My first ever trip abroad was to Ghent in Belgium. I was six weeks old at the time. It was my first of many, many visits to the country on our southern border. By now I've been to just about every major Belgian city and you'd think I wouldn't be all the impressed by the country anymore. You'd be wrong though. In those twilight zone days between Christmas and New Year's Eve, I went to Belgium once again. Here are the things I thought about this time visiting one of my favorite countries!

This time next week I'll be high up in the air, flying over the Atlantic Ocean towards Cuba. The fact that my flight from the Netherlands to Cuba via Mexico takes about 8 hours doesn't bother me. I'm used to long flights, always have been. No surprise if you take into account that my parents took baby me on multiple intercontinental flights. I enjoy those flights now. That time between departure and arrival is a true break from everything. Everything except my hyperactive thoughts, that is. The minute I board a plane, my thoughts go crazy. Don't believe me? Let me show you what I thought about on my last intercontinental flight from Helsinki to Bangkok!
Okay, I know we're not scheduled for take-off for another 15 minutes, but can we go already? Everyone is seated and if we go now we'll be in Bangkok even sooner! Wait, did we just move? Are we moving? It seems like... No, that was just my imagination... Or is it? Seems like... we are moving! Ready for take-off. Finally!

This is one of my favorite things about flying: seeing the world from above. It's so beautiful. I always hope I get to see my hometown from up here. Everything looks so calm and peaceful, as if there's not a single problem in the world. It makes me calm down a little. I could look out of this tiny little window for ages.

As much as I love the airplane view, I still like movies a little bit better. Especially when there's nothing but grassland to see. So if I start watching now, with 8.5 hours of this flight left, I could watch at least three movies of two hours each. One more if I don't take breaks and don't fall asleep. I want to watch Deadpool first, then Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Maybe I'll watch a few episodes of American Horror Story as well. That'll keep me entertained till we're somewhere above Myanmar. Now less thinking, more binge watching!

We flew over Delhi and I missed it! I've been wanting to see that city since forever, even just seeing it from above would have made me so happy. And now I missed it because I fell asleep after Guardians of the Galaxy... Stupid sleep, what do I even need you for?

I don't really want to go, but I'll have to. That sound when the toilet flushes... It's like the whole plane is going to get torn into a billion pieces. Okay, calm down Envy. Here's the plan: do what you have to do, wash your hands, open the door, step outside, reach into the bathroom, hit that flush button and run as fast as you can, away from that awful sound. Ready? Flush! RUUUUUUUN!


Seriously dude. Is there something wrong with you? I know these seats aren't the most comfortable seats in the world. I know we've been here for hours already. But please, don't do a full-on body slam every time you change positions. Please. You shake that thing so hard that my phone just fell off my table!

Dude. Stop moving. Every time you move, a shockwave travels through all the seats around you. You've woken me up five times now. Five times! Just sit still for a second or two and let me fall asleep. Please. I don't want to be a zombie on my first day in Thailand. Please... I'm begging you... I'm desperate...
I don't know why, but I'm awful at binge watching. And since sleeping isn't an option thanks to a certain someone, I might as well check some of the music in the library. I'm curious to see what the international section has to offer. What're the weirdest things I can find? Let's see... What's this obscure Asian band? Okay no. This is too weird. Too weird!
I always feel so disgusting towards the end of an intercontinental flight. It feels like I've been wearing these clothes all my life. I don't remember what it's like to walk around without these old shoes. Hell, I don't even remember what walking around in a non-confined space feels like! I just want to take these clothes off, jump in a shower and put some fresh, clean clothes on. That's all I ask.

Oh my god! We're here! I can't believe we're finally here! I can't wait to go out and explore Bangkok. I wonder what the city will look like. There are a lot of trees here near the airport, which is always a good sign. I guess Bangkok itself won't have that many trees though, but maybe Chiang Mai will be really green. I've heard so much about those jungles in the north already. I can't wait to see it all! I'm so excited, I would run out of this plane right now if I could!

So you see, even a relaxing plane trip makes my hyperactive brain go crazy with excitement. This time next week I'll probably be thinking a lot of things along these lines - but more excitedly because Cuba is my dream destination. And hopefully, there will be less annoying people in the seat in front of me and loads of Marvel movies for me to watch.

