The Ultimate Test -- Germany/Holland

My last few days in Europe were special. I'd go as far to say that they were as perfect as they could have been.

Sometimes I need to know that I can leave a place -- leave a person -- and when I return, everything will be okay.

Everything will be different, but it'll all be okay.

My last few days with Billie, Julia and Maud were more than okay.

Billie prepared a frying pan full of happy pig sausages for our first night and bought eight (at least) different kinds of cheese which I sliced and turned into a plate of magic.

This woman must read my blog. Only someone who knows me very well could fully understand the amount of cheese I can demolish in one sitting. 

We drank aperol spritz and I told stories about hitchhiking through the Balkans, couchsurfing on yachts and volunteering with a woman who believed Jesus was from Venus and Buddha was from Mars (or vice versa... I can't really remember). Billie told me stories of previous volunteers, their new dog (the sweetest, most gigantic epileptic puppy named Fidel) and we laughed and laughed until everything hurt.

Which is one of the best ways to make everything hurt.

Maud and I took a quick jaunt to Bad Kreuznach (I feel confident spelling the name of this town, but pronouncing it correctly is still entirely beyond me) the next day. We drank an acidic cappuccino (come on, Germany! what's up with the shit coffee?) and wandered through downtown until we were tired of wandering.

It's sweater weather... I looked down at my goose-pimpled skin. Finally. Goodness, this is so refreshing after the heat of Southern Italy and Barcelona. It'll be good to have the two months in Colorado and Oregon before heading to Mexico, too. I love sunshine, but my body is definitely craving a few "soft days". A blizzard might be nice. Or a typical Colorado hail storm out of a blue sky. 

The Healing Sanctuary is located in Puerto Escondido, which is a small surfing city on the coast of southern Mexico in the region of Oaxaca. This part of the world has 300+ days of sunshine a year and in January, the low is 47 degrees Fahrenheit and the high is 77.

Yeah... A goodbye hail storm from Colorado would be splendid. Probably won't have cold weather again for quite a while. 
 

By the way, Oaxaca is famous for its chocolate, its Oaxaca cheese (kind of like mozzarella) and its fried grasshoppers. 

baha.... sounds like the place for me. 

I cooked a pumpkin, chickpea tagine that night and served it with a Moroccan tomato salad. Billie is mostly vegetarian (she eats happy meat once a week), so these are the moments I celebrate my ability to cook for people with so many different tastes, morals and dietary restrictions.

Passing through a hundred doors will do that to you... 

The French volunteer had the lot of us doubled over in hysterics. She's the sort of person who takes the things that normal people joke about doing and then actually does them. Several times.

When I had horses, I used to always smell their grain and think, man... that smells so good. It smells better than granola. I wonder if it tastes better than granola...

But that's usually where I stopped.


I wonder if it tastes better than granola... being the final thought. I don't mind letting myself wonder. I'm a lady who loves to experiment and experience, but there are certain aspects of life I am perfectly content to leave to my overactive imagination.

Alpaca grain smells very similar to horse grain.

"Za grain smells so good," the French volunteer complained as we ate tagine, "but every time I taste it, I am always so disappointed!"

Every time she tastes it. Once wasn't enough.

Maud and I stopped by a nearby pumpkin/new wine/pretzel stand the next afternoon. We ordered the seasonal federweisser and some strange wurst we'd never heard of before.

Simply because it was a strange wurst we'd never heard of before. And the woman told Maud (in German) that it was a circular sort of sausage that was served "in a box".

"That sounds hilarious. We definitely need to get that."

 Unfortunately, "In a box" in German actually translates into "in a can".

Thus, we received a can of sausage that resembled cat food, in taste, texture and appearance.

Not that I've ever tried cat food (although I wouldn't put it past the French volunteer).

Just a can. On a plate. With two sad pickles, four pieces of plain brown bread and a packet of mustard.

This. This is why people say that German food is terrible. 

"Wow... this is not what I imagined with she said round sausage in a box. Now we know."

Traumatized, we returned to Billie's and I made a lemon meringue pie. A pie I couldn't eat, but thoroughly enjoyed baking.

That evening's meal more than compensated for the canned sausage however, and Germany quickly returned to my "countries with fabulous food" book.

This is mostly thanks to Simon, Julia's husband. This man is a cooking machine (if they made "Simon Cooking Machines", I would purchase one to put in my kitchen. But they don't. So I just have to be jealous of Julia for marrying him). He barbecued sis kebap and chicken wings and wurst while Julia and her friend made three different kinds of South African cocktails.

