Europe Update! 6/6 - 6/9 Rotterdam, Bluche Switzerland, and Hotel Weisshorn I know it’s been a while and I’ve got to finish these posts so I can finally be done with them. I’m kind of throwing a few days together here because it’s easier! For our last day in Holland we visited the large port city of Rotterdam. While there we took a wonderful tour of the amazing Hotel New York, an old office for the Holland America line. The rooms are each uniquely furnished, and their level of attention and detail and just overall hospitality was amazing. I walked away from the tour really wanting to work for them. After that, we walked across the canal to the Fenix Food Factory, which was a collaborative where different vendors set up shops within all specializing in a food or drink of some sort. On top of a presentation on how all the venders work together, I got to snag a warm, rosemary caramel stoop waffle- so I was a happy camper! Following that we later got a guided tour of the SS Rotterdam, one of the cruise ships of the Holland America line- the S.S. Rotterdam! The next day we all boarded the train to Amsterdam and flew to Switzerland where we traveled on the most gorgeous train ride I will probably ever have the pleasure of experiencing. We passed snowcapped mountains, crystal blue lakes, and rolling green hillsides. We were staying in the very tiny town of Bluche, where the Les Roches hospitality school is. It sits right below the ski resort of Crans-Montana. This time we stayed in their dorms (they have housekeeping?!?!?) and just were able to rest and relax. We spent the next few days just exploring and relaxing in the fresh mountain air. The next trip we took was down the mountain, across the valley to Saint Luc, where we did an amazing hike to the Hotel Weisshorn, an old Swiss chalet-style hotel nestled on the peak of a mountain. It was a lengthy, yet ambling, hike across multiple waterfalls and through misty trees. I felt like Heidi practically every second of it.
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Europe Update! 6/5 NHTV Kitchen Day Another day we actually did cool stuff was this day. In Breda, our sister school here in the Netherlands was NHTV. On this particular day NHTV’s school for hotel and facilities management allowed us to have a day to use their kitchen. Their chef walked us through a variety of recipes, including shrimp croquets, lava cake, crème brûlée, ratatouille soup, and a bunch more delicious dishes. There was only one real difficulty in creating all the masterpieces and frankly it wasn’t much of an issue. We had a difficult time converting the measurements in our heads from Imperial to Metric. If my phone just had signal in the kitchen.... that aside it was a great experience! I got to help make the ratatouille and it started off good until we encountered the problem of ingredients. The supplier had forgotten to bring bell peppers and zucchini! Luckily with the help of the chef we substituted cauliflower and celery, and the soup was saved! Was it traditional ratatouille? No, but was it still delicious? You bet! After the cooking was done we ate ourselves silly before heading to a classroom to learn about different beers in the Netherlands and European area. After suffering a bit through that, (I am not my fathers daughter) and I'm not a beer fan, we headed home before retiring for the rest of the day. Europe Update! 6/4
La Trappe Okay, I’m not going to lie- this day wasn’t the most interesting, so I won’t bore you with all the nitty gritty details. Every few days I’m reminded that I’m actually here for school and I have to do relevant things to my major. Don’t get me wrong but when you look at it in comparison to some of the other fun things we’ve gotten to do in Europe, it definitely pales in comparison. We started the day off by receiving a tour of a Dutch restaurant wholesaler. Basically it ended up being a Dutch version of Costco. We saw all the stuff they had to sell, for in the way of a few shoppers accidentally, and marveled over the types of pastries they sold. Once we were done with that, (and I had eaten a cricket sample, mmmmm flakey) we headed over to La Trappe Brewery. As the name implies, La Trappe was a Trappist brewery located in the Netherlands. For a Trappist brewery to be located outside of Belgium is rare so it was an interesting experience! We learned all about the history of Trappist beer brewing, and how it is all handled by Trappist monks. The three rules that must be followed to make a beer a true Trappist brew are 1. The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery, either by the monks themselves or under their supervision. 2. The brewery must be of secondary importance within the monastery and it should witness to the business practices proper to a monastic way of life and 3. The brewery is not intended to be a profit-making venture. The income covers the living expenses of the monks and the maintenance of the buildings and grounds. Whatever remains is donated to charity for social work and to help persons in need. I though the last part was a wonderful addition, and is a great way to give back also. The beer I had there, the White Trappist, was okay, but it almost had a frothy feeling to it which almost all the beers I took a sip of had. Interesting is the best word for it I think. The whole concept was cool, but like I said earlier, it wasn’t my favorite day. Europe Update! 5/30 Kettle One If you want to talk about the limited amount of VIP experiences I’ve had in my life, this one takes the cake. We had the amazing opportunity to have a super fancy, invitation-only tour of Kettle One’s Nolet Distillery. The Distillery in Holland is the original one and the only one, so all Kettle One products pass through there. Our tour was led by none other than the 11th generation of the Nolet family, whose father is the current owner. Our tour started with a small reception in a recreated windmill where they served us coffee and tea and biscuits. Then we moved up to a movie theater where they showed us a video from their last big anniversary where a biopic-style video was uniquely projected on the side of the windmill. After the movie was over we got the walk through the distillery, where I got to see thee Kettle One. I even got my picture taken by a professional photographer throwing coal into the furnace under the kettle! After we all got our photos taken we moved to bottling, then packaging and warehouse. The entire tour, from the interior design, flow of the tour, to what they included in the tour was so well thought out and well explained. We got to see every aspect of the process, and we were treated to a wonderful lunch. The warehouse we saw had the coolest automated robots shelving and unshelving, it was so cool to watch. The best part was that you could feel the care and attention put into every nook and cranny of it. After everything they took us up to the private bar where they treated us to unlimited drinks and we got to try all sorts of cocktails. I got to try a few drinks that I really ended up liking! I had so much fun I really just forgot to take a lot of photos because I was so in awe. This is something that creates one of those stories that I’ll tell the rest of my life whenever I see someone open up a bottle or make a drink with Kettle One Vodka. Europe Update! 5/29
Attempted Amsterdam Group Trip And well the train broke down. Then we sat on it for an hour before they limped it back to the nearest station. Then we went home because they cancelled a bunch of other trains and we didn’t really think it was worth it to wait around a few hours to try and make it all the way. So a bit reluctantly we cut our losses and headed home. After we went home my friends Adana and Fern and I sat on their balcony and just chatted, snacked a bit, and later in the evening the group went out with our group to a local bar called the Old Dutch, where we all hung out and enjoyed the evening. Or, something like that. Europe Update! 5/28 Efteling Wow was this a surprising day. We ended up going as a group for a ‘tour’ to Efteling, a Dutch theme park. It was so cute, because much like Disneyland it was mainly aimed towards younger children, but they had incorporated elements for older visitors as well. I could go into a bunch of details regarding comparing and contrasting Efteling and Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm (trust me I had to do an assignment on it, I could go on) but I won’t bore you like that. Efteling is themed after the Grimms Fairy Tales, and the park actually followed them, just having the signs trailing off at the bad parts like “…”. It was also interesting what they included, naturally they had Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding Hood, but they also had stories like The Little Match Girl, the Indian Water Lilies and Mother Holle. Some of those I hadn’t even heard of. The other thing I really liked was it had a ton of greenery in Storybook Land, and it wasn’t the carefully manicured stuff of Disneyland, it was the wilder, big, natural stuff. While we were there my friends and I stopped for cotton candy and an innocent trip quickly went awry. As you can see by the pictures we went a bit…. overboard. The lady who was working the stand was so sweet though, she gave us extra cotton candy and even let my friend Ginger sneak in the back and spin her own- day made! Europe Update! 5/22 After all of those crazy adventures of the previous days I spent the next day fairly low-key. It was the first day of our official, official program, where we visited NHTV, the host school in Breda, and got a lecture on the European Union and Tourism from one of the professors there that had, many years ago, been a transfer faculty at NAU! I also found out that European school lunches? They aren’t even in the ballpark, they’re so ahead. After the short class and receiving our eurorial pass I spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the park just reading my book after walking through the weekly market and finding a hidden little courtyard with a friend. There’s nothing like reading about homicide in public places and juicy fruit. Gotta love it. More Europe updates! 