Holland: Nate Ruess @ Cloud Nine, Utrecht

I have a bit of a déjà vu feeling towards this concert, to be honest. I know it was not the same thing as the one of Fun. I attended three years ago, but the circumstances were pretty similar. Both small concerts had little advertisement, both were in small venues close to main train stations in their respective cities, almost starting at an equal time. Not that I’ve had much experience on concerts so far, but I do prefer these ones. It’s so much more intimate and I think that’s worth a lot more than sold-out concerts for thousands of people. And there’s always a great plus when it comes to these concerts, they are a lot more cheap than the other ones. Not that it matters in some cases but it’s always nice when we can save some money.

It wasn’t exactly the best day to wait in line for a concert because it was quite cloudy and raining for most of the day, but I mean concerts are always worth it. Or at least, some concerts are worth it, others not so much. Since I’ve never been to Utrecht before I thought it would be a good idea to wonder around for a bit, but since the weather wasn’t feeling like helping yesterday, I decided to only go to city close to the opening of the venue’s doors. So the only thing I actually saw of the city was its train station and the venue, which is pretty big – the concert was in the 9th floor (quite the pain in the ass to get there).

This was without a doubt one of the best days I’ve had so far in 2015. It was absolutely amazing. And the concert was… just… perfect. Honestly, I don’t think there are enough words to describe how awesome it was. I’m pretty sure what I’ve already comment on my 2012 Fun. concert applies entirely to this concert, because after all Nate Ruess was their vocalist (well he still is). He’s the soul of any show because he’s amazingly talented. You’d expect that he would sound the same as in his studio songs, but his actual voice manages to be way better. I really have no words to describe it. It’s just one of those experiences than one has to live through to know how it feels. The show was amazing as it always is with him. And honestly he is absolutely adorable and sweet. I’m glad that he’s touring with Emily and Nate again – they were part of Fun.‘s tour band, and I love the four new editions to the band – I’d say three but I’m not sure if the drummer was Will or not (can’t really remember how he looks) [update: yes, it is him indeed]. It was a really amazing night and now all I want is to attend the next few concerts of this tiny tour.

Small venues are really one of the best things ever. Shows in venues like this are always the best because they are way more intimate: there’s fewer people and a lot less confusion. I think we were about 100 people so that was almost like a private concert, even though I wish there were more people there to support the artist, y’know. I got to be in the first row and this time it felt like I was almost on top of the stage. It felt amazing having Nate Ruess sing right in front of me but it was very intimidating too. All in all it was an amazing experience and I do hope I can see him again in the future (let’s just hope I don’t have to wait another three years for another chance like this). Now excuse me while I enter a state of post-concert depression.

I though about taking my DSLR camera with me, since it’s the only one I have, but I was too afraid to break it during the concert or not being allowed in the venue with it, so no camera for me this time. At least, it frees you from any photography duty and allows you to pay a lot more attention to the actual concert. So this time I am only posting photos that I took with my phone (you can find two very short videos on the blog’s Instagram account too). I’m sorry that their quality isn’t that great but it was the best I managed, considering that my phone died several times during the concert.

Holland: One Day @ Apenheul Primate Park

Before the deadline for the first draft of our thesis (which is actually the only draft we need to hand in), me and a group of friends decided to take a day off from the thesis craziness to go to a primate park. So a few days ago we went to the Apenheul Primate Park. This is a zoo located in Apeldoorn, in the Netherlands. This zoo has been open since 1971 and displays now more than 30 different species of primates

It is basically the same as a zoo, except for the part where it is only focused in one single order – primates. And also except for the part where some animals are actually free and allowed to wander around, even in the middle of the public. To be honest, this makes for a much better experience. This park is a big as many city capital zoos, so you can all imagine how many specifies of primates are indeed represented in this park and so much space it has. This was absolutely an amazing experience, especially because I managed to be very close to some of the primates. Unfortunately, none climbed in to my shoulder as they often do. It was amazing to observe orang-utans, bonobos and gorillas and realise how much similar they are to us, or us to them. It couldn’t have been a better physical example of the resemblances shared by two species in the same evolutionary branch.

The park is well-organised and they paid attention to some very important details. For instance, they provide us with monkey proof bags for our belongings – which aren’t more than just normal bags with a sort of lock. Even though some animals are totally free to wander around, there are always people in those places to make sure that they are safe as the public too. The park has all different species of primates, even some species that aren’t present in the wild anymore and whose only examples in Europe are in this specific park. The only thing I found disappointing about this park was the fact that they had no chimps. They are really one of my favourite animals (along with the rest of primates) and I would have loved to have seen some of them.

