My blog went silent in March. I posted once in April. Nothing went live in May and June. The biggest reason for that, as I've in my previous post, was my grandma's passing after four weeks in hospital and three weeks in a hospice. That wasn't the only reason though. There were other, more cheerful reasons, such as completing my first year of university. Making friends who kept me entertained with top-tier memes. But most importantly: I spent a lot of time traveling.

Let's go back to February. After visiting Paris, I chose the Dutch city of Dordrecht for my next destination of the Twelve Cities Challenge. I went there by boat on the first sunny day of the year. and explored the city center. In March, I took the train to The Hague and did the same thing there. We did the things a typical tourist should do: we visited a medieval jail and the Binnenhof, where the Dutch government resides. We were good stereotypical tourists.


I never got around to writing about Dordrecht and The Hague, because I had to survive my third block at university. Once finals were over, I got on a plane to Austria. I spent a full day in Vienna, where I watched the marathon and walked along the banks of the Danube in search of street art. The next day, I took a boat down the Danube to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Bratislava became city number for out of twelve for the Twelve Cities Challenge, as well as the place where I added another scare to the collection on my knees during a mountain biking trip that one-upped my Lao cycling adventure in terms of bizarreness. It was an awesome trip.

Upon return from Slovakia, I unpacked my bag only to pack it again the next day for a trip to Ireland. I was going to meet up with a friend on the Emerald Isle, but things didn't go as expected. I ended up third-wheeling my way to Cork, then found myself in Belfast with two Slovenian girls whom I met on the day that we left for Northern Ireland. The three days I spent in Belfast flew by, filled with good music, bad ideas and endless shouts of "Oh, me wee legs! I need to rest me wee legs!"


I returned home only to rush to the hospital and visit grandma. Traveling was put on the backburner for a while, but I did manage to visit Ella from Ella Was Here in Ghent. We had a Eurovision viewing party in an Airbnb, I hid under a blanket as the results came in and did the "Mezdi dance" after watching too much Ex On The Beach: Double Dutch. City number five was firmly in the pocket after that weekend.

In June, I visited my only true friend from my college days. We spent the day in Breda, where I kept getting distracted by street art in the alleys branching off the main streets. It was a relaxed, fun day that brought me one step closer to completing the Twelve Cities Challenge.

In all those months, I didn't blog about any of these trips. Not even once. You know what that means: This blog is going on a digital trip all over Europe. Buckle up, it's going to be a weird ass ride full of random nonsense and bad ideas. In other words: Your regular Lost in Translation content will be back soon.