I'm quite stubborn. This means I'm usually your worst nightmare in any kind of discussion. Sometimes it means I will not give up on what I want just because I thought it'd be fun. But most of the time it means something much simpler: when I see a climbable hill or mountain, I have to climb it. It doesn't matter if I'm half-crippled like I was in Scotland. I see a hill, I climb it. Simple.
Sadly I don't get to climb that many hills, living in a country as flat as the Netherlands. That's why I mentally did a happy dance when I was in Belgium and Ella from Ella Was Here came across Montagne de Bueren when researching Liège. This city has one steep hill with a citadel on top, which you can reach by climbing an enormous staircase with a funny name. When I went to sleep that night, all I could think about was the trip to Liège that Ella and I had planned for the next day. I was easily going to conquer Montagne de Bueren!

The sun was shining on a freezing Liège as we arrived late in the morning of the 28th of December. Before even thinking about climbing hills, or doing anything at all for that matter, Ella and I had to defrost and find the courage to continue our adventure in almost sub-zero temperatures. We had bagels at Get Your Mug, a bagel place where we learned that Ella is good at eating bagels while I attack them like a starving barbarian.
When we went out into the cold again we first had a look at the Christmas market, then pulled up Google Maps to get to Montagne de Bueren. It's basically a sidestreet of the Rue Hors-Château, exactly in the opposite direction we took even after consulting the almighty Google. Let's just say that reading maps isn't our forte...
We did manage my favorite ginormous staircase, only for me to realize I'd taken a liking to this thing way too soon.


Montagne de Bueren was way steeper than it'd looked in the pictures. Ella and I just stood at the bottom of the stairs for a while. I could only stare and wonder what I'd gotten myself into.
'Do you want to climb it?' Ella asked me. 'You can go if you want.'
I did not want to go up that monster of a staircase. At all. I was already getting vertigo just looking up at it.
'Yeah, I want to go up there,' my mouth said despite everything my eyes and brain were warning me for.
'I'll wait down here and take some pictures,' Ella said. She was being sensible. Me? Not so much. Because when I see a hill, I climb it. Simple. So while I still had the opportunity to turn around and say 'Nah, I'm good', I put one foot in front of the other and started climbing Montagne de Bueren.

The first few steps were no big deal - until I realized the whole staircase got steeper after the first ten meters or so. That's when I started to hate myself a little bit. Just a little. Giving up was no option though. I had to conquer Montagne de Bueren, all 374 steps of it, even if it was the last thing I'd do. I focused on my breathing and didn't look more than five steps ahead of me; I didn't want to get discouraged by constantly being confronted with my snail's pace. My approach worked until some kids came running past me, overtaking me like I wasn't moving at all. Not the best thing to happen to my self-esteem that day.
I walked on. Slow and steady wins the race. Slow and steady also becomes slow and painful real quick. My calves were burning, but I refused to give up. Then I made the mistake of looking up, thinking I had to be almost there. At least halfway, I told myself. I was so going to set a record time. I could practically feel the top of Montagne de Bueren under my feet already. So I looked up - and I saw I was only a quarter of the way. At the very best...
I sighed and swallowed a curse. I wanted to scream with frustration, but figured it'd be better to use that energy for walking. I trudged on, feet heavy, eyes focused on the top of the stairs this time. I wanted to take pictures from every possible angle, but couldn't bring myself to stop just for some pictures. I knew that I'd never make it if I'd stop, even if it was for half a second and three pictures.
My breathing became heavy. I was cranky as could be by then. A never-ending stream of swear words now found its way to my lips. I muttered curses in three different languages under my breath every step of the way, thinking Led Zeppelin probably didn't have Montagne de Bueren in the back of their mind when writing a song about a stairway to heaven. This stairway wasn't taking me to heaven - it felt like it was taking me straight to hell. I could see why the Huffington Post named it as their number 1 extreme staircase in the world.


