Finally checking in from abroad... been a fun 5 days & really easy adjustment to Europe since I've been with Werner the whole time. In Belgium, where Werner speaks "the language" (French I think), it's quite convenient to allow him to speak with all the locals. Werner is my crutch in Belgium. In the Netherlands, however, where Dutch is the common language, Werner's as inept as me. That led to a 7-minute back-n-forth between me & a cashier today when I was trying to purchase a Diet Coke. That was my toughest "foreigner" moment so far.

Some other things of note over these last 5 days:

-A shout out goes to Matt (I'm guessing Matt P. even though he didn't specify) for being the first to guess my whereabouts of the "Grand Place in Brussels" a couple days ago. I knew these first few rounds would be easy considering everyone knew where I was starting my trip. I'll make it a challenge eventually. Just warming up.

-The flight to Brussels was the first time in my life that a flight attendant made every announcement in 2 languages.

-Departing the airport in Brussels, it took me all of 10 seconds to stand in an incorrect line due to the language barrier. I was standing in the EU only customs line for about 2 minutes before I realized.

-For some reason I have trouble sleeping on planes lately. I hardly slept at all on the 7 hour flight over, and when realizing that I have flights of roughly 18 hours (Paris to Syndey) & 14 hours (Sydney to San Francisco) left on this trip, I figured out that Ambien (or a stronger drug) will be necessary. Either way I was able to power through Day 1 as Werner & I walked around Brussels for hours. I'm not really disturbed at all by the famous peeing boy statue (Mannekin Pis), but I am beyond disturbed by the copy cat peeing girl statue (Jeanneken Pis). I felt dirty just trying to take a picture of it, but still did of course.

-I gotta say, if beer in the U.S. was both as cheap & as strong as Belgian beer, I may have died years ago. As a matter of fact, I've discovered a whole new meaning to happy hours over the last few days. Alot of happy hours don't begin until 9 or 10 at night, and many have been 2 for 1 drinks of any kind. That probably contributes to my average wake up time being close to 11AM so far.

-Werner's parents' apartment in Brussels is a bit unique (read: quirky). This actual conversation took place when I first got there:

-Ross: "Hey, can I use your bathroom?"

-Werner: "Yep, it's right there. Just don't turn the lights on or else the internet will go out?"

-Ross: "Huh?"

-Werner: "The wiring's all messed up somehow so some of the switches control the wrong things in the place."

(I believe when I finally did need to take a shower & have bathroom lights on, Werner just had to make sure the dish washer wasn't on and he shut all other lights off.)

-By not sleeping on the plane ride over & powering through all of day 1, I was rewarded with 15 hours of uninterrupted sleep on night 1 (OK, can't say uninterrupted considering Werner tells me I basically sleepwalked (sleptwalked?) an hour into my rest). I've never been out cold for that many hours. I took that as a sign that I was fully caught up on sleep for the trip.

-On day 2, I experienced another first of what will likely happen several times on this trip: Werner & I missed the train to Rotterdam by 10 seconds, 12 seconds at most. The whistle was blowing as we were running on to the track. It was pretty disheartening. On the bright side, it provided us with an hour in the train station so Werner was kind enough to teach me how to read the train schedules (easy) & he gave me some basic French lessons (hard).

-I also had first experiences with someone trying to communicate with me in another language with me standing there dumbfounded, and with someone talking to me in English, only me thinking they were speaking a different language so I still stood there dumbfounded.

-It's been easy connecting to the web since I'm staying at an apartment where there's wireless internet connection, but I've been tempted to throw my computer out a window several times whenever Google or another site decides to change into the Dutch language randomly. Imagine a situation where you're trying to bet on american football, but the computer keeps taking you to soccer since your IP address is from Europe.

And now for my "clean for the family" version of yesterday's Amsterdam trip:

-Werner & I had lots of...fun. It was a great place, and everyone was really...nice. I hope to go back some time soon.

-In the span of 30 minutes, we saw a head on, bike-on-bike collision (no injuries), and an ambulance picking a guy up off the street in a stretcher (probable injury).

-Finally, I think I made at least 1 enemy in Amsterdam when I had this interaction with a bartender:

-Werner (pointing at some weird & really slow, bad looking derby race on TV): "What is that?"

-Ross: "That's Europe's version of NASCAR."

-Bartender (in a heavy Dutch-ish accent): "Oh don't make fun of us. You need us much more than we need you right now."

-Ross (doing that uncomfortable, fake laughing...trying to figure out if he's messing with me or not): Well, c'mon, it was funny."

-Bartender slowly walks away while staring me down.

I think that's all the exciting stuff for now. Below are some pictures I've taken over the 5 days. Stay tuned for more.