We have a large collection of songs from all genres that we would love to sing at your wedding. We can also learn your favorite songs for your special night!

So, I’m sitting here in our little cottage in Finny, overlooking some stunning Irish hillsides and listening to sheep and cows bleeting and mooing in the distance. It’s a typical day at the Madlaw residence. We stayed up until 4 am carving a pumpkin to use as a prop in an upcoming music venture, watching The Woman in Black, or at least the last 45 minutes of it as we didn’t realize it was showing on TV until we’d missed most of it, and then of course spent the rest of the night watching 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown, my new favourite late night raunchy, hilarious tv game show. So, after pushing away worries about my missing cat back home in Texas and assuring myself for the umpteenth time that our cabin isn’t haunted, merely infested with spiders, Chris read me Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince until I fell asleep.

I awoke with a start this morning at 11:30 pulling off my Adventure Time themed sleeping mask confused, as usual to where the hell I am. This has become a bit of a routine for me since we left Holland. Somehow my body still is confused as to how it’s possible that we haven’t been home in 4 months and continues to wake up completely surprised every time at my current surroundings. You’re in Ireland. In a little cottage surrounded by beautiful hills and stifling silence with brief interludes of intense cow and sheep noises. So yeah, after cooking some amazing homesick reducing breakfast tacos (Thanks to an amazing care package received from my best friend Melissa), today, like most days here at the cottage is consumed with pracicing music, working on editing projects, me cleaning and taking a bath (Because I’m freezing pretty much constantly). But I can’t really complain about the cold because according to the locals, this is the best weather they’ve had all year. They keep referring to it as “summer”, as in, “Looks like it’s still summer out, eh? I could certainly be getting used to this type o weather”.

We live in a teensy town, so small that to say there were more sheep than people would be a severe understatement. It pretty much consists of a church, a tea house that seems to never be open, and a store called “Duffy’s” next door to our cottage that is dutifully open every day from 9 to 3 and surprisingly sells gas from the tiniest little vintage gas pump in the parking lot across the street.

To get groceries we have to drive about 15 minutes into the town on Clonbur which is huge when compared to Finny, but in reality only takes up about 2 city blocks. But somehow still houses 3 pubs! Chris and I rate the pubs based on their wifi speed, cheapness of beer, and how much the bartender seems to be annoyed by us nursing a pint while trying to balance our laptop on the bar or have a raucous facetime session with the Wardlaw clan. The internet at our cottage is limited to 10 GB for our entire month, which means, no uploading pictures, or watching internet cat videos. (I know, it’s a sad state of affairs!)

But when you live in between to giant lakes and several towering hills, it’s a modern marvel that we’ve got internet or weird British television at all. The surroundings are so beautiful that it’s hard to really believe that it’s real. You know those fake landscape diaramas you see in train museums that are just made of fake moss and itty bitty plastic farm houses, and sheep are just white dots painted on the hillside? Well, it literally looks just like that. I can’t decide if it’s these hillsides that look fake or that the fake ones I’ve seen my whole life were actually just way more accurate than I ever imagined. My other favourite thing about the landscape here is that the stone walls that have been keeping sheep in their fields for centuries are beyond impressive. Many times they scale all the way up the side of these huge hills up craggy cliffs and beyond. It’s amazing to think of farmers, many generations ago, placing them piece by piece up these landscapes. And even so, despite their best efforts, sheep are escaping left and right. They are all marked with a different colored spray paint on their backs to indicate which heard they’re from. And they’re constantly jumping into or over things or taking a little afternoon nap in the middle of the road. Yesterday Chris and I were driving home just after sunset through a little tiny town up the road and I saw a man in a reflective vest waving his hands from the side of the road. My first thought was, Yeah, its cool, I see you, you’re fine. Before I glanced back to the front to see about 50 sheep come into focus all blocking the entire road. Luckily I skidded to a stop with inches to spare and all of the sheep stared, with their creepy little rectangle pupils into our headlights, backed up a few feet and then, all at once, ran straight for us! Knocking themselves over and into our car before finally filing past us. When we saw the collie dog happily jogging up behind them we realized that we had just driven into a full fledged sheep herding, and the sheep had the instinct to keep running from this dog even if that meant running straight into the front of our little Neissan Micra.

Did we mention that Ireland is one of 6 countries in the world where you can’t get car insurance through your credit card? It was either pay $1500 for insurance for this rental for a month or go without insurance and just hope you don’t get rammed by a herd of sheep. But we got away with no visible damage and just a few smatterings of poor sheep blood on the hood.

Most of our days are taken up with reading, playing music, going on hiking excursions and resisting the urge to surf the internet. It is seriously bizarre living the idle country life after months of traveling and hardly ever spending consecutive nights in the same place.

In order to stretch out our dwindling funds, we eat every meal at home, which means we’ve become best friends with the lady at the grocery store. Yesterday when we went in to buy eggs (side note: You can buy Duck Eggs here! They’re huge! And awesome!), she ran over to me and said “Hello! So good to see yeh. I thought you’d alr’dy gone!”

The cost of living here in Ireland is much higher than anywhere else we’ve stayed thus far. And as beer enthusiasts, this is based mostly on how expensive alcohol is here. Especially for a country arguably the most world renowned for being heavy drinkers, I was surprised that beer and liquor here is by far the most expensive. A six pack of beer at the store (even the huge grocery stores in big towns) are around €10 on average. And a standard bottle of the cheapest whiskey you can find runs €30! At a pub, a pint of any beer is never less than €4. Maybe we’re spoiled from the epically cheap beer of Prague, but I’m disappointed in you, Ireland. The most strange thing is that the cheapest beer sold at the store here is Budweiser & Bud Light! So Strange.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this short, scattered and random update for the moment.

I’m going to work on posting a lot more about our spectacular Holland adventures in the coming week and also continue our adventures in Croatia and on to Slovakia & Poland. Cheers!

After our disastrous last hour in Punat, we got a gelato to console ourselves and then hit the road back down the coast.  

 
  

We planned to spend the night in Split which was about a 4 or 5 hour drive, but we never found an internet connection, so after driving aimlessly around Split for half an hour we somehow got shot back out onto the highway heading to Dubrovnik, an historic medieval town at the southern tip of Croatia, now better known as the main filming spot for Game of Thrones. At this point, Chris and I hadn’t decided whether or not we were going to make the loooong drive all the way down there, but when we were precariously pushed out onto the highway heading there, fate made up our mind for us. On to King’s Landing!

At this point, Chris and I had been doing all of our hotel booking through priceline and airbnb at little cafes and internet hotspots along the way. We couldn’t find a single place with free wifi, and after getting shafted at the “San Antonio Hotel”  

 

we saw glittering in the distance, we decided to do a little off road camping in our car. We passed a few different spots we saw along the way, never quite convinced it was a good idea until finally, I was exhausted and pointed to a little alcove on the side of the highway and we skidded to a stop and arranged the car for a long nap through the night. Although we could see that we were near some kind of cliff looking out on the Adriatic Sea, Chris assured me that it would be safe and fine. Until we had both snuggled in for a good night’s sleep and he whispers “I know everything’s going to be fine, but just in case anything does happen, just know that I love you, ok?” NOT the kind of reassurance one wants to hear while in a car possibly teetering on the edge of a cliff right off of the highway.