Three-quarters of the way up my eye fell on the words spray painted on the base of the staircase's railing. They seemed nothing more than random French words like 'ou est', meaning 'where is'. I tried to make sense of these random words, not because I really wanted to decipher the message, but because dragging myself from word to word was the only thing that kept me going at that moment. That was until I saw 'j'aime ça' in bright orange. That's when I burst with anger and exhaustion. J'aime ça? J'aime ça?! I love that?! I had no idea who'd written those words on that freaking staircase, but I was not loving it. Not at all. Whoever wrote it probably didn't even get up there in one go. Stupid person.
I climbed on angrily, trying to suppress the urge to find this annoying anonymous spray painter and bash their head in with one of the staircase's cobblestones. I looked behind me, down at Ella. She was still taking pictures. She'd had the right idea, I was now more than aware of that. She wasn't dying on some dumb hill in Wallonia. Why had I ever thought that this was a good idea? This was worse than climbing Arthur's Seat with a busted knee.
My internal monologue was now just a bunch of random swear words. Then, just as I was completely convinced I'd die right then and there on those steps, they became less steep. And then, suddenly, there were no more steps. None. I'd made it!


I looked around in surprise. There was a wooden bench I refused to sit on. I was exhausted and weak, but not that exhausted and weak. There were still building rising high on both sides of me. Nothing special to see up here, I thought. Still, I felt euphoric. I'd freaking made it! I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the way down. I turned around - and stopped dead in my tracks.


I finally saw the vies. The promised view, which I didn't expect to see because of all the building on the Montagne de Bueren. From up there I could see almost all of Liège though. The sun broke through the clouds and made the waters of the river Meuse sparkle and shine like a diamond. It was amazing.
I immediately forgot about my cursing, my burning muscles and the serious hate I'd felt for this stairway. The view made up for most of it. I proudly left one of my Envy butterfly stickers on a lamp post at the top.


I stood there for a while, just taking in the view. It was extremely cold and I could not hold my camera steady while taking pictures of Liège. Yet in that moment, with my hands and feet freezing and my legs hurting, I was happy. That's what climbing new hills does to you. No matter how much your muscles ache, how much your body protests and how aggravating signs along the way can be, it's always worth it once you reach the top - especially if you reach it in one go. So please do me a favor and climb some hills for me.

Back when I took my first insecure steps into the world of street art I had no idea how hard it is to actually create something that's not butt-ugly. Apart from that my first attempt ended with me almost shitting myself and realizing spray paint is a difficult medium; I'd accidentally painted my entire hand a Satanic shade of red and the paint had dripped all over my stencil. Street art was hard.
About a month later I got my hands on four Bunbun stickers when I did a street art tour in Utrecht. Spreading them was easy, a quick way of adding some color to the world. As I worked on Mission Bunbun I started to appreciate sticker art more and decided to give it a shot while I tried to find out where to get some proper spray cans that wouldn't make me look like a demon. Soon I started designing stickers. It was the start of a new era in my street art life.

To be honest, I had no idea how to design a sticker. Sure, I can draw, but I didn't know how to turn a sketch into a digital design. No, I didn't think about googling that information. I'm old-fashioned and was lucky enough to find a graphic design magazine at the local thrift shop that explained the whole process step by step. Now I just needed a design. I leafed through my old sketchbooks in hopes of finding some inspiration. That's where I saw an image of a cloud puking a rainbow. I converted that sketch into a digital design.
Even though it made my best friend and me laugh, I didn't love this sticker idea. It wouldn't surprise me if some people in the gay community would be offended to see their symbol as puke, so I put that idea on hold. You never know what kind of backlash something silly like this could get online and I didn't want to step on any toes. I didn't want to go through with a design I if I weren't behind it for 100%. Then one day, out of nowhere, I got the perfect idea in mind. A butterfly, but with my name on its wings.


Two weeks after hand painting this design on a purple piece of paper I had a stack of 150 stickers in my room. I was completely in love with them, but also a bit insecure. My stickers aren't the average street art sticker: they're shaped like a butterfly with the word Envy on them in swirly letters, clearly made by a girl. But it was my design and I was proud of my slightly psychedelic stickers. Soon they popped up all over my hometown and the center of Rotterdam. And when summer came, I took it to the next level: I took my stickers with me to Southeast Asia.