I think I want to buy a Julia Cocktail Machine AND a Simon Cooking Machine. Mmmm... no wonder they're such a good couple. 

We commenced our five hour drive back to Holland just before noon the next day.

Billie and Julia thanked us for visiting. Thanked me for squeezing them in before returning to the States.

I'm still not sure how this is happening, I thought as I hugged my fun-loving German friends goodbye. They just opened up their homes and treated me to a priceless few days. They threw a freakin' party for us, for pete's sake. And now... they're thanking ME? 

I promised to visit them after my adventure through Central and South America.

"I'll have so many stories next time I'm here! So many new recipes. My legs will be hairier. Oh, and I'll be able to speak Spanish!" 

I try to live a life without expectations (although the have the insidious habit of sneaking in more often than I'd care to admit), but I think I can safely expect that I will be incredibly happy to see Billie and Julia when I'm next in Germany.  

Maud took me to Scheveningen that night. We walked along the beach and I tried to peacefully, contemplatively gaze at the North Sea, thinking, this is the last time you'll see the Atlantic for months, Bourget -- what have you learned on this side of the world? What lessons are you taking back to America with you?

However, the fact that I was bursting to use the loo -- absolutely desperate to pee -- made peaceful contemplation rather difficult.

"Maud?" I asked with a cheeky grin.

"Yeah?"

"Wanna take off our clothes and run into the sea?"

"Why not?"

"Just a quickie. Up to the shoulders."

"Okay."

"Do you swear upon the alpaca that you'll run in up to your shoulders?"

We should hands.

(Maud and I now swear upon the alpaca. This developed because I was afraid that Maud would make me eat half a chicken satay and an entire sausage. So I said, "You have to swear to me that you'll share both meals." "Swear on what?" "Well, what do we both like?" "Well... we both like Billie...but we can't swear on Billie." "We can swear upon the alpaca!" "So what happens if we violate our alpaca oath?" "We're cursed with a year of crap cappuccinos, that's what happens.")

"If you don't reach your shoulders, you're going to have absolute sh*t coffee for the next year, got that?"

So we dropped our bags (and our clothes) and ran into the sea.

"Cold, cold, cold, cold...." I chattered and shivered and forged ahead into the waves. "SHOULDERS!" I ducked down and then started to run back to shore.

It wasn't until I picked up my clothes that I remembered the entire reason I'd tricked Maud into running into the sea with me was because I had to pee.

Damnit... Blurgh. Fine. 

So I ran back into the sea, did my business and skip-hopped-careened out. 

It was half an hour later that we noticed a fellow who looked like he'd been sitting under the nearby bridge for a very long time.

"Meh. Must have been amused, at the very least," I smiled playfully and wriggled my toes in the sand. I love how nonchalant I've become about nudity. So what if a strange Dutch man just saw me take a leak in the sea? Meh. There are worse things. Like sausage in a can.

Back at Maud's, I cut up some bananas, found some liqueur and prepared my last bananas foster in Europe.

I've made this flaming dessert in so many countries now... my goodness. France, Germany, Holland, Morocco, England, Ireland... it's served me well. 

And as I can't sleep the night before a flight, Maud stayed up with me and watched Friends until four o'clock in the morning. We watched the last disc with the episode wherein Rachel almost goes to Paris...but then decides she's in love with Ross... so doesn't go to Paris.

Maud cries during this episode.

I just feel annoyed with Rachel for not going to Paris.

Am I completely heartless, is this episode just too cliché for me to empathize with or am I an excessively independent lady? 

Probably a combination of the three. 

Maud took me to the airport the next morning. During check in, the lady at the desk asked if I lived in the States.

"The machine is telling me to ask you," she said as she looked at my passport. 

I didn't know what to say.

"I suppose I do... but I haven't been there in sixteen months. I get mail there sometimes."

We ate sausage in a bag (a Dutch specialty that is significantly tastier than the German specialty of sausage in a can) and then hugged each other goodbye. 

"We'll meet again. You're going to be a part of my life for a very, very long time. I know it."

"I hope so."

Okay America... here I come. I don't feel ready, but life doesn't wait for ready. Just like I don't wait for life. Things happen. America is happening now. I'm going to try to treat my time there just like my time in Istanbul or Devon or Vis -- I'm going to let it be new. Let it be fresh. 

I'm going to see if I can have a beginner's mind in the place I know the best. This. This is the ultimate test.