Land of the rising sun – 03/3/'14

Interesting trip it was, we saw a lot, walked a lot, talked a lot (and loudly), experienced and learned a lot. This study-tour will be spoken, thought and laughed about even weeks after everybody returned to the Netherlands.

Mixed feelings I would say. It has been three weeks which is a long time, still I have the feeling I’ve been there for months. Not because it was bad, solely by the amount of data throughput in my brain. Most of the time I could hardly remember what we had done the day before.

So no it’s time to reflect, while sitting in an airplane cruising over the snow white Siberian lands at 900 km/h. This morning most of us woke up at about 600 hours, took a shower and had some breakfast, where others just stayed in bed. Although it wasn’t a so called ‘Darwin’ process this time. For those who stayed in the bed the journey wasn’t finished. A few (3) would head to Vietnam that day, one to Cambodia and the rest (6) stayed behind in japan. I hope they enjoy their stay and may their trips help them recuperate from our last three amazing weeks. That’s all I’m able to say about them as I’m going to our (still) beloved Netherlands. (Fun fact: most people just know the Netherlands as Holland which is technically speaking incorrect.)

Smooth sailing is the correct term for the travel to the airport as I’ve seen the inside of my eyelids for most the time. Of course aware of every station we’ve passed making sure to get out on time. Dozing in a metro or a train is a feature acquired in Japan. The first two weeks I didn’t sleep/doze at all during our travels, but as one gets tired enough eventually everybody succumbs to nodding “knikkenbollen”. I believe that for every one of us there is evidence for that crime. The rest of the trip will be devoted to staying awake, because we will arrive in Enschede at about 2300 hours.

It’s a shame we have to wait about two and a half hours at Frankfurt before flying further to Schiphol. We took off at 700 hours from our hostel at this moment it is about 1330 hours and we already traveled as long as thirteen and a half hours. And at the moment of writing we just left St. Petersburg behind and are above the gulf of Finland. Still a long way to go before arriving at home.

Frankfurt of course is a whole different story. In Japan we joked around about the post-japan trauma we might get. It really was no joke at all. Walking with my luggage to our gate I tripped over three people, the moving walkway was clogged by people standing in the middle. It was a nightmare, why couldn’t people just walk straight or stand at one side of the moving walkway?? Fortunately we got to our gate uninjured and got on with our final flight to Amsterdam. Which was not interesting at all, taxi from landing until we arrived at the gate on Schiphol almost took longer than the entire flight from Frankfurt to Amsterdam.

As expected we all got our luggage quickly and arrived at the train station in time to get a train earlier than planned (with a switch in Amersfoort). Still thinking about the train system in Japan which was (except for the first day because of heavy snow) flawless, our train arrived fashionably late with a delay of 5 minutes. Then there was the problem that we didn’t know where the doors would open. We were clueless and already missed the Japanese system. We all got on the train with reluctance, questioning ourselves… why did we leave Japan?. 5 minutes is not that much I must agree, but as we progressed the delay got longer and longer. At Hilversum the delay was about 15 minutes, on a route which shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes. Our chance to get the switch at Amersfoort was lost. So we got out of our train and waited there for the train we had planned to take in the first place. After running for a vending machine at the other end of the station we all got on the right train straight to Enschede. After staring out the window for a while we arrived at Hengelo, where it was the end of our journey together. We said goodbye to each other because I was the only one taking the bus. After the bus trip and a little walk, I got to my home. It was 11 PM, almost 24 hours after leaving the hostel. Wrecked, tired, amazed and maybe a little sad I went to bed. With the last thoughts about the hard matrasses and flimsy pillows in Japan I went to sleep…

Oyasumi nasai!

By: Eelco Bussink

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