That night, when we both inevitably got up to pee off of the side of said cliff, the stars were unbelievably beautiful. In the morning, we awoke to this stunning sight.

   

    
 

Back on the road, we drove for what felt like an endless amount of time along what seemed like endless miles of gorgeous coastal scenery only inhibited by the occasional super slow sunday driver in a non-passable single lane highway. Definitely the strangest thing about the expanse of the Croatian coastal highway is the very brief maybe 5 miles of it that is owned by Bosnia & Herzegovina! Yeah, it’s bizarre. You’re driving down the Croatia coast and all of the sudden, there’s a border crossing. Knowing that our destination is at the end of the Croatian coast, we were a bit worried. But a quick glance at the map confirms, yep, the coastline suddenly becomes Bosnia and then just as quickly, becomes Croatia again! 

 

The other strange thing about this border is that while everyone in front of us had their passports scrutinized by border patrol, we just flashed our American passports without ever opening them and they waved us through.

After a couple more hours of driving and a short stint through a beautiful mountainous valley lined with the most fruit stands I’ve ever seen in my life, we finally arrived in dreamy Dubrovnik. When you drive into the city, it doesn’t look like you’ve seen it in the tour books, because the old city, an amazing tiny medieval town on the coast surrounded by massive castle walls, is at the bottom of a hill and not visible from the modern part of the city. We drove around for a solid hour, first getting jettifoned yet again onto a one way highway going away from the city we wanted to be in, but this time it ended up being a pretty awesome accident (except that I had to pee, BADLY) because we got an unbelievable view of the city!

  

We finally made it to a port-a-potty and eventually found a cafe with internet. We’re two millennials that have gone without wifi for nearly 30 hours – we were in an awful state. Especially because despite being at the very very end of the summer season, it was impossible to book ANYTHING in our price range. We were immediately regretting our rash decision to follow the highway to our Dubrovnik destiny. After 2 1/2 hours and 3 Ožujsko beers later, we were still SOL with a hotel. So, we finally sucked up our pride and booked a more expensive hotel inside the city walls. It can’t be that far of a walk with all of our bags, I thought. And I’m sure we’ll be able to find parking SOMEWHERE. Well, the parking garage that the internet told me would be $40 for a night which I found to be unbelievably exorbitant, ended up being $70/night which I was absolutely unwilling to pay. So I opted for a little hidden parking lot you could only get to by driving up 3 very tiny very sketchy one way roads with cars lining each side that ended up opening onto this secret parking lot right on the water overlooking the fort. At this point, I’m grumpy because we’ve been driving for hours, got very little sleep perched on a sketchy cliff and haven’t eaten anything except a piece of bread with some peanut butter on it all day. I decide that, despite the lack of signage, and our lack of understanding the little signage their was, our car would be fine for at least an hour while we checked into our hotel in the castle walls. We lugged our baggage and my cranky self down the hill from the car, into the old city amongst a barrage of tourists and looked out upon the massive amount of stairs awaiting us. Absolutely exhausted, we arrived at our apartment over 250 steps later only to find a mean old Croatian woman who yelled that she didn’t know where our host was and was not willing to help us call her. On the brink of tears, we finally get a hold of our host and wait 30 minutes for them to arrive and let us into our teeny tiny weird smelling apartment with an AC unit that made raucous grunting noises predicatbly every 40 seconds and poured out the most pathetic amount of cool air onto our exhausted bodies. But I was so damn relieved to be somewhere for the night, I couldn’t complain. We took showers and decided to head back to the car to find a more permanent parking situation.

   

  

To cheer me up, Chris spotted a pirate themed candy shop (!?) and we went in to plunder us a bag o’ gummies (which reminds me of a weird song my 6th grade choir sang which included the line “I’m a rough tough burly sailor as tall as I am wide, and the oceans just an itty bitty pond with gummies on the other side.” I didn’t then nor do I today have any idea what the hell that means.) Liking a giant heart shaped all day sucker, I followed a stray cat in through a hole in the castle walls and discovered an awesome play ground! Things were looking up! Or so I thought. We walked back to our car and as we moved it into a new spot, I heard the old familiar crunch of scraping it on the other side of the car, opposite of where I had royally scraped it just 48 hours before in the Great Croatian Car Foible of 2015. Hot, hungry, cranky, angry, annoyed, exhausted and realizing that we’ve just further injured our poor rental car, I realize there’s a little white slip glimmering under our windshield wipers we hadn’t noticed before. It’s a parking ticket. Fining us somewhere around $90. At this point, I pretty much lost my shit, Chris was doing his best to console me while I was openly weeping in front of hundreds of tourists. On the way back to old town, a guy handed me a flyer. My first thought was, ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TRYING TO SELL ME SOMETHING RIGHT NOW? I’m usually the type of person that refuses flyers being handed to me, but I was too tired to resist. I looked down at the flyer. It was for kayaking around the city, that sounds pretty awesome. Except I’m sure its a million dollars, oh, it’s only $30…. Chris looks at me, so happy that I’ve stopped leaking from my head. “Do you like that? Would that make you happy?” I nod slowly. My first thought it, I bet that guy never thought he was actually going to make a sale off of handing a flyer to a crying girl.

We had pizza and beer and I ate my gummies and we resolved to kayak around the city the next day. That jug of beer really took the edge off of our 300 step trip home.  

     
 

The next morning we lucked into an AirBnB overlooking the city. A little Jimi Hendrix themed apartment in the home of an aging Croatian rocker. It was called “The Rock Palace” and so much more amazing than we ever expected. The guy did insist on talking our ear off about seemingly ever band he had ever seen or even been in to as soon as we arrived. But the place included free parking (dear God, I’ve never been so happy to have a place for my car to sleep) and a really baller view.  And despite the fact that it was the hottest day we’ve had to endure in nearly a year (we’ve been blessed to have entirely escaped the Texas summer), and this apartment had no AC, I was happy to have a place and a plan and head down to our much awaited kayak trip!

  

  

If I thought we had a lot of steps to deal with the day before, I was sorely mistaken as to what really constituted a lot of steps. We climbed down and down and down row and row and alley and alley of stairs down down down to the shores of Dubrovnik from our Rock Palace on the hill. I realized we would have to work for our view.