While working on Mission Bunbun I'd developed this technique of putting a sticker in the palm of my hand, slapping that hand softly against for example a lamp post in passing. Quick, efficient and not too obvious. Still I was a nervous wreck when I did this at Schiphol Airport right in front of a police van (which I hadn't noticed until my dad pointed it out the minute I vandalized a lamp post). Not the start I was hoping for on my biggest streept art mission to date, but things were much easier on the stop-over in Helsinki, Finland. The only thing that was difficult here was keeping myself to the sticker limit I'd set myself to each country. I couldn't take as many stickers with me as I wanted, that's just one of the downsides to backpacking, so I had about four stickers for Finland, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia each. On top of that I wanted to leave one behind in every city I was going to visit. That was no problem in Finland though, as I only visited Helsinki. There I broke the sea of Rock Church stickers with my Envy butterfly, left one on a bridge near the ferris wheel and put them up on a pole at the bus station and the airport. No problem whatsoever. The real challenge began in Thailand.


Bangkok was full of street art and I couldn't wait to add a little something to the colorful mix. Before I knew it I was down to one sticker, after already taking one from the stack that was meant for Chiang Mai. I had to leave one more sticker in Bangkok, I just had to: I'd found Ox-Alien stickers on a lamp post and really wanted one of mine to be next to one made by my favorite Rotterdam based artist. As I reached out, aiming for a spot next to the Ox-Alien on the lamp post, standing on my toes to reach it, I spotted a police officer in a very important-looking uniform on the other side of the road. I panicked, hoping he wouldn't notice me vandalizing his city. I lost my balance, missed my mark and my sticker ended up half on top of the Ox-Alien sticker. I didn't give myself time to feel bad about it; I quickly walked away before the police officer could come over to see why the weird white girl had fallen over for no apparent reason.

Sticker slappin' in Chiang Mai proved to be a lot easier, but again my stack had disappeared before I knew it. After my jungle trek I sat down with the alarmingly small amount of butterflies I had left. I knew I was going to go to Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos. Hopefully I'd move on to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia afterwards. With that plan in mind I put three stickers aside for each city except for Siem Reap, where we'd probably only be for a day or two to visit Angkor Wat. I was ready for the Lao part of my mission.


Laos made it easy for me to put stickers up. No one gave me weird looks, no one frowned at me, nothing. Now that's usually my goal, but in Laos it's apparently socially accepted to put stickers up everywhere in broad daylight. It made my mission so much easier. Luang Prabang got some Envy butterflies on lamp posts on the bank of the Mekong River. They looked lonely there, as there was barely any street art on the Luang Prabang peninsula. In Vientiane I decided to give my stickers some company, which is why I left one on a traffic sign next to a sticker of a yellow dancing elephant. My favorite sticker location of the entire mission is the lamp post in front of a book store in Vientiane though. That action left me with one sticker less for Phnom Penh. No regrets though. Once a bookworm, always a bookworm.

When I said 'no regrets' just now, I should have said: 'I regretted it a little.' The Cambodian lag of my mission now came down to only three stickers: two for Phnom Penh, one for Siem Reap. Again I left a sticker on the banks of the Mekong river, now in Cambodia's capital. I put it on the flag pole with the Dutch flag on the boulevard. Then the entire mission was over before I knew it. I was proud of myself: I'd made my own street art stickers and had left them in eight cities in five countries over the course of two months. But that wasn't enough.

Half a year has passed since my biggest street art mission yet ended in Cambodia. Since then I've put a few more up in Rotterdam, but I need more. Not just more cities and countries to leave my stickers in, but also more colors. I'm thinking blue and red butterflies. And I definitely need more stickers to continue my mission - because if there is one thing I learned from my sticker rationing this summer, it's that you can never have enough street art stickers with you.

One of the questions I've been frequently asked in my blogging career is: 'Are you really Dutch?' Now I have no idea why I'd lie about that. I'm about as Dutch as they get, but you don't want to know how often I've had to explain that no, my country didn't start World War II; I'm Dutch, not German. And no, I'm not Scandinavian; Denmark is a different place alltogether. Most of the time a mention of my home country of the Netherlands is met with question marks. People in general know very little about this place. We fly under the radar most of the time and I'm not ashamed to admit that that makes me a little sad every now and then. After all, we have a lot of awesome things that make us so unique. Those things are all things I'd love to share with you. Inspired by Steph's 10 Things I Wish You Knew about South Africa, I present you: 10 Things I Wish You Knew about the Netherlands!