Let me tell you now that you’re gonna get spammed by dozens of pictures of primates, which are one of the most adorable orders in the world. The first few pictures show the park, while the remaining ones are of the primates. These pictures were edited using the programme “pixelmator“.

These are some of the habitats of the primates. I can imagine how much different they are from the actual habitats, but then I guess is better than anything. There is plenty of room for them to wander around, especially for those of them who have more freedom than others. The park itself provides a wonderful walk through the wild, considering that a good percentage of it is not the zoo, so people can walk freely there.

These are black-capped squirrel monkey and they are one of the most adorable creatures in the world. This is the wrong thing to say but I really wanted to take one home with me. These South American squirrel monkeys are found in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. They are one of the few species that are actually completely free in the zoo. It’s easy for you guys to get one of them to jump into your shoulder. You just need to kneel close to one of them and they’ll generally jump into your shoulders. But we gotta be really careful because they are sneaky and little thieves.

From top to bottom: crowned sifaka, red ruffed lemur and ring-tailed lemur. In a way (because taxonomic classifications are really hard to understand if we’re not in this subject) they all belong to the family of Lemuridae. There is a part of their enclosure which is totally open, so they can also wander around even in the middle of the public. However, I only saw one red ruffed lemur do it – and he actually scared a few kids. And at this point we witnessed a group of ring-tailed lemur chasing a peafowl. It was quite funny to be honest.

And here we have the zoo’s group of bonobos. Along with the common chimpanzee, they are one of our two closest relatives. It was absolutely amazing admiring them and realising how much alike our species are. Unfortunately, they are and endangered species only found in a 500,000 km2 area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Central Africa. The little ones was also one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. The first photo of the bonobos is actually one of my favourites: I’m pretty sure that could have been a photo of one of our common ancestors with the rest of the great apes.

Moving to another species within the family of great apes, I present you guys the group of Bornean orang-utans. As a curiosity, they actually share approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. I wasn’t able to take many good photos of them because of the glass, of the fact that one of the little guys couldn’t stop still for a second and also because there was a lot of people inside that building.

From top to bottom: Javan lutung, western lowland gorilla and ion-tailed macaque. I believe that the best time to see the gorillas is when they are doing one of their shows with them. Apparently, you have the chance to throw apples at them, for feeding let’s be clear. I’m to assume that they have a large enclosure, so it is a bit difficult to see them because they will never always be in the same part of the enclosure as us.

And now moving to the biggest spam you’ll see in this next: Barbary macaques. They are a species of macaque unique for its distribution outside Asia and for its vestigial tail. They are found in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and Morocco and El-Kouf National Park in Libya along with a small population of unknown origin in Gibraltar. They provided me with the best experience in the whole day. Because you may ask… Well because the tiny one (that you can see in images 4 to 8) was really close to have jumped. And I so wish he had done it. In the 8th photo you guys can actually see how close he was to my camera. By all these photos you can see how much in love I was with the little one. He is adorable adorable adorable.

From top to bottom: unknown (I’m sorry but I couldn’t really identify them; I should have taken note of their species name), emperor tamarin, Goeldi’s marmoset and Gray langurs. Emperor tamarins are absolutely cute with their white moustache. At the end of the day, this was an amazing experience and I am so glad I decided to go.

There shall be a concert in 2015!

There is still hope people; there is still hope…

Being in the Netherlands, yet temporarily, made me think from the beginning that this would be a good chance to go to a few concerts. I mean, it’s the Netherlands, it’s Amsterdam, who wouldn’t want to come here right? Well apparently everyone. I had really high hopes that I would be able to see a couple of my favourite bands this year, but soon I realised it wasn’t gonna happen.

For starters, Bastille are now preparing their second album which means no tour at all, at least until September (according to the rumours that’s when they’re gonna release the album). If they do a tour at the end of the year, I won’t be in the Netherlands so it won’t really matter, and god knows if they’ll go to Portugal again.

Then while Imagine Dragons are already on tour and they’ll come to Europe, for some obscure reason it will only be to a few countries. They may do others at the beginning of 2016 but there aren’t many news about that. And I’d thought they would come to the Netherlands for sure, but nope, not at all. Germany? Yes. France? Yes. Belgium? Yes. Denmark? Yes. Netherlands? No. Well, either way, by the time they’ll come to Europe, I won’t be here, so…

And then there’s Walk the Moon, who are also currently on tour, in the States, obviously. Where everyone goes… Damn you guys. Apart from a few concerts in the UK, which unfortunately I could never attend, there’s nothing schedule for Europe. Yet because I do hope they’ll come back.