The kayak trip was absolutely everything I hoped it would be. The water was cool and refreshing on the hot day, we paddled around the beautiful island just off of the coast of the old city which housed an awesome old monastery (now made into a Pizza joint!) and a super cool rocky cliff beach area where we swam around a spooky cliff cave and paddled past a nude beach with dozens of naked old Croatian guys. By the time we were paddling away from the island and toward a hidden cove cave, my arms were killing me. Kayaking in the ocean is no joke. By this time in the trip, my legs had been conditioned from miles of walking and the steps and inclines and stairs of months of travel but my arms were unprepared! Luckily Chris has super human arm strength and could take over whenever I gave up hope and said I’d rather we be washed out to sea.

   

  
    
    
    
 

We spent a couple glorious hours snorkeling in a cave and cliff jumping looking out onto the Adriatic sea and the castle walls of Dubrovnik.

That night we walked up the many many many stairs back to our Jimi Hendrix apt and Chris made dinner for us. My arms were like really painful jelly. I was totally useless. The next morning, feeling a bit better, we walked along the castle walls with really stunning views and Chris nerded our on the Game of Thrones sights to see! We climbed more and more stairs, and then more stairs again up to the big fort! I sang into a deep and awesome well and then, finally having made amends with Dubrovnik, got back in the car to make our way back up the long and winding Croatian coast up to Plitvice National Park!

   

    
   

Home of thousands of Croatian Waterfalls!

  The main Prague railway station is a huge beautiful building with three intimidating globe shaped clock spires at the intersection of a massive number of railroads in the center of a bustling city surrounded on all sides by fast paced highways. It also happens to be a block away from our friend Megan’s beautiful apartment we have been staying at and the street I walked down on my morning commute to preschool gave a grand overview of the whole thing. The only problem is that because it’s surrounded by highways and railroads, it’s practically impossible to get there on foot! And since Chris and I are prone to risk taking and danger our method of choice was walking down the incline from the vantage point on the side of the highway with cars wizzing by about 2 feet from our shoulders. 

  
To be honest, it’s probably safer than the first way we attempted which was underground, took us in circles and was full of hobos and sketchy drug deals. But once you enter this grand building, it’s eerily quiet. The vaulted ceilings are painted with beautiful frescos but there seems to be no one there. When you go out onto the train platform the scene is still just as deserted but more derelict. Ceiling tiles missing here and there, broken doorways leading to rotted stairwells or no stairwell at all. After feeling like we’re in some sort of weird communist dream sequence we finally find an escalator down to the basement. Where we discover a bustling metropolis of commerce. It’s like a gorgeous shopping mall down here and it’s FULL of people. And there are three levels of underground surprises down here!

So, after peeking my head into Sephora, as an excuse to get change for the 2,000 dollar bill the ATM gave us, we got lost for about an hour before finally making our way to the car rental place! We thought our lost days were over until the friendly clerk handed us a tiny map and said we should go outside, turn left, then right, then take an elevator to the -2 floor and then just use our car keys to click around until we see the headlights blink. This was just as confusing as it sounds. But somehow we made it out and got our car and just used our keys to buzz it out of the lot. Without any other human being actually seeing us leave.

But, We’re on our way!! 

  First stop: The Sedlac Ossuary. A small church about an hour from Prague that houses the bones of thousands of plague victims & victims of the Hessian wars that a blind 17th century priest placed meticulously into pyramids and also created adornments for the church out of. Including this giant chandelier which is comprised of at least one of every bone in the human body. 

   
    
 After visiting the Ossuary and getting photos for my first annual Madlaw Halloween Card, we went to eat at a Czech restaurant straight out of the middle ages. Complete with strict meats/goulash/dumpling menu, big wooden benches and old wall paintings. I got a beer sampler (one of my favourite things!) And we had one of the best meals of our entire trip! Chris had the foresight to also order a side of grilled veggies. Probably the only veggies we’ve had since arriving in Prague.

   
 
Then, it was on to Croatia! We stayed the first night in this teeny tiny town on the border of Austria. Vineyards on all sides as far as the eye can see. The place we booked on priceline was this little hotel run by a woman and her daughter who happily drove to greet us as we arrived late at night. The young daughter was in her 20s with dreadlocks and when she forgot how to say something in English she just shrugged and pantomimed and said “I mean, you get it.” The mom just smiled in the background, was probably in her early 50s and had adorable braces. The next morning we went down to have breakfast and had more delightful but confusing interactions because the daughter wasn’t there but the mom was leading us around and just pleasantly speaking to us in Czech even though she knew we didn’t understand anything. At one point she turned to me and said something which, I realized was basically “So, you don’t speak ANY Czech? None at all?” I felt proud as I looked at her and said “ne.” haha At least Max the 6 year old had successfully taught me Yes & No in Czech. And that’s about it. 

   
The next day, we headed through Austria. On the way to Vienna, we got stuck in the wooooorst traffic that stopped and started abruptly. After years if driving down roads in Colorado with one way construction and pilot cars, I assumed they were doing some kind of serious construction. After an hour and a half of being in this stopstopstopgogogo traffic, I had successfully painted my nails, complete with complex nail art, all while being the one in the drivers sear, but we still weren’t getting anywhere. I decided not to complain, though, when I looked to the right and saw a beautiful castle on a distant green hill with fields and vineyards in the foreground. 

   

  

 Especially when remembering LA traffic, I realize, there are much worse places to be stuck.  But when after 2 hours of being stuck we realize that the entire debacle is just due to a single traffic light in a small town the highway passes through, I decided that maybe I do miss the foresight of a sometimes overly efficiency focused country. But my nails did look pretty bomb.

  
That night, we spent an uneventful night in Zagreb other than trying to get food at an allnight joint called American Donut which was out of burgers, fries & donuts. False Advertising! 

  But we had a weird ham, chicken & cheese burger with Croatian Beer and hit the hay. The next day, our eyes were locked upon Chris’ grandfather’s hometown Punat! On the Isle of Krk in Croatia, Punat is a quaint seaside fisherman’s village turned tourist hot spot in the last 20 years. 

 We had another amazingly lucky Priceline experience when we booked a little apartment near the marina. When we arrived the lady came out to greet us so warmly and when we told her Chris’ grandfather grew up here in Punat before moving to Chicago during WWII, she told us, “OOh! Punat?! Really? Look! I have bumps! (pointing to her arm) Maybe we are long lost cousins?!”.

The little apartment was attached to her home. As she left to go on an errand she told me “This terrace is yours! But the cat is mine.” I thought we were having a translation issue until I peeked around the corner to see a lazy orange tomcat sleeping in the wrought iron patio furniture in the garden in front of our apartment.

We changed clothes and headed straight for the beach. The city is long and skinny and made up of small one way streets heading sharply up the hill from the coast. At the end of the coastline is a little swimming area where Chris and I felt our first rush of cold water from the Adriatic Sea. I balanced my iphone rather precariously to get this shot of us watching the storm clouds roll in overhead. 

  We brought our cat-shaped umbrella but didn’t end up needing it. A little pebble beach was beautiful overlooking a larger part of the sea betwen Croatia and Italy.

