Utrecht, The Netherlands – 07/04 – 07/05

(Michelle) We heard from somebody in Lubeck B&B hostel in Utrecht was the best hostel ever. We were so curious about this talk up that we had to check it out. Utrecht is a cute town and all, but the B&B was a little bizarre. On the surface, it was all that was described – cheap lodging with free internet and food all day. The clientele was a bit more sketch than we have seen elsewhere though. We came across a guy who slept for at least 30 hours straight and another guy who sat on a computer looking at porn for 3 hours (if you were watching tv, you could easily see what other people were looking at on the computers) and then when he was done looking at porn, he shuffled around the room for another hour afterwards. He left and then came back in about 15 minutes to shuffle around in his tighties a little while longer. It’s enough to raise an eyebrow. We decided to check out a movie (Die Hard 4.0), as we had the time and the Netherlands doesn’t dub the voices over to Dutch like they do in other countries. We experienced our first movie intermission. It was weird though because it cut off the movie right in the middle of an action scene and then it changed to a screen where it said something (in Dutch) that we assumed to say that it was an intermission. I later read that that was common in the Netherlands, but Nadirah and Nathan had never heard of it and when we later went to the movies with them later in Amsterdam, there was no intermission.
While in Utrecht, TJ and I created a new bar game that we called “Slider”. It is a horseshoe like game using coasters and immense wrist skill to try to hang the coaster off the edge of the opposite side of the table without it going over. I’m sure we are not the first to create this game, but if you are looking for a game at a bar where there are none, we recommend it (if you are really curious, we can send you our rules). TJ was mad because it started as his idea, but I beat him at it.
By now, it has become abundantly clear that the Netherlands is the place to have a bike. We have seen lots of people biking in the city regularly in other towns in Europe, but between Utrecht and Amsterdam, I have seen some crazy bike skills like
1. Talking on the phone while riding (extremely common)
2. Dialing a phone number while riding
3. Eating a hamburger wile riding
4. Riding with 3 kids on the bike
This is all as they are dodging tons of people, cars and trams.

(TJ) One of the best things about the movies in Europe is that you can buy beer at the movie theatre. Why has this not caught on at US theatres besides the occasional Brew and View?

I’ll add to the biking list.

5. Text messaging while riding a bike
6. No one wears bike helmets, Helmets are for sissy’s and those who can’t ride.