More than half of the Netherlands is below sea level. My hometown is approximately 2 meters below sea level and that's nothing special in the western provinces. Centuries ago the place was a swamp. My people built dams, pumped the water out and created land this way. If our dams break, more than half of the country will be flooded. Luckily we're the absolute masters of building dams.
Still not impressed? What if I told you our twelfth province, Flevoland, isn't even a century old? We built Flevoland from scratch by getting rid of the Zuiderzee, our inland sea. Pretty damn impressive, don't you think?

I have to be honest with you: when I say that half of my country shouldn't be here, I do not take the Caribbean islands into account. Aruba, Saba, Sint Maarten and Curaçao are a few of them. They're remnants of the colonial age and their place within the country has changed significantly since then. Some are now Dutch counties, others have become semi-independent. It's a bit of a weird situation, since most people in the provinces are barely aware of the fact that these islands are part of the country, while people on the islands don't always identify as Dutch. Either way, on paper it's all the same country, so if you go to Curaçao you can say you've visited the Kingdom of the Netherlands!

Yes, our official name is the Kingdom of the Netherlands. We have a king, queen and a whole bunch of princes and princesses. Call us old-fashioned, but it's worked for us for centuries. You see, our king doesn't have all that much to say. We've been a constitutional monarchy for well over a century, which means we used the constitution to limit the king's power and make sure the Dutch people would live in a democracy. In fact, we limited the king's influence so far that I wouldn't be able to name one of his official tasks if my life depended on it. Except for visiting a random Dutch city on King's Day and giving a Christmas speech, but I don't think that counts. So basically we're a democracy hanging on to the traditions that come with being a kingdom.

... and depending on your location, also English and Papiemento. Those last two are only official languages on the islands, Frysian only in the northern province of Friesland. Dutch is official everywhere, of course. And even though my country is minuscule, we have loads of dialects and heaps of accents. Most westerners can't make sense of the southern dialects, whereas we use a ton of expressions southerners have never even heard of. It's an amazing situation for someone who loves languages as much as I do.

If you can't ride a bike, are you even Dutch? Seriously, we learn to ride a bike at such a young age that the bike basically becomes an extension of our body. Our cities are filled with brave and reckless cyclists who will not hesitate to take right of way, even when they shouldn't be taking right of way. We own the roads. Remember this and you'll be safe in the Netherlands: never mess with the cyclists!


Sure fire way to tell if you're in the southern provinces of the Netherlands: if there are random chapels and Jesus statues by the side of the road and at crossroads, you're in the south. The southern provinces are Catholic, the northern provinces like protestantism better. And when it comes to other religions we can be assholes, especially when we talk about Islam. We are completely fine with shutting an entire town of from the outside world because you can't repair its bridge on a Sunday, but hijabs send our religious nutcases into hysterics. It's a sad situation for atheists and agnostics like me.

Now this one doesn't apply to me personally, but Dutch people are known for being down-to-earth. We're not easily spooked, brush weird things off and think logically. 'Act normal, that's already crazy enough' is an expression we use that perfectly represents the Dutch down-to-earth mindset. It makes us valuable in crisis situations and, in my opinion, completely boring when it comes to haunted places and urban legends: we have none.

That down-to-earth mindset I mentioned? Yeah, you can throw that right out of the window as soon as the Dutch football team goes to a big international tournament. Okay, I know the team has sucked so bad since 2014 that we didn't even make it to the 2018 World Cup, but if we make it to the next tournament, the Dutch will collectively lose their mind. Entire streets turn orange, our national color. Trees get more decoration thrown on them than the average Christmas tree. Flags will be everywhere, the regular ones and the tiny party flags in red, white and blue are strung from house to house. Supermarkets hand out mascots in red, white, blue and orange. Football is the only possible topic of conversation. This insanity lasts as long as our team is competing. A week after they're out, it's like none of this ever happened and everyone goes back to acting normally, because that's already crazy enough.

Now that we're on the topic of football: football supporters from Amsterdam and Rotterdam hate each other and the other city so bad that it's seeped through into other aspects of life as well. This goes so far that grown men from the Rotterdam area refuse to say 'the A-word' and call our capital '020', its area code, instead. And even though I support a southern club, I do enjoy the discussion on which city is better. Of course Rotterdam has a better university, has better street art and is more important for our economy. I'm biased though: I'm from the Rotterdam area, what did you expect me to say?