 

 
That night we went to a special type of Croatian Restaurant called a Konoba which are basically adorable little cave restaurants. We had been warned about booking ahead of time in the busy season but on this tuesday night, we were the only ones in the restaurant. I got the Surlice with goulash, a very special pasta dish specific to the town of Punat. And Chris had one big Octopus tentacle that I found especially creepy and he found especially delicious. 

   

  

 That night we talked on the phone for a while to Chris’ mom and found out some really interesting facts about his family including that his grandfather’s family had fled during WWII and his brother had died from Fascist gunfire in the town. His great-grandfather went to the US to get a place for them to move but didn’t send for them in time and Chris’ grandfather and great-grandmother were forced to flee over the mountains into Italy and spent a year in a refugee camp in Italy before being able to immigrate to the USA. Especially in light of the current refugee crisis happening just miles from where we are now, this was especially poignant. We went to visit his grandfather’s old house and a plaque on the wall above the address reads “Trg Zrtava Fasistikog Terora” because the Square in front of the house is now dedicated to the Victims of Fascist Terror. And on the other side of the little square is a beautiful tiny chapel.

   
   
When we went to go check out of our apartment, our host didn’t want us to leave! She invited us to sit on her balcony and told us about the town and about her life and her daughter she missed so much living in Canada. And she told me, with a tone of admonishment how to make Surlice! “Your husband is Croatian, you must make this Punat dish.”

We left feeling blissfully connected and excited and drove around the island trying to get the perfect souvenir. Driving in and out of small and confusing one way roads, we ended up at the mouth of this teeeeny tiny road heading up the hill. In my giddy excitement, I said, let’s go! And Chris was skeptical. “I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s really narrow.” With my typical disregard for any kind of naysay, I just said “Dooo it Do it Do it! It’s going to be awesome! I’ll film!”

I saw tire marks along the road and a couple of different little parking spaces every once in a while along the side. It only makes sense that this street is just deceptively small and must be appropriately sized just enough to allow a car through. Well, folks, I’m here to say, I was wrong. So wrong. This lane got smaller and smaller like the hallway from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice & Wonderland. Staring with a foot on either side and then progressively getting to where we had to pull in the side mirrors and finally squeezing to the point at which both sides of our rental car were wedged into the historical houses bordering the lane on either side. Did I also mention that we were on an incline and our car was a standard transmission?

  
As if this nightmare situation couldn’t get any worse, an old Croatian woman emerged from her house and started yelling at us. Literally wedged into rocks and hard places, we just looked really pathetic and sad at her until she came down and tried to help us with big hand gestures and speaking intensely in Croatian. And lots of shoulder shrugging. By some kind of miracle, she managed to help guide us into a little opening she had in her Olive/Grape grove and we did about a thousand point turn to turn around and go back the way we came. But we emerged feeling still terrified and defeated with big yellow and tan scratches along the sides of our car as battle scars.

Alright Punat, you win this one! But Croatia hasn’t heard the last of this little purple/brown station wagon! On to Dubrovnik!

So when I last left you, I was explaining the crazy story of how we ended up living permanently in Prague! Woo! Well, I’m now here to tell you that that dream has now unfortunately been extinguished. Boo! …Buuut it’s ok!

So for two beautiful short weeks, Chris and I were living it up drinking unbelievably cheap beer and subsisting on a diet of mostly sausages and fried cheese.

   

 
  
 We were also living in the corner of the living room of our friend Megan’s apartment in a gorgeous part of Prague just up the street from the main railway station. I was working at the world’s cutest preschool with The Czech Republics cutest children. Said children LOVED me and I wore them as giant kid boots, kid scarves, kid hats, and pretty much anywhere else a 4-6 year old can drape themselves across an adult human.

   
 Working at the preschool was a TOTAL TRIP. I was the only one there that didn’t speak Czech and this confused the children to no end. Even though they loved me and wanted to be draped across my body at all times, they had such adorable frustrations communicating with me through their limited English. And the girl that spoke English the best would do her best to translate what the other kids were trying to say which was mostly “She doesn’t speak English good enough” or “You really don’t speak ANY Czech? NONE? Don’t you know we’re IN the Czech Republic?”

But all of that was forgiven as soon as another girl pointed at my eyes on the 3rd day and said something excited to her in Czech and she translated with excitement, “She says you have eyes like ELSA! You do! Purple & Black lines.” Eyeshadow choice at 7 am that morning – on point.

  
Another funny but adorable thing was reconciling fights/emotional things with kids who had a limited English vocabulary with which to express themselves. The two girls that got most attached to me were best friends, but the other teachers aptly called frenemies because they would get into at least 2-3 fights every day where they would sit across the room in a huff or angrily pull their hand away from their hand holding and give the other the classic cold stare/arms crossed look. The problem is that I would witness all of these but they were speaking in Czech so I had no idea what the argument was about! But they would inevitably turn to me to be the mediator. Aside from how frustrated they were with having to explain things to me, I actually think this was great practice for them with their English skills and social skills. They had to decide whether the dispute was important enough to go through the hassle of explaining to me what they were mad about. I quickly found out that the old model still holds true even in a completely different country and culture. “Did she hurt your feelings?” *pitiful nod* “I don’t think you meant to be mean, but you hurt her feelings. I think you should say you’re sorry.” *something in Czech that body language tells me is an apology* followed by “Ok, can we be friends again?… let’s give eachother a hug.” (I only had to use the ‘like you mean it!” line a couple of times. Still worked like a charm). It’s amazing what can be solved by a hug. I pretty much solved 90% of disputes between the kids this way.

  
Although the commute was a force to be reckoned with (2 metros and a very weirdly scheduled bus) and left me frustrated and confused most days, (it somehow took me 2 hours to get to school on the first day) 

 
   and it took me hours and hours to figure out my metro ID card

– the school itself instantly felt like home. They did a great a job of fostering a really comfortable environment for learning and playing. And, amazingly, all of the kids are given the same thing to eat each day – 2 snacks & lunch, and lunch is always has a soup course and a main course and is classic Czech foods. And no one is a picky eater! That might’ve been the most striking difference between my experiences here and the American kids I’ve worked with. Sure some days the kids said they didn’t like the food, but they would still eat it even if they didn’t like it. I’ve never seen such easy going kids at lunch.

Also, they have a trampoline!

   It definitely brought me back to my childhood when the trampoline in our backyard was my favorite thing in the world and a big part of my daily routine. On my last day, the kids insisted on taking turns jumping with me, which will be one of my favourite memories from my time here. Jumping on a trampoline as a kid is so amazing, it’s just pure excited bliss. And the preschool itself overlooks a beautiful huge mountainside.

