Getting on a boat in Englad is one thing. Waking up in another country where they drive on the wrong side of the road and speak Dutch is another. Great experience, except after the night we'd had we did'nt want to be woken two hours before we had to get off at 7 by a women offering us breakfast over the loudspeake in Dutch.
The boat lands in Rotterdam and from there we headed to Laden to meet 'the Dutchies' (3 Dutch blokes Sam and Gaz had met in Oz). Sjef (Chef) and Seibren (See bren) are cool blokes living in this small town based around a series of rivers and highly populated with students who in general don't get along particularly well with everyone else. I fell in love with this town fairly quickly (which has become a bit of a habit) it's got loads of cafe's and almost everyone travels around by bike and travel by boat is fairly common too, very nice relaxed atmosphere with friendly people. but we weren't there for very long, we were off to Masteritch another cool town in the Netherlands, this is where Sjef's folks live.
We're not met all that openly at Sjef's folks house his dad hardly said hello and after we'd had a beer his mum got home and suggested we go out for a while, which we did and we got some tea and some beer into us, then headed back to get showered and changed and were off again. this time with a case of beer, bottle of tequila and some potent dutch spirit that tasted a lot like burning (This was introduced by the 3rd Dutchie Francoia). this made us equipt to play the dutchie's SDDS "Supper Duper Double Ass drinking game", sounds stupid, it's actualy a fun and effective game and I think the name was invented to make english people say Supper Duper Double Ass drinking game. after playing for a while we decided it'd be rude not to challenge a group of people that were playing soccer behind us to a game, so we did and I was Man of the Match and no one can really remember the details but we know we won. Due to SDDS the rest of the night is a fair blur for everyone but we know that amongst other things the following happened, we went to a pub, a club, a kebab restaurant, a koffee shop for joints, mickey spewed in a pint glass, gaz burnt his lip on sambuka, Sjef needed to chuck after the first joint so ran out of the koffee shop clutching his mouth, Francoia stole a bike and Mickey nearly got arested for it, Mez and Sjef were the only ones that picked up, we drank Sje's fave beer (apparently 15% and served in a glass the shape of a wine glass but size of a pint everyone was wasted and had an awsome night.
The next morning we're off around Masteritch having Sjef's guided tour and picking up some awsome food while we were at it. but this was the 9th of June or as Europe new it, "the start of the 2006 world cup" so we were off to Germany to have our slice of world cup action.
