I do love living in continental Europe. The constant buzz of passionate language; people sitting outside cafés drinking coffees and beers even when it’s freezing mcjeezing; being able to travel so cheaply and easily between a large number of countries without having to change money, change adaptors… Don’t get me wrong, I quite like being from the unique, awkward, isolated islands of the British Isles but this continental Europe lark always makes a welcome change.
This Easter weekend I went on a very last minute trip to the Netherlands, aka Dutchlands. For a mere €40 return, my friend and fellow intern Carole and I travelled from Brussels to Utrecht Centraal – the transport capital of the Netherlands, and the city where I lived in 2007/2008 for my Erasmus year at university. I hadn’t been back to Utrecht since 2009 so I was excited to return and rejog/relive some of my Dutch memories. As was the case in 2009, there wasn’t a social network to be reunited with but I was able to meet up with a couple of Dutch friends and even a friend from Japan who has since moved to Utrecht.
The city had experienced some changes since my last visit. Most drastic of all was the fact that my student accommodation had been knocked down and is currently a building site awaiting the development of a new train station. The university library, which had been under construction when I had been there, is now finished and in delightful working order. The very top of the Dom, where my friend Donna so famously lost her earring in the slatted floorboards, has now been boarded up to avoid such dramatic incidents ever happening again. However, the Dom still stands proudly in the centre of the city. Albert Heijn remains the best supermarket in the world. Dutch guys are still distinctly Dutch because of the long-hair curtain-style thing they’ve got going on…
When we arrived in Utrecht, and I caught my first glimpse of the Dom in real life, I had a sense of being “back home”. Contrastingly, as we arrived back in Brussels last night, I didn’t have that same feeling. I felt like I was returning to that place where I happen to live. It’s early days in Belgium and I have no doubt that that feeling will come, knowing how emotionally attached I get to anything and everything. But there’s not long to make that happen: one month down; only four left to go.
Cat Mac Waffles 
Awww Utrecht! How you feel about Utrecht is how I feel about Edinburgh. Great times. Hope you’re settling in nicely in Brussels!