  
After waking up most days before 7 am, and running around with the kids all day, I was too physically and emotionally drained to see much of Prague. But Chris spent day after day while we were there diligently searching for a place for us to stay. Megan and her roommates were amazingly generous to let us be stowaways in the corner of their living room for 10 days, but it felt horrible to be in such a state of flux and uncertainty and, even for someone who grew up with 7 other people in the house, I missed having a semblance of privacy. But the Prague rental market (maybe just in September?) is INSANE. We contacted over 50 different people and places, most of which never responded (I’m still receiving email rejections!). We even went to see a place available and in our budget that ended up being the sketchiest place I’ve ever been into. And I’ve been in a lot of sketchy places. 

  And then just when I thought our luck in Prague couldn’t get any worse, we hear from our visa agent that (even though I informed him of this) that he didn’t realize our tourist visas were going to expire so soon (in 2 weeks!) and there was no way we would be able to get our visa applications in on time.

After venting my frustrations quite literally over the side of the Charles Bridge and imbibing a few giant beers (and some delicious absinthe!) Chris and I came up with our new course of action – DO EVERYTHING. Since we only had two weeks left in the EU, we have to try to go to the places we were planning on seeing in the next year of living in Prague and then go to see Ireland (conveniently located outside of the dreaded Schengen Area) and just hang out there and make music for a month or so until our savings run out and we have to return to Texas (or go on to other adventures?).

So, I had a very sad next day resigning from my job and trying not to get teary eyed in front of all the little babes I’d already become so attached to. But we got on Priceline and booked a car rental and plotted our course to the wonders of Eastern Europe and, most importantly, a pilgrimage to the hometown of Chris’ Grandpa Zic in Croatia.

  
 And now… we’re here! Day 2 of the roadtrip and we just pulled into Punat! I’m going to post another update on the roadtrip itself tomorrow. So much to share!

Hey Blog! I’ve missed you!

I know you probably all think, as this blog might suggest, that we’re still wasting the time away watching The Disney Channel in Trijntje’s apartment. As much as I wish that were true, we’ve actually been up to a ridiculous amount of stuff! Firstly, I got a job! in Prague! Depressingly far away from the Dutch kinfolk we’ve come to love, but still in the general vicinity, and more importantly with a work visa on the horizon which will enable us to stay in Europe and not be kicked out in 3 weeks time. Plus, it’s the home of Chris’ good friend Megan who has been super amazing with helping me find a job and so generous in letting us live temporarily in the living room of her gorgeous apartment while we look for our own place.

I’m planning to make a post all about all of the different places we’ve stayed on this trip, so I’ll save the details for that post.

So, after an epic Keizerstraat house party and some tearful goodbyes to our Dutch loves (and some delicious seafood and rousing conversation about Zwarte Piet on the Scheveningen harbor),

 we bid farewell to our bicycle propelled existence in Holland. But we had one issue, our place to stay in The Netherlands was up, but Megan wouldn’t be back to receive us in Prague for another week, soooo… what else to do but spend the week in Paris!

So, we hopped on a surprisingly pleasant 7 hour bus from the Hague to Paris. The company, called FlixBus, was a LOT like Megabus (even down to the much-promised but actually non-existant wifi) and Chris and I snagged seats on the upper deck overlooking the huge windshield and had a front seat view of the Dutch, Belgian & French countryside as we rode by.

 I should also mention that it was cheapAF. It was less than 20 Euros each to go from The Hague to Paris! Which was 8 times cheaper than the cheapest train. And cheaper than our taxi fare from the bus station to our AirBnb in Monmartre, Paris.

So, we did Paris! The weather was completely unpredictable, ranging from 90 degrees one day, and us sweltering in our teeny tiny apartment to 55 and rainy when we went to visit the famous cemetery and see the friendship bracelet laden grave of Jim Morrison only to be kicked out by a very serious guard blowing a whistle to clear out the graveyard at closing time.

 That day was great because the bad weather forced us to be creative with finding things to do and we ended up at the most amazing and bizarre bar/cafe/I don’t even know what that was accessible only by a weird slightly precarious tiny stairway into a loft area covered in astroturf, bean bag chairs and strange art and a DJ playing ethereal African music in front of giant David Lynch-ian projections. We played a gigantic connect 4 at which I strictly dominated Chris and ate some weird/delicious salmon things and a chocolate tart.

  
 We also visited the Eiffel Tower and found a secret spot away from the hoards of guys trying to sell you light up trinkets and sketchy beers in a bucket of water.

  We listened to a podcast from the delightfully nerdy Rick Steves about the origin of the Eiffel Tower and then had our whiskey confiscated in the 3rd of three different purse searches before hiking up the tower. We also found a secret room where they were showing a huge three wall projection of some cool Eiffel Tower history. We just happened into the room near the restrooms, there were no signs telling people to come and watch and the only other people to join us were a pair of tiny kids that has evidently alluded their parents and also discovered this amazing hidden room, and a few staff members who would casually walk in and walk straight through a hidden door in the center of the projection to what I assumed was some kind of strangely placed staff break room. The view from the tower was absolutely stunning and even more so under the light of a beautiful full moon. In a possibly whiskey induced emotional state I cried at how beautiful the moon and the tower looked and a huge tour walking by pointed and “aww’d” at me. I also lost the heel to my shoe halfway up the tower! We walked up an ungodly amount of stairs during our week in Paris. We stayed in the world’s tiniest AirBnB studio just half a block from the Sacre Coeur which is the highest point in Paris. It was romantic and beautiful, but also painful on the thighs.

One night, we walked nearly 5 miles down to the catacombs and back to Monmartre on the hill. We were keeping ourselves on a super tight budget so we survived mostly on 2 Euro Croque Monsieurs from our favourite bakery down the street,

 baguettes, beer and stinky cheese (only one of which was too stinky to handle and we had to throw away instantly although I’m pretty sure the stench lingered with us for a good half hour). We drank absinthe in a tiny indie bar on a side street near the Moulin Rouge and discovered a hidden room in the back with a couch fashioned out of an old bathtub

 . We hung out with the skeletons of 6 million Parisians in the epically creepy but strangely calm and comforting Catacombs.

 We got our photo taken by a tiny French girl on a daddy/daughter date with her dad in an adorable hold in the wall restaurant called The Little Windmill. She told us and her dad translated, that she likes to take photos of people enjoying their time together because being together is fun (He said he and her mom had split up and she now always wanted to document everything).

 And most nights we had movie screenings in our little fold out couch bed with popcorn and beers and watched all the Paris movies we could think of. First the original Moulin Rouge about Toulouse-Lautrec’s life, then The Doors, La Vie En Rose & Amelie. On our final night we watched the moon rise over the Sacre Coeur Cathedral.

 Desperately attempting to avoid the obnoxious street musician standing in the middle of the crowd on the stairs playing a variety of 90s hits, we hopped a fence and sat on the lawn of the hill so sloped that it took a core muscle workout to keep from sliding down it. While we mostly managed to avoid the vibe-harshing music of the street musician, we were still inundated by guys trying to sell us overpriced, lukewarm Heinekens, but the view was spectacular!

