Southside & the Netherlands: Scarfies in Europe.

You may have noticed that most of our blog posts begin with some sort of travel-related shenanigan which wasn’t funny at the time, but in retrospect it’s hilarious to laugh at our expense. This post is no exception.
When we arrived in the middle of god-knows-where (somewhere in the south of Germany) for the four day camping Southside Festival to meet up with Ally and Molly, excitement levels were pretty high. This was quickly dampened by the thunderstorm which broke out as we struggled to put up our non-waterproof tent. Determined to keep our spirits high, we crawled into the tiny tent which could only just fit all 4 of us it with our bags, and huddled for warmth, taking turns to puff up our double air-mattress. We woke up many times in the night, partly because the mattress was deflating, partly because there were raucous Germans singing along to Rammstein outside our tent, but mostly because of the amount of water entering our tent. Thankfully the days were dry and relatively warm, so we could lie in the sun, dry out our sleeping bags, drink sangria and forget about the nights.

 Money saving initiative #4: That canvas shell that goes over most tents and keeps it dry is definitely not worth the extra 40euro - go instead for the cheaper, non-waterproof option. Even if you've seen the weather forecast and it predicts thunderstorms.

 Although we spent some long, wet, sleepless nights in our tent, we grew pretty fond of it.

Drying off in the sun with a cheeky wee boogie. We introduced the Germans to Flight of the Conchords, they didn't get it.

We almost forgot to mention, the festival itself was mindblowingly great. European festivals are on another scale to NZ ones (unsurprisingly)! Alt-J, Two Door Cinema Club, Ben Howard, Frightened Rabbit, Bloc Party, Of Monsters and Men, the Arctic Monkeys and of course the National were all amazing. Rammstein must also be mentioned, for exceptionally terrifying use of fire on stage.

Matt Berninger you beautiful, beautiful man. WE ALMOST TOUCHED HIS FACE.

Toning it down after the festival in Alex's study town, Tubingen.

After our night of recovering in Tubingen, we were ready to face our next challenge: Amsterdam. Here Molly introduced us to her friend Lieke, who made a very good tour guide. Of all the cities we’ve been to, Amsterdam was probably the most useful one to have a guide for – Lieke showed us the ins and outs, the highs and lows, the dos and donts of this crazy city. Getting around Amsterdam is a bit like that scene in Dodgeball where the guy says “If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball”, except instead of just cars it’s with bikes, trams and pedestrians too. There was even an educational side to Amsterdam as we visited the Anne Frank house and the Sex Museum - one of them was sobering and informative, the other was shocking and hilarious.

The team in Amsterdam. Beers and our first introduction to bitterballen.

 Everyone in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and northern Europe for that matter, gets around by bike. It's the cool thing to do; they're at the top of the food chain. Here is an example of one such bike.

 In this photo, you see an assortment of lots of different bikes all hanging out together.

 Molly in action, riding one of these bike things. See how it makes you look badass?

 HOW MANY BIKES IS TOO MANY BIKES?

Raw herring with pickle and onion, somewhat of a Dutch delicacy.

Being students at heart, our next stop was in Lieke’s study town, the Dunedin of the Netherlands; Groningen. We have to be honest, there isn’t a lot to do in Groningen other than get amongst the student culture, which is exactly what we did. