amsterdarn and eindheaven

It's been travels aplenty since the last time I've checked in here and I'm not sure where to begin!

I suppose I'll start with Easter- which is a big ol' deal over here, and most Universities had two weeks off for everyone to go home and hang out with their families and eat yummy foods. Not mine, though, lucky lucky me! Some friends and I spent Easter Sunday eating apples and chocolate eggs in Bratislava, a.k.a. Snoozeville, Slovakia. The short and short of it is that we ran out of places to go after about five hours and sat in an Elvis-themed cafe for the last two hours before our train home. There is a giant castle there, what seemed to be the city's pride and joy, but it was under construction and was basically a giant scaffolding on a hill. We spent a lot of time secretly exploring a closed transportation museum which also seemed to be some homeless person's love nest, and got some pretty moody-looking photos of each other wandering around the abandoned station. So, there were perks!
I can't remember much of what happened last week, mostly hanging around the dorms and doing homework and stuff like that. It has all been pushed out of my brain to be replaced by the AWESOMENESS that is Holland! On Thursday morning we left for this lovely lovely country, and I'm pretty sure my heart is still over there.
We saw all the normal touristy type things, like the Van Gogh Museum, which was worth the trip, even though there were three huge groups of people in wheelchairs hogging up the views of Sunflowers and Wheatfield with Crows. There was also a really graphic Sex Museum right by our hostel and a ton of those famous cafes...One night coming home from one of our recurrent visits to Amsterdam parks we got terrifically lost, but made our way to the red light district and saw all the pictures from the Sex Museum come to life. There was even a guy doing push-ups in front of one of the "ladies" trying to impress her with his brute strength or something. Personally, I don't think muscles were really what she was after. Anyway, anyway, moving on...
On Saturday we took a train ride to Eindhoven, about an hour and half from Amsterdam (a really Mission Impossible-type ride, where we got on the wrong train and had to jump across seats and throw bags not to get separated at a transfer station... I don't think we will ever get any good at public transport, at least when it is in a foreign language). My friend goes to design school in Eindhoven, and he cooked us and a ton of his cool, design-y type pals really really really great spaghetti and kiwi apple plum pear yum yum fruit salad. A total relief after three days of pastries and butter cookies in Amsterdam.In general, the Holland I saw was a combination of the greenest, flattest countryside I've ever seen, more bikes than Ive ever seen in one place, really charming canals flanked with townhouses on every block (they are lit up in the evening, it was so so romantic!), and really crowded public parks where people just lay around and play music.
We had a great time there, to say the least, and we spent a lot of the weekend making up songs about Holland and how much we loooove it. I hope Vienna doesn't get jealous.

But alas, I am back home now, and have spent all day working and booking flights and trying to figure out the next couple of weeks. I am EXHAUSTED, but excited. There are still so many things to be checked off on my to-do list, but at least bloggin' my heart out can be crossed off! Now for paying my credit card bill.... yipes!