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Already leaving Belgium, as I have a train for a day trip destination today.

Hallo Koninkrijk der Nederlanden!

The first thing I noticed as soon as we crossed the border is that, at the first train crossing, there were three cars waiting, but also like 15 bikes.

I stop in Maastricht in the early morning, and go for a stroll. Maastricht is quite a pretty town, with its Dutch architecture and their typical paved streets. It was a pleasant walk, but there isn’t that much to see except for the old fortifications along the Meuse river, so I started to look for a spot to eat. And everything was closed, or too expensive. At noon. On a Wednesday. Go figure…

The 50th(!) train of the journey made me cross a good chunk of the country, all the way to Utrecht, my place to crash for the next two nights. I have spent the last 10 nights in a row in different cities (last time I had 2 nights at the same place was in Belfast!), so that rest is much needed and will be greatly appreciated. It’s also a perfect timing for the laundry.

To reach the hostel, I needed to cross a gigantic and ugly commercial center, which was so overcrowded. So that’s where all the Maastricht people where. A huge, chaotic movement of people, going from shops to shops, oblivious to their obediance to some kind of mercantile master of puppets. Not my kinda place.

Later, I was about to keep up on my late blog, but I started chatting with Cirine from France, Marlone from Germany and Tiffany from Brazil. They were talking about getting a drink somewhere, and hell, I really need one today.

It is my birthday after all…

So today I was off-budget. Nice restaurants, I paid for the drinks, and then we went for a bar. But Utrecht is insanely expensive! At 12 € a pint, we didn’t get too drink too much.

Overall it was a really great evening, and much better birthday than I anticipated. It’s only the second time in three weeks that I managed to make contact with people in hostels and go out somewhere, so I’m really glad that happened today of all days.

And here’s last week video: