This was the first week that I experienced any large hiccups in travel plans. Originally, I was supposed to be travelling to Paris to meet a friend of mine who was doing an internship in Paris. Every train I had taken prior to this was not reservation compulsory, so I figured I didn't need to pick my train super early. On Thursday, I realized, hey, I should book a train. After looking on the Eurail app, I realized all trains to Paris are Thalys trains and they are ALL reservation compulsory. Sweet. Naturally, all of the seats on these trains were booked. Therefore, after all this prior planning, I had to cancel my trip to Paris...whoops. Luckily, my peeps (Jules, Carter, Gabe, Hailey, and Alana) were going to Brussels, so I went with them.
Brussels was actually way cooler than I expected it to be. It took us a while to find the Airbnb at first. Carter was really struggling with finding the exact address because he doesn't have data, but eventually, we figured it out and all was well. We immediately headed to go eat somewhere, and because we were in Brussels, waffles were obviously a priority. The waffles were kind of amazing. The chocolate sauce that was served with mine was so rich and delicious.
We then decided to go explore for a little bit. There's a big park near a palace sort of building, and due to our extreme sleep-deprivation, we voted to go lay in the park for a little while. This park was beautiful and so incredibly green. There was a little cafe in the park as well, and they served cocktails to-go! What a wonderful concept. A few of us got one, and it was pretty awesome. We found a spot to lay down in the grass, enjoyed our cocktails, took some cute and cheesy pictures in the grass, and then slept for about an hour. It was glorious.
I felt quite refreshed after my nap. French fries were the next thing on the agenda. We found a little place that served them for like 2 euros. The portion size was massive though. I had no idea how many fries I was going to be getting, and I immediately regretted it. I think I ate like maybe one-fifth of them. Good thing is I didn't waste much money though.
We spent the rest of the day just wandering around the city. The Grand Place, which is like the town square, was beautiful. All of the buildings had golden decor on them that shimmered in the sunlight. There were a bunch of alleyways that led out of the Grand Place, so we decided to go venture out and see what there was to see.
We found a Belgian chocolate store that was like literal heaven on Earth. You walked into the store and were just engulfed with the smell of fresh chocolate. They even let us sample some things! Needless to say, we all bought chocolate, and then subsequently returned the next day to buy more chocolate because it was so good. For dinner, we found this cafe along one of the alleys that had really good cocktails and snacks. We hung out there for a while, swapping life stories and getting to know each other better.
The next day, we pretty much wandered around town again all day, buying some cool sweatshirts, eating chocolate, fries and waffles, and enjoying the beautiful weather. Our train back to Bonn was scheduled for about 6 pm, so we headed to the train station with plenty of time to grab food. When we arrived, we noticed that there was a platform listed for our departure, but it had an asterisk, which is never good. Sure enough, our train had been cancelled. I almost lost my mind. It took us a while to figure out how in the world we were going to get home. Initially, we were told we would have to take a train, to a bus, to another train, to get back to Cologne, and then a bus to Bonn, and one last bus home. Sounds fun right? After we got to Liege, where we were supposed to get on the bus, we discovered we could get on a Thalys train, which would be much faster, but the kicker was, we would not have a seat. I sat in the luggage rack for the duration of the train ride. It was quite an experience. We got home though! Sadly, none of us got much sleep though because we had to meet at the train station the next morning at 6:20 am to head to Hanover. I think I got about 4 hours of sleep. It's fine though. I was fine. I wasn't tired at all.
We finally got to Hanover around 11 am with hardly any time to eat lunch, and then we were of to see the axolotls. These little salamanders were actually very cool. They work wonders with limb regeneration and are being used for research. The axolotls always look like they are smiling which makes them super cute. Then we went to the medical school in Hanover to meet with someone from the department of cardiovascular surgery. We spent most of our time talking about LVADs which honestly just kept making me think of Izzy in Grey's Anatomy if we're being honest. It was a cool experience though, especially because we got to actually talk to a patient with an LVAD. He was a reporter who had lived a crazy eventful life travelling the world. It was neat getting to hear him talk about his experience with the device rather than just hearing a medical professional talk to you about it.
