FRIEND OR FOE FRIDAY!!!

           The Dutch are such lovely people!  I’m happy to say that none of the actual Foes featured here were of Dutch decent.  Oh there are some Belgians sprinkled in as well.

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1) FOES!  All three generations pictured here are foes of mine.  Grandmother, mother and daughter were the rude ones of the plane that gave me grief when I wanted to sit in my assigned seat.   Nastiness is in that blood!  I had to wait for them to all fall asleep to snap this picture.

2) FOE!  Here’s the old timer that woke me up in the airport and started swearing at me in German.  We went back and forth with our banter until he got a phone call and I obnoxiously took a couple picture of him.

3) FRIEND!  It’s Sander!  What a great host in the Netherlands!  I had a fun four days with Sander at his family’s apartment on the beaches of Noordwijk.  He’s traveled to over 50 countries in his 25 years so it was really helpful to get some advice from him in regards to Europe.  He was especially good at introducing me to some really good Dutch food and drinks.  The most surprising one was probably the buttered roll with chocolate sprinkles inside.  I had no idea it could taste so good.  Note: There is no nutritional value  in this sandwich so best not to get hooked on it.

4)  FRIEND!  Sander and I traveled down to Belgium to visit his grandfather for the night.  After a lovely meal, the three of us shared a massive chocolate dessert.  It was his grandfather’s first time ordering one sundae with three spoons!  As you can see, he enjoyed it!  

5) FRIEND!  Two gals traveling on their own are bound to be friends!  We found ourselves on a train heading toward Brugge and were eager to help each other out where we could.  She was from Iran but had studied in several European countries over the past 8 years.  She was heading to Ghent for a PhD course- yup, she was a smart cookie.  And really cool too!

6) FRIEND! This woman was great!  She was from Antwerp but had moved to California about 20 years ago.  Her son and she were back in Belgium to check on her sick father.  She was so friendly when I asked her to take a picture of me in the fancy train station.  She had reminded me that this train station was famous for the flash dance performed years earlier.  It was a youtube phenom so we found it only necessary to start our own flash dance as pictured here.

7) FRIEND!  I wasn’t as successful going to the bars in Brugge alone but the bartender and owner was really cool.  He was really nice and taught me the art of scraping the first layer of foam off the top of a Belgian beer to eliminate the CO2 intake.  (Ed)Wardo was super cool.

8) FRIENDS!  This guy was a bartender at Wardo’s bar but had the night off.  As you can guess, he was really drunk and our friendship was brief but I appreciated him befriending me when I was all alone.  His girlfriend and he had just come from a bike/drinking race so they were as messed up as they look in this picture.

9) FRIEND!  My first couchsurfing experience!  I found Hucky’s profile on couchsurfing and was so happy she was able to host me two days while in Brussels.  She had an extra room available for me and went above and beyond when it came to hosting. She worked for the German Embassy in Brussels so she really enjoyed meeting different people and helping them acclimate to a new environment.

10)  FOE!  Yuck, foe.  This woman washed her hands in the sink of the women’s room at the Brussells airport.  Then she took off her stockings and washed those too.  Then she put her feet up to the sink and started washing them in the sink.   Absolutely horrendous.