Wednesday, December 31st: Amsterdam - Bitterballen, Oliebollen, Skating Rink and Fireworks

Our food missions for the evening (once we arrived in Amsterdam) were Bitterballen and Oliebollen!

Bitterballen: Little spheres of meat, cheese, and dough, deep friend and crunchy on the outside.  A classic Dutch food, often served at pubs as a snack.  We bought ours from a hot vending machine!

Weird system, but super convenient, and probably super popular for anyone who's heading home after a night of drinking and craving some greasy salty snacks.  I watched one guy chow down on three vending machine sausages in a row while I was standing here!

Oliebollen:  When we first arrived in Amsterdam on the 22nd, we noticed little seasonal food stands set up serving sweet donut-y treats with names like "Oliebollen" and "Appelflappen".  When I was in Aruba, I remember eating Oliebollen, and thinking that they reminded me a lot of Tim Horton's "Dutchies" and then it all started to make sense (Aruba was a Dutch Colony!).  Appelflappen was new to me, but equally exciting (I mostly just enjoy saying "appelflappen").  When we'd first arrived, we Googled both of these to see what the deal with them was.  Appelflappen translated to "Apple Fritter", but "Oliebollen" translated literally to "Oil Sphere".  Mmmmm!

Taking in the pre-midnight fireworks (I'll get to that in a second), we ended up wandering past an Oliebollen stand (no appelflappen, unfortunately), so we decided to try them out.  We ordered one each, but because the stand was closing right away, the fellow serving us filled up the entire bag (more than 10 for sure).  We each tried one and decided that as tasty as they were, they were also pretty true to their name - so greasy!

In looking for a nice spot to warm up and kill a bit of time waiting for the midnight countdown, we got some glühwein at the bar next to the central skating rink and then tried to pawn off our oliebollen on other customers.

Me, enjoying some glühwein in the skating rink shack

This girl had no interest in our Oliebollen

Now, New Years Eve in Amsterdam is very different from New Year's Eve in Canada, mostly because fireworks are legally set off by anyone anywhere.  Earlier that day, the sound of firecrackers could be heard occasionally, but as soon as the sun set (around 5:00pm), it was a non-stop cacophony of explosions, and we literally had to dodge some firecrackers and roman candles on the street while we were walking.  This continued until about 3:00am, but the frequency and intensity definitely increased from midnight until 1:00am.

I found a video online of this year's fireworks in Amsterdam, shot from the 20th floor of a building.  Being at ground level (and much closer to some of these fireworks) has a different vibe, but this gives a good idea of just how many were being set off at any given time.

Tomorrow we're heading back to Minneapolis.  Unless something outrageous happens, I don't think there will be any more updates.  Until our next adventure!  Thanks to everyone who commented/emailed while we were here.  

Monday, December 30th: Ghent and Bruges, Belgium

Sometimes taking the train across countries is confusing!  We got on our original train, knowing that we were getting off at "Ghent", and then as soon as we entered Belgium, the stop name changed to "Gand St.P".  I think all locations should just have one name, and that it shouldn't change with the change of languages.  At least Uwe explained the Köln/Cologne thing (Colonia was it's original name during Roman times, and those two are just variants).

Anyway...

We originally didn't plan on spending any time in Ghent, it was just going to be a more cost-effective stop on the way to Bruges. However, the hotel receptionist seemed so disappointed when we said that we were just "passing through" that we decided maybe we should check out Ghent at least for a bit in the morning before heading to Bruges.

We're happy we did!  It may not be quite AS picturesque as Bruges, but it also had hardly any tourists (especially compared with Bruges) which was lovely.

And on to Bruges!

We seem to prioritize a lot of our traveling according to foods that we want to eat.  Most countries that we've visited so far have had a list of "must eats". Because this was pretty much our only day in Belgium, we made it our mission to find: fries and mayonnaise (Flemish fries are supposed to be the best anywhere!), waffles, chocolate, and beer.  We wandered around Bruges for a good part of the afternoon: seeing pretty sights, taking pictures, and trying to check the foods off our list (It's a hard life!).

We had fries as a late lunch (to get out of the cold), picked up a box of chocolates at a fancy Belgian chocolate shop, ate waffles for dinner, and then spent the rest of our evening in a pub called Bierbrasserie Cambrinus.

Fruit topping for me, Nutella for Garrett

This pic was taken from their website.  It was a LOT more packed when we were there.

Garrett tried a flight from their selection of over 400 varieties.

Garrett convinced me to try a beer called "La Corne" that came in a curved, horn shaped glass with a fancy holder to keep it upright.  It proved a bit difficult (and silly looking) to drink out of, but the beer was pretty good.

Monday, December 29th: Köln, Germany - More Cathedral, More German Food, More Christmas Markets

We decided to take it easy today.  Had a nice at-home breakfast (which included more blood sausage!), with Uwe and Cheryl, and then just did some wandering throughout Köln.

We revisited some of the spots from yesterday, and saw the cathedral from the inside today.

We checked out the Christmas market again.  The cute paintings outside of the shops inspired me to buy a little gnome ornament for our tree next year.

We also did some shopping at a store that Garrett really liked in London, that we still don't have in Winnipeg, tried a big pretzel with Nutella and a street vendor dish called currywurst (bratwurst with bbq-type sauce and curry powder).

Our train left at 7:00pm for Ghent.