Well, there was always the chance to go to a few summer festivals, but to be honest, I don’t feel like paying +150€ to just see one band perform. I mean, I’ve done it before and because I deeply regret it now, I know it would be a huge mistake to do it again.

However, exactly one week ago I received such great and amazing news on my email. I’d like to thank my always present curiosity to see what are the e-mails that I have on my junk folder, because that’s when I realised I’d have a chance to go to a concert this year. YEAH!

Long story short: I’m going to Nate Ruess’ concert in Utrecht. I’m really excited and so looking forward to this concert. These little treats for ourselves are the best things in the world, honestly. And I’ve been dying to see him ever since I saw Fun. live back in October 2012. I can’t believe it’s been almost three years now… Time does really fly by. He was probably one of the last artists I ever thought about seeing live again, so I guess things do happen when we least expect them to.

Fun. aren’t over, Nate, Andrew and Jack are just taking a little time off from the band and are currently working on their solo projects. Nate will release his album in June and before that he’s doing a little tour around Europe and the USA, as you can see in the picture. I’ve already listened to two of his new songs (I posted one of them in my last post, you can see it here) and they are amazing, and completely his style.

One of the things that I like about this concert is that it’s gonna be similar to the one of Fun. that I attended in Lisbon. Both venues are super small, which means a more intimate concert. The venue in Utrecht has room for only 400 to 600 people. I guess I’ve had enough of big crowds. Another aspect that I’m really looking forward is the prospectives of having some of the people who performed with Fun. performing now with Nate. I’ll be really happy if Emily and Will join him in this tour.

Holland: One Day @ Amsterdam #2

With my parents over during the Easter break, we decided to go back to Amsterdam. The last time I visited the city was more than a year ago, and I had totally forgotten how chaotic it is with all the tourists it receives everyday. And if tourists didn’t provoke enough chaos already, because they are completely unaware of the bike paths, some companies have decided to implement bike tours around the town. It would be fine if people were actually used to ride a bike in busy towns, but that’s not usually the case. Needless to say, chaos is even bigger now.

This time we didn’t visit museums or anything like that. We mostly decided to just wander around the city, getting to know a little bit about it. We ended up by spending the whole morning in one of the main commercial streets and we found a couple of very interesting shops. I wish we could have some of them back home. And we had the best brunch/lunch ever: a delicious and gorgeous apple pie with cream (you can see a picture of it here).

We decided to visit one of the Protestant churches that there is in Amsterdam. I can’t remember the exact name of the church, but is the one located close to the House of Anne Frank (you can see photos of the church below). I must say it was quite disappointing, if we compare it to Catholic churches. I had never been inside a Protestant church so I didn’t know how much they differed. They are architecturally speaking interesting but they really don’t have the same appeal that Catholic churches have.

And lastly, we wandered around Amsterdam’s chinatown. I was going to say it is small but since I’m never been to any other chinatown, I can’t really say that. All the photos that I present here were edited with the programme “pixelmator”.

Holland: One Day @ Delft

In one of the days that my parents came to visited me in the Netherlands we decided to spend one day in Delft. This is a city and a municipality in the region of South Holland. It is located close to Rotterdam and The Hague. Delft is known for its historic town centre with canals, Delft Blue pottery (Delftware), the Delft University of Technology, painter Johannes Vermeer and scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek, and its association with the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau.

Once again, it was not the best of days because it was still cloudy and rainy. As you can guess this is not exactly the exception, but considering that we’re in Spring already, it feels a bit annoying that the weather hasn’t really improved yet. All these photos were edited using pixelmator.

One of the things that I liked most about this city is that it reminds me a lot of Brugge (in Belgium). I am saying this not only in regard to the buildings themselves (as you can see in these photos), but also in regard to the general layout of the city. However, there is only one Brugge (in my opinion). The architecture of this city is without a doubt its highlight. I must say that this city is even more pretty that Leiden itself, which is already a really pretty city. It felt like Delft had more historical buildings, so to speak. I just felt is was more beautiful.

The only thing disappointing about this city is its churches. Well, this something quite disappoint throughout the whole country actually. Because they are a country of protestants, their churches are not exactly the same as those in Catholic countries; and it’s not like they had a Gothic or a Baroque period. I feel like that their churches are not really worth the visit, unless they are free of charge.

