haha my German is real extensive) and he he goes "Michele, I find place!!!".  The birth of the first Tilly Tag....."Tilly's Travels:  I find place".

Amsterdam was not at all what I expected.  It was a very beautiful city and wasn't as dirty as people had lead me to believe.  It is a biking community, so bikes were piled on top of each other everywhere you looked.  Everyone uses this form of transportation and most think of their bikes as expendable.  The bicycles that were worth anything had huge locks on them that look impenetrable and were often located in less open areas.  Our first night in town we explored a little, visited a coffee shop, toured the Heineken brewery, and went on a pub crawl of the Red Light District.  First let me tell you about my coffee shop experience.  Marijuana is legal in Amsterdam and is sold in most coffee shops that feature a little sign that is half green half white, the ones that we saw that didn't usually had a pot leaf with a big x through it.  My group was more than thrilled to be able to smoke guilt and worry free.  I've never had the urge or care to smoke so it was just a really interesting atmosphere to be a part of.  I did try a special brownie though :)  The Red Light District was a completely different world.  I was so surprised at how attractive the prostitutes were.  It was literally alley upon alley filled with windows of beautiful girls with great bodies posing for the tourists walking by. During our pub crawl one of the obnoxious guys tried to take a picture of one of them and the woman ran out of the building screaming in another language and throwing stuff at him.  It was really quite a little adventure! "Tilly's Travels: We almost died!".  The next day we toured Anne Franks house and a sex museum.  The Frank house was such an interesting story and definitely one of my favorite parts of Amsterdam.  Actually seeing the hiding place accompanied with pictures and artifacts from the house put it all into perspective.  The sex museum was.....hilarious.

Bruges was our next stop, a little town in Belgium where everything closes at 6.  We arrived at 5:45. "Tilly's Travels:  I didn't read the guide book!"

On Thursday we commuted to Brussels and parked the van in the smallest parking garage ever. We had only a couple inches of clearance in the parking garage so the boys had to open the sun roof and touch the ceiling every couple seconds to demonstrate to everyone how close it was... "Tilly's Travels: watch your head!".  Brussels is a bit of a blur to me....I'm pretty sure I was beyond exhausted and sluggish from the amount of fast food and car snacks I'd been eating.  The highlights were a little traditional brewery, also the last one left in Brussels, Delirium, a bar that serves over 2,500 different beers, and a flea market where I bought a .20 cent black and white photograph of a little boy wearing a leash.  One of my best finds ever! Delirium is where we celebrated my birthday and it was a really good time.  We would each order different types of beer then let everyone try them.  With the alcohol percentage of most being over 10% we were feeling good within the hour.  "Tilly's Travels: hold my beer!".  One disadvantage was that it wasn't a smoke free bar, we all woke up the next morning with sore throats and achy lungs.  Not having a phone or internet access on my birthday was an adjustment and very overwhelming when I returned to Garmisch.  I felt like I spent an hour just responding to e-mails and messages.  Next year I'll try and be more accessible for my own sake and my Mommas.  I know it's hard on her that I'm not around, especially on important days.  Sorry Mum!

Our plan was to leave Brussels around 5am on Saturday so that we could stop at a nearby army base for Taco Bell.  After a lot of deliberation and discussion we decided to drive through the night and pass up our chance for sub par Mexican food.  This could have been a big mistake, but when my head hit my own pillow at 7am I was so happy to be out of the van and back in the Abrams.
Being back at work today was a struggle.  I like the traveling lifestyle much better.  Like I've said before, any and all donations are welcome!

P.S. Randy, I hope you're satisfied with the latest blog!  I'll try and update more frequently :)