The next morning we went and had our first and only meal out in Paris at the Two Windmills of Amelie fame. The breakfast was decadent and delicious!

  I even found myself enjoying Steak Tartare, which I find revolting in general (especially when I accidentally ordered it on our first night out in The Hague! – Who would’ve thought that ‘Filet American’ at a late night street food place would mean Steak Tartare on a bun??). Then we came home to pack, which is when pretty much everything went downhill for a horrrrrrible 24 hours. We were late leaving our airbnb because I got confused about the time our flight left from the 24 hour clock they use here. So we stuffed everything quickly into our bags and were ready to go 2 hours before our flight. 40 minutes to the airport and our Uber was there. Home free, right? Weeeeelllll, halfway to the airport, I’m bickering with Chris because we were both stressed after having to leave so quickly and I suddenly realize, WE FORGOT OUR PASSPORTS AT THE AIRBNB! Uggghhhhhhh, it takes us about 3 blocks to finally translate to the driver that we have to go back, I don’t know how we’re going to pay for the ride because Uber’s system doesn’t really allow for alterations in the route, and oh, side note, WE NO LONGER HAVE KEYS to get in. YIKES. And I don’t have internet or cell on my phone. And our air bnb host is out of the country! This is not good. And I’m really, really regretting having the bright idea of hiding our passports while we were in Paris.

So we spent a good hour going back, trying to track down our host’s sister, waiting for her to arrive, getting our passports back and speeding back to the airport. Halfway back to the airport, we’re set to arrive only 40 minutes before our flight, our driver gets a call, speaks frantically in French and finally turns to us and in broken English says “You did not TAKE key, no?” And we’re like huh? Only to realize that when his sister arrived and handed Chris the key to run up to the 3rd floor to grab the passports, Chris accidentally stuck the keys in his pocket in his hurry to get back in the cab! At this point Chris and I just both simultaneously released epic sighs of frustration and our uber driver said “We have French saying that says ‘some days it is better to have stayed in the bed. yes, this we say here in France.” Thanks, dude. Message received. After a very awkward stop at an ATM and shelling out 60 extra euros for his extra time and him taking the keys back to our airbnb host, we run run run to the gate 40 minutes before our flight only to be rejected by a snooty frenchman at the counter that just shrugged and said “no. too late.”

I think the most frustrating thing about sitting in a weird airport cafe with all of our luggage, sobbing and desperately researching other trains/planes/automobiles to take us to Prague was realizing that we ate super meagerly and penny pinched through our entire week in Paris only to lose over 500 euros by simply forgetting to pack our passports. The only options we ended up with were taking a 20 hour bus with two different bus changes in France and Germany, or waiting 24 hours and getting on the exact same flight but the next day. So, we opted for the latter and went to priceline to figure out where the hell we’d be staying that night. We could’ve stayed in a sketchy 2 star for 50 euro or a swanky 4 star with a pool for 100. So I decided, look, I’m miserable, I’m going to splurge on this nice hotel and at least have something to look forward to in the next 24 hours of purgatory. This ended up being a mistake. The hotel was horrible! Our room had a stunning view of the wall of the building next door. When I called to see if there was maybe another room with a better view (the hotel was definitely mostly empty) the woman on the other end just yelled “THERE IS NO BETTER VIEW MADAME.” Cue more tears. Chris decided that, hey, maybe the fact that we haven’t eaten in about 10 hours is contributing to Libby’s constant leaking face, let’s order a pizza! Genius, right? Until we couldn’t find a way at all to order from the myriad pizza places in the area without speaking french and spent about 2 hours talking on the phone trying desperately to google translate our way into some pizza and failing miserably. Not to mention the complication that we had no cash as we had to give it all to the cab driver. Cue perfectly timed call from my mom and dad. They facetimed me just to say hi and see if we had made it to Prague only to find a red eyed bawling mess on the other end. They finally talked me down from my hunger fueled madness and my mom adorably paypal’d me money so we could afford to order room service. My parents are the BESSSTT. After some scary french phone interactions with the cranky hotel staff, we finally had full bellies and went down to get a beer and breath a sign of relief by the pool before being kicked out by the frantic confused bar tender.

  
  
But the important thing is, we MADE IT TO PRAGUE! We’re HERE! And I’ve spent a week at my new job! I think I finally have a handle on all of the many Czech names and complicated diminutives! More to come soon. I’ll get back into the habit of updating this more often so I don’t have such long epic posts. Let me know if you guys enjoy reading these or if they’re just pointless. Although even if it’s the latter, I’ll probably keep doing them anyway. I’ll probably find this amusing in the future, right?

Missing Texas desperately,

Libby

Chris and I have officially surfed into our 4th borrowed house! Josefien’s sister Trijntje is letting us stay at her adorable little studio apt on a beautiful street. 

  
The toilet is in the hallway and the shower is in the kitchen but the big beautiful windows let in a ton of light! Even though it’s been raining non-stop this week! I know that cloudy with little falling cold needles of rain is classic Netherlands weather, but we’ve been so spoiled by sunny beach weather this summer. Aaaaand we don’t own any waterproof clothing.

So, we’ve been going to as many indoor things as possible. Luckily we invested in a Museumkaart, which is pretty much the best thing ever and I wish existed everywhere. It’s basically a card that costs 60 Euro up front but then you get free access to nearly every museum in the Netherlands for a year! Sooo, Chris and I have been living in and out of museums all summer. When we’re not on the beach.

Since it’s been in the 50s and 60s and raining all week, we’ve been on a museum binge. On Sunday we realized that there is a fotomuseum we haven’t seen yet so decided to stop by. When we showed up there was a line out the door and it turns out we showed up just minutes before one of the most famous rock photographers of all time, Anton Corbijn, did a signing at his exhibit! Aaand it was the very last day to see the exhibit! Perfect timing! 

  Chris and I oggled all of the gorgeous photos of Bowie, R.E.M, Arcade Fire and tons of others and then rode to see my grandmother’s old house where she grew up. She said when her father was sick with TB while she was a little girl, she’d visit him in the top room and they’d look out to the Scheveningen Lighthouse together. 

   
 It turns out, the house is currently for sale! So, we looked it up online and found a bunch of photos of the inside of the house. 🙂 http://m.funda.nl/koop/den-haag/appartement-49438236-van-slingelandtstraat-52-c/fotos/

Today, Chris and I went to see a huge, amazing car museum called the Louwman Museum. It’s about a 25 minute bike ride in the aforementioned evil spikey rain, but the museum is really amazing. So many cool vintage cars starting with horse drawn carriages and cars from every era and every unique shape and size.

   
    
  
I made Chris take a picture by this one because I thought it looked like pug.  
   
 We didn’t even make it through half of the collection so we’re planning a return trip.  We had a mini “feast” (chocolate cake, baby coke, bierjes & jenever!) in the huge, beautiful cafe which is probably my favourite part of the whole museum.  It’s set up to look like a street from the turn of the century with old storefronts and… well, it’s really hard to describe, but trust me, it’s awesome!

