surfing in benelux

Couchsurfing, that is! Indeed, much to the surprise of my fellow RISE interns, I did couchsurf with my mom. The trick to making everything work (relatively) well was choosing hosts who were compatible with us... most surfers are young, like to party, etc. so I looked for hosts who said that they don't want surfers who stay up late and drink too much and stuff.

Actually, our first host was Selin, in Nurnberg. She was super chill, and we arrived pretty late to her flat. Selin is half Turkish, half German and works as a law consultant (or something), and is in her early/mid thirties. Oh, and she has a 19 year old boyfriend. Yes, it was a bit odd. My mom was convinced at first that he was her son! Of course neither of us really asked what their relationship was, and later when she was showing us around the flat she mentioned that one of the rooms was where "we sleep." Anyways, we hung out for awhile and later I watched part of a Lost episode with them (I believe the finale of season 4).

Sooo, our hosts in Amsterdam were Jan and Renske. They were nice enough to pick us up in their boat. We met in front of the Nemo museum, and we went around the canals before "parking" and then walking to their place. That night they took us to a local Indian restaurant, and the next night they took us to an Indonesian restaurant in town. Again, they were super chill and we had a great stay with them.






Next up: Brussels. We stayed the first night with Melson and Els (they're actually Dutch) who have a 3-month old daughter, Mia. They were really nice and had so many interests... Els is getting an herbologist license and is learning how to make cheese and has started a garden in their backyard. Her day job is teaching Dutch but I think she speaks like 5 languages. Melson has been looking into peak oil, and various childrearing and development techniques. They recently decided to stop taking flights, and their preferred method of travel is hitchhiking, which is pretty awesome. And it goes without saying that they always buy bio (which means organic), and they always buy used clothing.

They could only host us for 1 night because their parents were coming for the weekend, so the second night in Brussels we stayed with Claire, a 40-something woman who works for the European Council (Brussels is "Europe's capital" and most of the EU is located there). Claire was really nice as well, and she recently fell in love, with Africa! I love seeing her face light up when she talks about Africa, or when she was listening to the African songs.