It's my birthday again!  Well, maybe not yet where I am right now, but it's July 17th in the Netherlands already, so it kinda is my birthday.
 I usually spend my birthday with familh and -very important- a lot of cake and ice cream. Not this year though. This year I'm spending my birthday with some leftover fear from yesterday's ride in a Peruvian cab.

Visiting Peru is a dream come true. If it wasn't for the crazy traffic. I'm currently in the huge city of Lima, where the amount of cars has more than doubled in the past two years. To make it even more exciting, the Peruvians thought it a good idea to give cars the right of way over everything and anything. I'm visiting the  city as a pedestrian and I almost got killed a dozen times  the 30 hours since I got here...

At some point my dad wanted to get a cab. We did. And then the madness began. Blinkers aren't used here -if you're lucky a driver will wave with his hand out of the window. This doesn't happen very often because most of the time your vehicle is sandwiched between trucks. Right of way is something everyone wants but no one gets. The noise is deafening because everyone is angrily honking away at cars who are too busy honking to get moving.
In these trying circumstances I sat on the backseat of a cab that belonged to a driver who had quite possibly lost his mind. Half of the time he drove in  two lanes at ones. If so much as an inch of space between two cars opened up, he was already cramming his car into it. I was smashed from the right to the left and back every time we turned a corner. I was glad it was almost over, prayed for a break and thought I was going to get one when I saw a stop sign.
The cab driver ignored it and shot forward onto a gigantic crosaroads with five lanes of cars coming at us from the right. None of them stopped for us. Luckily the cab driver hit the brakes at the very last second. We somehow made it across the crossroads and to our destination. With one final gravity defying turn we pulled up in front of the restaurant that was our destination.  I fled the car with shaking hands and unstable knees...
The moral of the story? Never EVER get into a Peruvian cab! Never!

So I saw this thing over at Karissa's blog and it looked like a lot of fun. Books are about half of my life (the other half is music and sports) and I liked to do the A-Z Book Survey too. Here it is, I hope you find some awesome new reads in there ;) Feel free to take the survey yourself too.

Author You've Read The Most Books From:
Stephen King, definitely. I started reading his books when I was thirteen and got addicted. It only got worse after Under the Dome became a TV series. I think I've read about 12 of his books and will read a couple more during the summer.

Best Sequel Ever:
Prodigy, by Marie Lu. I wasn't very impressed by the first book in the series, but Prodigy just blew my socks off. It was indescribably awesome.

Currently Reading:
Vampire Diaries: The Awakening+The Struggle. I thought I was going to hate it, since I didn't like Twilight, but it's actually quite good. Stuff happens within 50 pages, instead of the 500 pages of nothingness Twilight gave me...

Drink of Choice While Reading: 
Tea in the summer, hot chocolate during the winter, or whenever I feel like it should be winter.

E-Reader or Physical Book: 
Physical books without a doubt. I like the smell, the feel, the sound of rustling paper... I'm in love with physical books.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Dated in High School:
Ron Weasley, that's for sure. Or else Derek from the Darkest Powers Trilogy. There both a bit awkward, but I've got a soft spot for awkward boys :)

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:
Holes, by Louis Sachar. I have this rule that I don't watch a movie adaptation before I've read the book. In this case I watched the movie way before I read the book. I highly doubted I'd like the book. After seeing the movie I doubted a little less. And after reading it, I was in love with it :)

Hidden Gem Book:
Sequoia, by Kirstin Vanlierde. It's a dystopian by a Belgian author and it's amazing. Sadly, it's only available in Dutch...

Important Moment in Your Reading Life:
When I realized I could effortlessly read a book in English. All of a sudden I could read so much more books. I think about a quarter of English bestsellers get translated into Dutch, so when I started reading in English, there was just so much more to choose and so much more to enjoy.

Just Finished: 
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, by Helen Fielding. Sounded funny, but disappointed me. I expected more from the woman who brought us Bridget Jones.

Kinds of Books You Won't Read:
I'll read anything except instruction manuals. The only thing you actually have to read is the thing I'll never read.
Longest Book You've Read: 
I read this really big Lord of the Rings three books in one thing. Not sure if it counts, but it had almost 1300 pages. I've also read all the Game of Thrones books and they're all over 600 pages each, so yeah, I'm not afraid of big books.

Major Book Hangover Because of:
Mockinjay, by Suzanne Collins. I just couldn't believe my all time favorite series had come to an end. I didn't read a book in weeks after that.

Number of Book Cases You Own: 
One. But there's a room in our house filled with books. The space underneath my bed is filled with books. My desk is filled with books, I've got a couple of bookshelves (only manga on those, but still) and piles of books in random corners of my room.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:
I've read The Hunger Games at least five times. Once because I'd bought it, once because I enjoyed the story, once because I did a book report on it. Once because I wanted to read the original English version abd once because I wanted to read it before the movie would influence my view on the story and the characters.

Preferred Place to Read: 
I'm okay with any place. I can read anywhere, but I prefere my room.

Quote That Inspires You/Gives You All The Feels From A Book You've Read:
"Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.” - Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell.
This is what inspires me to keep writing. To remind me of that great feeling you get when the words come effortlessly and you get swept away by your own story.

Reading Regret:
Reading some books that were the first in a trilogy in Dutch, even though I could have read them in English. I hate it when books in a serie don't match cover-wise, so it's a no go for me to switch to English halfway through a series. I regret it the most because I have to wait ages for Dutch releases, and sometimes publishers loose faith in the series and don't publish a last instalment at all.