Since it’s been so rainy, we decided to stop by the Albert Heijn “XL” and buy things for dinner and cocktails! I’ve been thinking about dying my hair purple again, but haven’t been able to find purple hair dye anywhere, so I settled on a bright red I found at the super market. So, tonight Chris and I have been drinking delicious cocktails made with the bizarre but delicious fancy sodas I found, I dyed my hair & we ended up watching a marathon of the Teen Nick show “Victorious” which Chris and I have been laughing way too much at. And That 70s Show. And the TV at Trijntje’s is very dapper and wears a hat. 

  
 
  
Also, the shower in the kitchen has some difficulty draining, so it looked like a giant shower of gazpacho when I was done rinsing out my hair. 

 Good night everyone! More updates soon!

Tomorrow we’re heading to Delft to conquer the tower at the Nieuwe Kerk! Tot Ziens!

As Requested and much awaited, here is my list of the little things I’ve noticed about The Netherlands that make it unique. To get things started off on the right foot, we’ll jump right into talking about toilets! On family vacations abroad while I was growing up, my siblings can attest, I was weirdly obsessed with different toilets. You never knew there could be so many forms to serve a function! And where our toilets in the US are pretty much identical from sea to shining sea, in the rest of the world they seem to differ from house to house. I used to take photos of them and always thought I would make a collection of all of the various types I came across. I’m sure my mom probably thought I was just a creep when she went to get our film developed (camera film, whaat?!). But I digress… In Holland there are a couple of things I’ve never noticed before in other places I’ve trekked across Europe. Firstly and most awkwardly, it has a bit of a “landing” before the bowl where everything sort of sits before being washed away. Why in the world this exists other than to create aroma issues, I have no idea. Someone told me it had to do with water conservation, but it takes quite a bit of water just to flush things off of this landing. So, I’m calling bs on that one. pun intended.    I hope Josefien forgives me for posting a photo of her toilet on the Internet. In other bathroom news in Holland, their toilet paper here is really thick! 4 ply is standard, and if you’re being cheap, you can buy 3 ply. 2 ply hardly exists and I’m pretty sure is only for hobos in the lowest tiers of society.   Third and last potty related observation about The Netherlands is that using the restroom publicly is hardly EVER free of charge. Getting a beer at a bar? Still gotta pay 50 cents to pee! Paid 20 Euro to get into this music festival? I invite you to wait in this long line to pay 50 cents for the privilege of peeing in this port-a-potty! Even waiting on a platform at a Train Station for a train to come, you must pay to use the toilet. (Although I should mention that the aforementioned quality of toilet paper here never wavers)  I feel personally conflicted about this because I’ve had multiple conversations about how i would gladly pay a nominal fee to use a nice public restroom in large cities in NYC where it seems entirely impossible to find public restrooms. And my sister Molly has frequently told me terrible stories about how residents of NYC will just not drink water to avoid having to find a restroom and then passed out from dehydration but the city refuses to get public restrooms that require pay for use because it just “isn’t right to have to pay to use the restroom”. Stuck doing the pee dance in the middle of times square, I would gladly pay to use a restroom, but somehow it just feels wrong that I paid 8 Euro to see the windmill at Kinderdijk and yet am still obliged to pay 50 cents to relieve my bladder. On to better and less potty-related items… BIKES!       I know the Dutch are famous for their biking, and not without reason, their biking infrastructure is second to none and every street you go down will have at least 50 bikes parked along the sidewalk. Our housemate told us that there are more bikes in Holland than there are people and I definitely believe it. Along every major road there is a bike path. And not just a “lane” on the street, it has it’s own road parallel to the road but separate even with it’s own traffice signals, adorably in the shape of a bike. There are also bike paths running from city to city cutting right through beautiful farm land and very well maintained! Chris and I have taken advantage of these extensive bike paths in the last few weeks taking on long bike trips from city to city.  

 And people of all ages bike here which is so amazing But don’t be fooled by how cute little old dutch ladies on bikes look, the dutch take their bike lanes very seriously and don’t suffer fools going the wrong way or taking up too much room in the lane lightly. I had a woman purposefully knock me off of my bike because she was incensed that I was going the wrong way in the lane. We also learned that the bell on a bike should only be used when necessary to let someone know they’re in the way or doing something wrong. When we first arrived, I rang my bell just to let a lady know I was passing her on the left and she was INCENSED that I had rung my bell at her. She let me know by throwing me an angry look and ringing her bell at me incessantly as I passed. But the Dutch also show a lot of affection in the way they ride bikes. I’ve seen the best and strangest things happen on bikes in the time we’ve been here. I’ve seen couples holding hands and kissing while riding their respective bikes, I’ve seen them carry their friends and family on the back and front of their bikes. I once saw three grown men sharing a single bike. It’s really impressive. But they also carry their babies, too! Apart from the magic of the Bakfiets, which is essentially a bike modfied to have a big wooden compartment for kids to ride in in the front, many people here have carriers on the front and backs of their bikes, or tandem bikes made for one adult and one child, and I even once saw a man just carrying an infant in his arms while riding home from the beach. Yesteday Chris and I saw a couple that were holding hands while one rode a bike and the other was skating on a long board.       They can also carry a 24 case of beer with one hand while riding home on a bike and have crates designed just for this purpose. Aptly, the Duolingo app Chris and I have been practicing our Dutch with used this phrase last week:   I’m sure I’ll be using this phrase all the time… Another cool aspect of the bike culture in NL is that bikes get flyered at music events!       Another strange aspect of Dutch life is that they love to drink little beers. At pretty much any restaurant or bar, you can order for 2 or 3 euro, a “bierje” which is just a beer served in a small glass.    While this is really pleasant with dinner, it is a little weird at a festival or event. As I mentioned in a previous blog, they have amazing festivals nearly every weekend in the summer. 🙂 But at these festivals you wait in line to buy a 2 Euro beer twice the size of a dixie cup. Since no one wants to wait in line every time they finish a tiny beer, you can get them in little cardboard cup holders in sets of 6! Which I actually find adorable and charming, but it leads to little baby cups littering the ground everywhere you walk because trash cans are impossible to find.    When Chris and I were at a huge free festival called ParkPop, there were little kids running around collecting these disposed cups and turning them into veritable art installations and forts! That part was actually pretty cool. I’ve also noticed that the Dutch don’t seem to ever use top sheets in their beds. Chris and I have been house surfing a lot and staying in various places and each bed seems to come standard with a fitted sheet below and just a feather duvet with a duvet cover on top! Growing up in the Texas heat and being used to sleeping under just a sheet, this particular oddity of Holland drives me a little crazy at night. It’s too hot under the covers and too cold out of them!  Not that I’m complaining, we’ve been totally blessed with amazing places to stay, but it’s my job to come up with these random tidbits, ya know. Speaking of sleepless nights, the birds here are CRAZY! Chris and I will frequently wake up in the night both laughing because of the bizarre noises the apparently mutant seagulls make here. Sometimes it sounds like they’re laughing maniacally, sometimes it sounds other worldly. I’m never short of amazed by the crazy sounds of birds here. I took a short video the other night for your amusement:    And while we’re on the topic of weird videos, here’s a video of our neighbor trying to vacuum up some of her clothes that fell down from her drying rack and landed on the roof below.    It should also be mentioned that virtually no one owns a dryer here (as is common in most of Europe) and, randomly, their washing machines have wash cycles ranging from 2 hours at the shortest and 4 hours at the longest. To end this unusually long post, I’ll just say that other things we’re getting used to here in our own experience are little things like not having ridden in a car in 2 months! Going from spending at least an hour in my car every day in the states, it feels a little weird! And I haven’t blow dryed my hair in 8 weeks! Also, they laugh at the idea that American grocery stores have baggers that bag your groceries. Silly Americans…here the checkers throw your items to their left and have a big lever that sweeps them to one side so they can b Next post, I’ll tell the harrowing tale of getting stung in the eye by a bee in a gigantic rose garden! ❤