Yeah, we make some pretty cool things here. Not just wifi, oh no. Gouda cheese? Dutch. Hagelslag, chocolate sprinkles to put on your bread are Dutch of course. We were the first to legalize gay marriage. We're pretty good at introducing the world to good things. And we make the things you love even better. You like art? Have a look at the Dutch masters. Best DJs in the world? Man, that list would be nothing without the Dutch. Melisandre and Daario Naharis from Game of Thrones? Dutch actors. You're welcome ;)

So you see, we might be small (though we're literally the tallest people in the world), but we're pretty awesome. I haven't even told you about all our amazing cookies yet, but I don't want to overwhelm you with our general amazingness. I hope you'll get to visit the land that shouldn't actually be there. If you do, let me know. I'll be more than happy to give you a local tour of awesomeness.

Every now and then I need to get away from life in the Rotterdam area. I need to get away, explore a new place and experience as many new things as possible. Now I hadn't really gone anywhere since August, so by December I felt like the walls were closing in on me. That's when I got in touch with Ella from Ella Was Here, bought some train tickets and went to visit her in Belgium the day after Christmas. 48 hours and a lot of pictures later I was back home. I had a clear mind and lots of stories to tell. So why not join me as I recount the tales of two bloggers, who went out with their cameras in hand to bring you the best Belgium has to offer?

Dear 2017,
God, it feels good to see you disappear in the rear view mirror. I didn't dare say or write any of these things in your final days, in case you'd come back to bite me in the ass one last time. Actually, you did that anyway by having me run my last race of the year in a storm that almost blew me into a pond. Thanks mate.
I guess you understand why I didn't trust you anymore. Not just because of yesterday's storm, but because of everything you put me through. We had a horrible start together. I spent your first two months crying over an ex-boyfriend. Then, when I finally felt better in April, the whole drama with college started. An internship that ended in disaster, teachers who refused to give me feedback and finally dropping out when I realized how college made me feel miserable every single day.
2017, you were a mess. Family issues, health issues, a broken heart, I went through it all. And on top of all that, you put me through therapy for an inferiority complex. Was there ever a moment when you cut me some slack? If you did, it sure didn't feel that way. I mean, I even lost a job this summer before my first day had even started!
I spent so much time crying and feeling lost that I barely had any time for the goals I had set for your 365 days. I didn't even look at my Make it Happen List. I'm more lost than ever when it comes to my future career. And remember when I said I wanted 180 college credits to my name by the time you'd end? Please don't make me laugh, we all know how that ended.
I lost everything to you. You were a complete asshole. I hated you with a passion. You were by far the worst year of my life and...


Dear 2017,
I'm sorry for saying all those horrible things about you. I let my emotions get the better of me, though you have to admit that you were never easy on me. You forced me to take a long hard look at my life and make some changes. Because of you I learned to accept and cope with my giftedness. I realized I'd never be happy if I'd stayed in that awful college.
Of course I hoped to go to university right after the summer, which you didn't allow, but at least I landed a good job so I can save up for tuition. I consider myself lucky that I managed to get that job. So I guess you weren't 100% evil, 2017. It all hurt like hell, but some of the things you put me through were needed. You taught me so many lessons and put me down a path I never would have taken on my own. It was a difficult path, but at least I made it. In fact, when I think about the places I visited and the people I met along the way, I guess you could say it was worth it.
My trip to Antwerp in February was amazing. I fell in love with Edinburgh in March, where I met Zach. The summer days in Southeast Asia made me feel much better about my life and I'd never be where I am today without Julie, whom I met in the Thai jungle. December was almost over when I went to Belgium again. I met Annelou, who shares my passion for street art, Ella from Ella Was Here, who helped me accept my giftedness, and Serkan, who showed me that not all guys are liars when they say they care about you.


Dear 2017,
I'll always remember you as a hard and seemingly endless year. You were harsh and at times even cruel, but taught me some valuable lessons. The important thing to remember is that I hit rock bottom while you were around. From here on out, things can only get better, and to be honest, they already did get a little better after June. December even came close to being awesome. I guess you weren't so horrible after all. Just make sure your younger sibling 2018 is a little kinder to me.