Series You Started and Need to Finish (all books of the series are out):
Surprisingly none. I used to buy tons of books and stop halfway through series, but I learned from my mistakes. Now I either read the entire series almost back to back, wait for the books to come out or don't start the series at all.

Three of Your All-Time Favorite Books:
Of course The Hunger Games and Harry Potter. But also Amy and Roger's Epic Detour, which is a book about a road trip. Most places the characters visit are places I've visited too.

Unapologetic Fangirl For:
The Hunger Games. I read the book in 2009, so I consider myself part of the 'original' Hunger Games fanbase. I did a book report on it in 9th grade and we had this teacher who gave everyone bad grades, but I got an A because of my analyses of the story. 

Very Excited For This Release More Than Others:
Heroes of Olympus: Blood of Olympus. It will be so hard to say goodbye to Percy and Annabeth, yet still I'm looking forward to it. I kinda grew up with these guys.

Worst Bookish Habit:
Making reading into a competition. Like, I'm reading this 600 pages book and I tell myself I have to read at least 100 pages a day and finish the book before the end of the week. I can get so obsessed with the pagenumbers that I can't focus on the story anymore.

X Marks the Spot- Start at the Top Left of your Shelf and Pick the 27th Book:
Legend, by Marie Lu.

Your Latest Book Purchase:
I'm not sure if manga counts, but I recently bought three volumes of Full Metal Alchemist. I started this series when I was fourteen and I'm still not finished... Maybe I should have thought about this one when answering the question for the letter S...

ZZZ-snatcher- Last Book that Kept You Up WAY Too Late:
Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell. I loved Cath because I could relate to her so well, I just had to know how the book ended. I wasn't disappointed :) Totally worth the lack of sleep

I always liked to think of myself as a person of the world. Because I've 'been to places' and 'seen stuff' and 'done things'. So why was I so thoroughly terrified when I had to travel by train all on my own? Probably because I actually am a small town girl, used to cycling and walking, not chasing after leaving trains or running from creepy dudes on the subway.

I made a schedule to replace the person who usually comes with me

My first trip by train was a real adventure to me. Usually someone's with me who knows their way around the public transportation system way better than I do. I trust that person with my life, I'd follow them to the end of the world, even all the way into Mordor, just because I don't know which bus to take. You can see how troubling it was for me to go out on my own, all the way from my peaceful little home town up to Rotterdam's Central Station and then on to Groningen, a city in the north which is considered the far end of the world to most people from my town.
But I made it, I didn't even loose my dignity by chasing after a subway that was leaving at the very moment I stepped out of the bus. Instead I did the grown-up thing to do: I got myself a newspaper and read it. But only the comics, which didn't made it such a grown-up thing to do after all...

Then, after a quiet ride on the subway, I had to get out and get into another one which would bring me to Central Station. Panick! Alarm! Hopping off one line and onto the other was something I had done once, back in December, with my parents, but that didn't make the prospect less scary. It would be a real accomplishment to get lost on Beurs station in Rotterdam, but I can get lost on the way from my bedroom to the toilet (FYI: down the stairs that are straight in front of my bedroom, take four more steps and you're literally in the toilet bowl).
I avoided getting lost by loosing the dignity I had so carefully preserved when getting off the bus; I saw a flashing sign with 'Rotterdam Central, leaving in 0 minutes' and made a run for it. The gods were with me that day. I caught the tube and arrived safely at Rotterdam Central - 50 minutes before my train would leave...

See, it does show my train after all

Those 50 minutes felt like a decade. I was so worried about missing my train that I checked every sign twice, just to make sure there actually was a train going to Groningen. Then I had to check them a thrid time, because my train wasn't on any of them!
Turns out I was just too early to see my 7.05am train on a sign that only showed which trains were leaving until 6.54am... Anyway, I don't know how I did it, but I found the right train. And that's where the journey really began.

It takes almost three hours to travel from Rotterdam to Groningen. Along the way I've seen a lot of people come and go. People on the train seem an entire different species. There's just so many types. It didn't take me long to realize that a nervous seventeen-year-old was one of the less remarkable types you can meet on the train.
There are parents with noisy children who go and sit in the quiet areas anyway (but you'll forgive them, because their children are so cute). But those people are better than the grumpy alcoholic who makes the entire compartment smeel like beer. And what to think of the hostile reader? Yes, hostile readers do exist. There was a college guy sitting opposite of me who was reading Game of Thrones. I wanted to ask if he liked the book, but he almost growled at me when I looked at him. Maybe because my interested face looks a lot like my creepy face... which looks a lot like my normal face...
But no matter what type of person is sittin next to you, they're all trying to avoid eye contact. The readers are obviously at an advantage. There are also people who avoid making eye contact by staring out of the window at the extremely diverse Dutch landscape. There are two rules for Dutch train views:

1. The farther north you go, the more horses you'll see.
2. North, east, south and west al look the same: grassy polders filled with cows

All the same is staring at the dull Dutch landscape my favorite way to avoid eye contact. It is by any means better than the passive-agressive staring others prefere. It seems paradoxal, but it actually works. Unlike staring out of the window, for there's always the threat of making eye contact through the reflection - even more akward and feared than normal eye contact.

So I sat in the train for hours, curled up in my cornerm trying to become invisible. My suitcase was blocking the chair next to me and I felt terribly guilty about it. Not that I could do anything about it; I was too small to reach the luggage compartments.
it was a very uncomfortable ride. I felt my heart stop every time the train stopped, because I was so afraid I'd forget to get out of the train in time.
But I safely arrived in Groningen. And you wouldn't believe how proud I still am for travelling across the country on my own, for the very forst time!