5,133 miles away from the hellish summers of San Antonio, I think I finally understand what all the excitement is about. Sure, I’ve spent weeks at a time traveling to various destinations during long summers, but this is the first summer I’ve spent almost entirely in a place where the weather is almost disgustingly pleasant throughout 90% of summer. It’s amazing!

Most mornings we wake up to a nice breeze blowing in through the windows and a greenish light reflecting off off lush tree leaves. The weather is always somewhere between 65-75 degrees fahrenheit with varying levels of blustery wind.

    

 Because of this beautiful weather, pretty much everything that can be outside, will be outside. There are festivals and outdoor get togethers every weekend. At the aforementioned surfer house we’ve stayed at, Chris and I have already attended more outdoor BBQs in the last 5 weeks than the last 2 years in BBQ-obsessed Texas.

Last week there was a huge freak summer storm and they had to move one such festival inside. It was moved to a huge indoor venue/complex called Paard van Troje (Trojan Horse) – The bartender at the show happened to be a girl I had met at a BBQ a few weeks earlier and she told me that that venue is actually closed entirely throughout summer because most live music is played outdoors in festivals! They actually had to re-stock all of their beer, liquor, etc that morning to have it ready for that night.

Despite the unbelievably beautiful weather, most days Chris and I find ourselves in our natural night-owl routine of staying up playing music, reading books, watching movies and writing until 4 am and sleeping in until noon. In the afternoons we try to stuff in as many museum visits as possible. In The Netherlands they have an annual membership card that covers 90% of all of the museums and its only $60! With our “Museumkaart” in hand, Chris and I feel like we have the key to the city and sometimes like we’re part of a very fancy elite card carrying group. Then at night we bike around the city or go on long walks and Chris eats copious amounts of raw Herring.

It was nice to take a few weeks off of playing gigs, especially after we played a gig nearly every night the week before we flew from SA. But recently we’ve gotten back into the habit of practicing and hope to record an EP here in The Hague soon! Last week on a whim, we googled Open Mic Nights in the Hague and ended up at an adorable little place called Cafe de Bieb. I knew it was the place for us as soon as I realized they have my new favourite belgian beer, La Chouffe, and not only because it has this adorable little kabouter on it :

We met the organizer to put our name down and he was incredibly nice and inviting and noted that he and Chris both have the same issue constantly trying to swoop their hair out of their eyes. Our first surprise was that every performer sang and introduced themselves in English although the vast majority of performers and audience members seemed to be Dutch. The 2nd thing I noticed was that, unlike every other open mic I’ve been to, everyone in the audience was listening intently instead of talking amongst themselves, clinking beer glasses or perusing social media on their phones. The cafe itself is pretty small with only a handful of tables, made smaller by the section of tables that’s been torn away to make room for the stage. It’s packed with people all standing around the stage and bar huddled together watching the performers. Chris and I played our set of three songs and got a really great reception.

  
The organizer approached us and said he’d filmed one of our songs to send to a promoter in Leiden who needs an act to fill a slot at a festival on the canal this weekend! So, with that we finally booked our first legit gig. Now just to figure out how to get up to Leiden…

On Saturday night I decided to make some homemade butterbeer and give a crack at reading the first Harry potter book in Dutch from Josefien’s collection.  

 I was surprised by how easy it was for me to pick up on most of the language pretty quickly but mostly surprised that most of the characters’ names are changed! Getting used to Dumbledore being Perkamentus and the Dudleys as Duffelings was getting a bit overwhelming so Chris and I decided to watch the HP7 movie instead, as we’ve been very slowly rewatching them over the last few months. All coked up on HP excitement, we ended up staying up till 3 am. And then, like many of my ill advised drunken ideas begin, we decided to ride our bikes the hour up to Leiden instead of dealing with the train. And, bonus, save 8 Euros! Woo!
That was, until the alarm went off at 8:30 and we attempted to peel ourselves out of our sleepy stupors. We had to be at the park by 11 and at 9:30 I had the realization, hey Libby, don’t you come from a long lineage of people that are chronically tardy? We dragged ourselves out the door at 9:50 am and resolved to hoof it! NBD, right? Wrong. It was somehow the most stressful and grueling bike ride that seemed to never end! Although we weren’t too cranky to notice the absolutely spectacular scenery around us, we were probably too sleepy to really appreciate it.  

  

  

 Soaked in sweat, we arrived only a mere 20 minutes late, and were done with our sound check in 5 minutes.

   
  The festival is called PickNick and was a super adorable free event with music, kids crafts, families and food. Chris and I played for the first time as an official duo. We are now playing officially under the moniker, “Madlaw”! We played a set of new and old tunes that we crafted 10 minutes before the set while trying to both sit in a hammock adjacent to the stage.  
    
   

The set went great. I think my favourite part was seeing people riding past the park on their bikes get off just to stand and watch us for a while. The weather could not have been nicer and we laid on the grass by the canal enjoying the music and watching boats go by and little adorably weird kids yell and scream in dutch in the kids section.

 Now we were in a quandary. We were too exhausted to stay but too tired to take the loong hour and half ride home. So we settled on getting strong beers at this adorable pub in Leiden before trekking back home. We had some delicious beers in a historic bar called De Bonte Kuh in the shadow of a massive 14th century church.       
  Newly fueled, we trucked it back home arriving home just as my phone navigation died. But along the way we rode past picturesque Dutch countryside and even met a family of swans!   

    
    
    
    
 
And…as you might imagine, today, the next day, was spent lazing around the house and soothing our achey bodies with a marathon of Wet Hot American Summer: The First Day of Camp. We’ve earned it! haha My knees hurt, New post about the weird things we’ve encountered in Holland tomorow!