5/21 My next day was supposed to be our jet lag day, but a local brewery opened its doors for us (as it was a holiday on Monday in the Netherlands) for a beer tour and tasting. Before that afternoon adventure it was lunch time so a few friends and I hit up the local Albert Heijn grocery store for some bread, cheese, sausage, carrots, and wine. We found a nice spot along the small boat dock in the city park and ate a beautiful picnic lunch. With the water,sunshine, bustle of people, and just overall summer attitude, I was in heaven! Later we all dressed up in our blue button ups we visited St. Jorge’s Brewery in the basement of an old Breda building. It was a super cool concept and was done so well. We got to see the equipment, learn the history of the brewery, the label name, as well as the labels and names of their beers. They mainly specialize in a darker brew, but we tried a light one as well. While I’m not a huge fan of beer, okay, I don’t like it at all to be perfectly honest, I made my way through a good portion of each, and was surprised by the difference in taste to the only beer I really know thanks to dad, Pacifico. After the tour concluded we all went a few shops down where one of the faculty members ordered his favorite Dutch dessert, Poffertjes, which are often referred to as "miniature Dutch pancakes". They were little pancakes that were completely plain, but had a sweetness to the batter that was missing the powdery texture pancakes can sometimes get. In other words, delicious! As if that wasn’t enough to do in the day, My friends Fern, Adanna, and I went on the hunt for a bicycle rental place. The Netherlands has more bikes than people, so we had decided a bike ride was in order. We chose to ride the bikes to the Belgium boarder, which was about a 30 minutes’ ride from Breda, and somehow we turned it into a leisurely, cow-filled, photo-shoot, sprawling-farm field ride of a lifetime. Seriously though it was the stuff movies and dreams are made of, and the pictures don’t do it justice. My favorite moment of the whole ride had to be when we came out of a small copse of trees to the view of farm fields dotted with cows, and the distant church spire in the background. My least favorite part was probably the brief moment I got knocked into and momentarily forgot my rented bike was in fact not mine from home, so no hand brakes. I spent two seconds fumbling for a way to stop before back peddling but alas I got acquainted with some of the local fauna, which I quickly found out I was allergic to. Thank goodness for Benadryl. After a much quicker ride back, we ended the night with the card game “Dutch Blitz” which reminded me of a mix between Uno, and Slapjack... Then I slept like a log and woke up the next morning feeling like I couldn’t walk. Worth it! Europe Update! 5/20 After a long, but surprisingly calm and good flight, my friend Ginger and I made it to Amsterdam on the 19th, a day ahead of the program schedule. We made a quick excursion into downtown Amsterdam for dinner before passing out at 7pm. By the next morning I was jet lag free. We met up with our program mates and faculty at the airport and we all traveled by train to Breda, which is about an hour south of Amsterdam. Our hotel. Hotel Sutor was situated right in the heart of downtown Breda, and was a quaint place that our program completely filled up, so the about 30 of us had the entire hotel to ourselves. Typical (I’m finding out) of Europe, the stairs were so steep to the rooms I actually smashed my knee against the stairs above while climbing up them a few times. After arriving we had free roam so a few friends and I set off to explore. The most notable thing of interest to us was Grote Kerk, or Church of Our Lady. It is the biggest point of historical importance in Breda, and is situated on the edge of the lovely downtown market plaza and maybe 50 yards from our hotel. It was finished in 1468 and it had a beautiful organ which was the largest in the Netherlands, and a beautiful wooden pulpit, as well as a few frescos still intact. I really wanted to climb the bell tower but they only do that on Thursdays and Saturdays, days I wouldn’t be there! I enjoyed it immensely though, and naturally took lots of pictures! After the church we walked around a bit more, got gelato at the shop right next door to the hotel, and then walked in the large city park, which was also right nearby. We ended the night with a hot dog, Dutch style with coleslaw, dry onions, and homemade garlic sauce from a street vendor at a music festival around the corner. After a long day and still a bit of jet lag I passed out and slept like a log. |
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