The next morning, we were up early to head to Norderney. Admittedly, this is the part of the trip I was most excited for, but also nervous about. Our first day there was one of the best days we have had on the trip so far though. After we arrived, we immediately got bikes and took a bike tour of the island. It was nice to get some physical activity other than walking in for a change, plus it's a really cool way to see the island. I will admit though, my legs were burning by the time we made it back to Haus Detmold. After my legs had a chance to recover, we had free time before our group dinner. Some of the girls and I (Hailey, Jules, Alana, and Emily) grabbed a volleyball and decided to go pass for a little while. Eventually everyone left and it came down to just me and Jules. We decided to pepper for a while, and Jules graciously put up with my disastrously lacking skills for two hours, God bless her. She kicked my butt, but it was so much fun! I honestly couldn't think of a better way to have spent the afternoon. Free time turned into group dinner pretty quickly because time flew, as usual. Henning was the grillmaster that night. He cooked us some brats that were pretty good. We also got to play on the playground before/after dinner, which was actually amazing because playgrounds are awesome. Jules and I established a secret clubhouse in the tunnel on the playground, and as all secret clubhouses do, it had a password. For any of you who were wondering, or who got the password wrong numerous times, the password was tacos ;) Better luck next time.
There was also this zipline on the playgroud that was SO FUN. We started having the guys push us and run with us to see how fast and how high we could go when we got to the end. It was all fun and games until we accidentally almost destroyed Hailey. She flew up over the cable that the zipline hung on, her foot got caught, and she proceeded to tumble to the ground. It was probably one of the funniest and most terrifying things I've ever witnessed. We all hit the ground laughing (and then obviously made sure she was alive) because it was so funny. To finish off the evening, a few crazy nuts decided to go swimming in the North Sea. Needless to say, yours truly did not participate in this adventure.
Wednesday was our highly anticipated spa day at the famous Badehaus. This had been super hyped up by pretty much everyone so I was very excited. This place was basically a huge spa with lots of different salt water baths with water from the North Sea, all of which were varying temperatures and salt concentrations, and then many many saunas and steam baths. We went into every single salt water bath there, including the super hot one that initially feels like your skin is burning off. My personal favorite was the high salinity bath. The salt content was approaching that of the Dead Sea, so you just floated on top of the water, and it was in a cave room, so it was dark, and all you could hear was the sound of rushing water. It was the most relaxing thing I have ever experienced before. I could have taken a nap in there and actually avoided drowning due to the salinity, boom. We then all got to experience the famous mud treatment. This was up on the fire level with the saunas. We were split up into groups of female or male for this adventure, but I'm not going to lie, I was slightly apprehensive about this because I knew we were all gonna have to get naked and that still freaked me out a little bit. After the initial awkwardness, it was totally fine because you were covered in mud so you almost didn't even feel naked...which was weird. My skin felt AMAZING afterwards though. It was as smooth as a baby's bottom, or smoother. Then we went and tried out all the saunas. We started with one of the lower temperature saunas, and eventually worked our way up all the way to the traditional Finnish sauna. I had never been in a sauna before, and honestly, I completely understand why the Europeans do this. It's so oddly relaxing and soothing, even though you sweat buckets the whole time. I do think I would probably prefer the temperature of the traditional German sauna though. The Finnish sauna was pretty freaking hot, not unbearably hot, but super super hot. I'm still glad I got to experience it though. They also had these 5 or 6 meter waterfall showers that were heaven for all of the knots in my neck and shoulders. Besides all of the very adult things at the Badehaus, they also had a family room with a huge slide!! You bet we went down the slide at least five times per person. It may not have been the coolest slide ever, but it was still super fun. All in all, the Badehaus was an incredible experience; 10/10 would recommend. We were free for the rest of the afternoon until our hike through the mud flats, so we (Gabe, Carter, Jules, Hailey, Emily and I) went back to Haus Detmold and played volleyball on the beach. We did 3 on 3 and it was so fun! I could have played beach volleyball all night long, but alas, we could not.
Our last night there, we did our tour of the mud flats, and this was actually way cooler than I expected it to be. The mud was so soft and squishy. Our tour guide was also awesome. She was so knowledgeable and obviously very passionate about the Wattenmeer, and that always makes tours more interesting. We also got to watch the sunset while we were on our tour, and it was a picture perfect sunset with the water and the rolling hills of the island. It was so beautiful.
Jules was going crazy taking all sorts of sunset pictures during the golden hour. When the tour was over, we went back to Haus Detmold and continued to watch the sun set on the beach. We played around in the water a little bit and just hung out and talked. Gabe, Jules and I stayed out there until about 1:30 am, and then Jules and I finally went inside. The crazy part was, there was still sunlight even in the middle of the night. It was like the sun never actually set, which was wild. That never happens in the US. Looking back on it, this was the best day of the trip, and I think it probably will be the best day of the trip for me regardless of what else we do. Norderney is the bomb.
The next morning, I don't think any of us wanted to leave, even though we were heading to Paris. That island was such an awesome adventure, and I feel so blessed to have gotten to experience it. My life long goal from now on will probably be to go back to Norderney. So, I guess you could say I liked it. Thanks for the mems Norderney.
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