Holland: One Day @ Rotterdam #2

With my parents here for their Easter holiday, it was time to take a break from my thesis and do some traveling. In the next few weeks I will then be posting a couple of posts about the cities I visited (some new around here, others not so much) and with photos that I took too. I will start with Rotterdam, a city that I had previously visited in February (you can see the post I made about it here), and that I decided to show to my parents. It wasn’t the best day in terms of weather. It was cloudy and rainy sometimes, so the photos aren’t at their best level. They were consequently edited with pixelmator.

We started by visiting the new Market Hall (or “Markthal” in Dutch), which is a residential and office building with a market hall underneath – hence its designation. This market hall was opened on the 1st of October by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. This building comprises 288 apartments, a 4600 m2 market space, a 1600 m2 horeca (this is an abbreviation that means hotel/restaurant/café) and 4-storey parking garage. As you can see from the photos of the market (the first ones), the highlight goes to its ceiling which is absolutely beautiful and amazing. It was painted by Arno Coenen. This is a market worth visiting; that’s for sure. It has fruit/vegetables stands, flower stands, cookies/chocolate stands and several restaurants or smaller stands selling food. Everything looks amazing and I am sure they taste even better.

Next to the market we have the famous Rotterdam cube houses (or “Kubuswoningen” in Dutch). They are apparently famous but we just happened to see them because we decided to walk around the market. These houses were created by Piet Blom who decided to tilted the cube of a conventional house 45 degrees, and rested it upon a hexagon-shaped pylon. These houses are located on Overblaak Street, right above the Blaak Subway Station.

Holland: Life in Leiden #4

After being in the Netherlands for about 6 months or so, I haven’t also talked about my experience of living by my own. Because of past experiences, I thought it would be a good idea to share an apartment with another person: it would keep me occupied and I wouldn’t have crazy ideas. However, I quickly realised I never actually needed something like this, and I should have just opted for an individual bedroom (with shared facilities). That was not the only reason why I chose the residence where I am now, though. This is the cheapest one that the university offers and that was the major reason why I chose it. And fortunately, it ended up by being the closest residence to the faculty building, which is something quite awesome.

I seriously love when the northern countries of Europe complain about how bad the southern countries are. Oh well honeys, you seriously need to look at your own belly buttons, and especially at your little precious Netherlands because consumer service here is a JOKE! Honestly, the next time someone says something bad about us southerners, I will punch that person in the face really hard. This being said, I will let you know already that there’s gonna be a lot of complaining in this post…

But beginning with the positive side of all of this: I am saving money. Yeah that’s it. Well, actually is not the only good thing about this residence. One of my friends also lives in this building which means plenty of get-togethers with our group of friends, dinners and movie nights. As I said, the building is only 5-minutes away from the faculty by bike (not so close if we go by feet though). It is located in a residential neighbourhood, which makes it a very quiet place (thank god), close to shops and several parks (but then again, where isn’t a park in this country?). However, it appears that Dutch people consider this as a bad neighbourhood, which made me realise two things about them: first, they really have NO idea of what a true bad neighbourhood is; and second, for such a liberal country, they are FAR more racists than what we could ever thought.

And now for the bad things. I’m going to keep this as short as possible. First, this building has no common area whatsoever, so there’s no chance of getting to know your neighbours or something like that, unless you end up meeting someone at the laundry room – which is another big fat JOKE. So second, we have the worst laundry room ever. It’s not only dirty (which is something that the company that owns the building should take care of), but the machines are also most of the time broken. Are they fixed immediately? Oh hell no. Have a few days passed? Then maybe they are fixed by now. Are we accused of lying when they’re broken? Yes we are. Third, we were left out of hot water three times in just one month. Plus, we’ve had countless problems with our internet connections Fourth, were the apartments clean when we moved in? No, of course not. Did we pay for them to be clean? Yes we did. Did it actually happen? No it did not. Fifth, the shower in the bathroom is the most annoying thing ever. We cannot control the temperature of the water. One minute is warm enough, then it gets super hot, you add a bit of cold water, and BAM, it’s freezing now. And then you have to use as little water pressure as possible or otherwise you will flood the entire bathroom.

