the netherlands (nederlandis)

so last Friday the son of my 3rd host family took; Page(american), Harry (Taiwanese), and me to Maastricht, Netherlands.

 so in the Netherlands farm animals are really popular, and they have a great appreciation of them. above is a petting zoo in the center of the town that you could just sit and watch animals play with their fellow animal brethren. below is a mural of a cow's head that someone tiled onto the side of their house. the picture is a bit deceiving but the cow is about 30cm in diameter.

this is the stained glass hall of the university that the host brother goes to. these windows were originally in the attached church but were removed and placed here. when we walked through the hall the sun was just coming up and i got this lovely photo just before the room went rainbow coloured and almost blinded us with its reflections. 

 the art there was also really weird these are little coffee table statues, i some people would call it a conversational piece. the rest of us would say its the real life version of a kindergartner finger painting.

 As most of you may know, biking is very popular in Europe. the photo below is the schools English library bike parking. there is over 300 bikes jammed into that little space and they are stacked on top of each other.

 when we were walking past the bikes, the host brother told us that bike theft was a major problem at the university and that one time he had had his bike stolen only to have the man who stole it from him try to sell it off to him on a street corner.

 the photo above is the red tower. im not exactly sure why its red. i think they just got a good deal on red paint but could only get enough for the one tower. we werent allowed in the church but it looked pretty cool from the out side. the photo below is some kind of government building, im not sure what but the name was like a paragraph long so it must have been important.

 after the tour of the city, the host brother took us for ice cream. i got crockenotella(this is not spelled correctly but its close enough, and puffo. puffo is smurf in dutch and this was more like smurf blood ice cream with little marshmallows shaped like smurfs in it, it also had a nice drizzling of dark blue syrup on top(argo the name smurf blood).

 ah, wooden bicycle...ah hipster...cant breath...ah

 so the above photo is a robotic butterfly. i know what your thinking you cant put a price on something as awesome as a robotic butter fly. well they did...and its five euros.

 the high light of this trip however was getting to go shopping. this is how the one store sold their t-shirts. in a milk cartoon. men dont care what a shirt actually looks like, so why not put it is a awesome milk carton. nothing like getting out of the shower going to the fringe and opening up a nice carton of t-shirt.