DUWO, which is the company that owns this building (and several other residences in the city), has the worst costumer service, EVER. I’m not even exaggerating here. When we have any complaints to do, or any repair requests, we have to do them online. Do we receive answers? No. There’s no kind of reply from them. When we call them, are they nice, helpful? No, hell NO. The worst part of all of this is that everyone complains about their services, and this has been happening for years. I just don’t get how does this company still exist if they have such a bad service. They actually had a review column in their website, but because people were giving their service bad ratings, what did they do to it? They took it down, obviously.

And finally, as for the experience of sharing an apartment… I’m living in a studio, which means that everything is shared. There’s a bathroom separated from the rest, just as the kitchen, but then the living room, dinning room and bedrooms are all together in one room. This means that there’s no kind of privacy, unless you close yourself inside the bathroom. After the first month, I was already tired of this situation and desperately praying to have my own bedroom back. This made me realise that I’m perfect to live by myself, alone, and not actually share an apartment (unless it means having my own bedroom). But then I think that maybe this wouldn’t be that bad if I actually had normal roommates.

I’ve had two different roommates (including the current one) and they were both from South America, which means sunny countries as Portugal. I don’t known if it’s a latina thing, or if both of them are afraid of the dark, but they can’t keep the freaking curtains closed during the night. It’s the most annoying thing, waking up at 5am with the sun rays in my face. It’s awful. I really like to sleep in dark environments, thank you. Then we would think that girls are tidy and clean. NOPE, not at all. Well, at least not these two. I seriously loved when my current roommate commented once that she can’t live in a place where the floor is dusty. Yeah I would get that if it wasn’t for the fact that she always leaves the kitchen and bathroom an entire mess after using them; and let’s not speak about the mess that is her side of the room (papers on the floor, shoes and clothes all over the furniture and floor, etc.). The bright side, it’s only four more months.

I wanted to share some photos just not to leave this post with a gigantic text, and because I had no idea of what to put here, I decided to take photos of tiny details of my part of the apartment.

Holland: One Day @ Amsterdam #1

I have just realised that since I came to the Netherlands, for my Masters, that I haven’t shown you guys any photos from Amsterdam. These photos are however a bit old. They were taken exactly one year ago when I came here for my university’s open day. I did not stay in Amsterdam but I did visit the city in one of the days I spent in the Netherlands. It was not enough, obviously, but one day is better than anything, right?

The city is the same as any other Dutch city, with the exception of being the capital city, which means that it gets tons and tons of tourists daily. What, by the way, is the worse thing that can happen to anyone cycling in the city – honestly, it is the worse city in the Netherlands to cycle, because the tourists (knowingly or not) walk always on the bikes paths. It just makes cycling a lot more tricky than it normally is.

This city is absolutely beautiful; I just wish I had had more time to explore it on that day. Taking one of the canal-trips is absolutely worth it, especially if it’s a sunny day. It’s a perfectly good way to see some of the city’s attractions, and it’s also a really good way of seeing a good bunch of the city, without taking too long to do it.

The only attraction, if we can call it, I saw was the Anne Frank Museum. It occupied our entire morning and lunch period because the queue to enter the museum was huge when we got there (and it wasn’t that late in the morning). So, as a piece of advice, do try to get there as soon as possible, just to avoid being in a queue for a couple of hours. However, any wait is totally worth it. And obviously, we leave the museum with our hearts shattered into million tiny pieces. All the photos below were altered using the program “pixelmator”.

Holland: One Day @ Rotterdam #1

I didn’t have much time to wander around the city, but from what I could see, it seems to be very pretty. The buildings and streets are just like any other Dutch city. I don’t think we will find much differences between Dutch cities, to be honest. Probably the part that I enjoyed more about the city was its underground, but maybe just because I haven’t been in one since the beginning of the year. To be honest, from some stations to others, it actually seemed to go a lot faster than the ones I’ve been in other countries. But I’m pretty sure it’s roughly the same speed everywhere. As I had previously mentioned at the end of last year/beginning of this one, I bought myself a ticked for one of the semi-finals of the ABN-AMRO World Tennis Tournament, which is held everywhere at Rotterdam. This semi-final was played between Gilles Simon and Tomas Berdych. This match was won by the last player, with the following result: 6-2 6-1

As for the tennis match, which was what took me to Rotterdam in the first place, it was bloody amazing. The Ahoy area is pretty fancy, to be honest, which makes me question, how much more fancy are the grand slams then? In respect to the match itself, I now do understand people who actually love those really long matches. This was awfully too quick. It didn’t even lasted for one hour. However, if it was either Rafael Nadal or Maria Sharapova playing, I’d prefer instead a quick match. I was expecting so much more from Gilles Simon considering the fact that he defeated Andy Murray in the previous round. Either way, Tomas Berdych played an amazing match from the very first minute, and he was definitely the best in the court during the whole match.

Watching tennis matches live actually makes you notice an awful lot of details. First, it seems that they have no time at all to rest between points – it seems to be a lot more on TV. Second, I never noticed that the ball kids and the line judges are substituted during the match itself. Third, even if he players scream or shout something, it’s actually not that loud as it seems on TV.

Regarding this specific match, I have one last comment to make. THAT WAS THE WORST UMPIRE I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE! Honestly, it got to a point, very early in the match, when I just wanted to shout – “Sir, you suck!“. First, poor Gilles. His last name is Simon not Simone. Second, don’t shush people; that seems rude. Just say as everyone else does: “silence please“. Third, it’s THIR-TY and FOR-TY, not THIR-TEEN and FOUR-TEEN. Honestly, he did a really made job. And plus, we could hear some of his reactions to the match. Like, man that’s not your job. I’m not saying that he had to have a perfect British accent, but people should be sure that the umpires can actually pronounce the words correctly.

Lastly, about the photographs themselves. I’m sorry that they aren’t of great quality. It was a really crappy day to take photographs, and plus, I still have to learn how to take better photos indoors. I have published a few other photos on the blog’s instagram account (you can check it here). And all these photos were altered using the programme pixelmator.

The view that I had from my seat.

Holland: Life in Leiden #3

After two very general posts about my experience of living in the Netherlands, today I want to get into a more detailed approach. As you may have noticed by now, if there’s something that there’s no lack of is green spaces – smaller or bigger parks, I mean. And we even get the chance to have small farms in the city – not exactly in the city itself, but in the residential areas. So, a bit in-between the place where I live and my faculty’s building, there’s this tinny farm with sheeps, goats, chickens, two donkeys, ducks and a few geese. I only took photos of the goats and donkeys – you can see them below. These kinds of parks are definitely one of my favourite places in the city.

One of the first things people always mention when someone’s moving to a country beyond France is how bad the weather is gonna be. To be totally honest, it hasn’t been that bad. Yeah sure, the first couple of days here, back in August, were horrible; it rained pretty much during the entire day for like two days in a row. But after that I kinda improved. We had a very pleasant September. It was sunny almost everyday and the temperatures were just perfect for late-Summer/early-Autumn. October and November weren’t that bad either, even though we started to have a few more rainy days. It still doesn’t rain much. If it is to rain is never more than about 5mm per day. So far, this past month, what we’ve had more was either really foggy or sunny days. But truth be told, is getting really cold here. Like REALLY cold. Lately, maximum temperatures are around 5/4ºC, minimum temperatures around 1/0ºC; this promises to be a very rough winter, especially considering that I’m used to the weather back in Lisbon, where the lowest minimum temperatures are normally above 10ºC. And now temperatures are normally all below zero, so this is pretty freezing for me. I’m not even sure how I handle being in the street. But honestly I’m really praying for it to snow already, which it doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon.

I don’t think I’ve found many negative aspects about the Netherlands. I mean, I was expecting people to be a bit more practical and organised but we can’t have it all, can we? However, there’s a thing that I kinda hate (okay maybe this is a really strong word): it’s their public transports. Don’t get me wrong, they’re actually perfect. Buses every 15 minutes, trains to hundreds of cities in the Netherlands and surrounding countries, trains to and from Amsterdam during all day, but the prices are quite expensive. They have discounts and free cards for Dutch students for 5 years (if I’m not mistaken), but if you need to use the buses, for example, it gets a bit expensive after a few days. That’s why our best friend is actually a bike. It takes us everywhere and we only pay for it once.

I’m used to big cities and basically just seeing big apartment buildings around me; and supposedly I’d see none here. But that’s not quite the truth. Obviously, most people here live in their own two-story houses (like the ones shown in the photos) but there’s a good amount of big buildings – more than I ever expected actually. I’m not sure what kind of home I’d like to live in the future, with my own family, but I wouldn’t mind living in one of these houses. They’re small but cozy and really beautiful, and I’ve always wanted to have my own back-yard (and front-yard too if it isn’t too much to ask for). But what I really love about these houses is their windows. You should know that Dutch people don’t make a big use of their window curtains – unlike us Portuguese, they gotta take advantage of every minute of natural light that they can get. It’s weird passing by people’s houses and just being able to look inside their homes. It will never stop being weird.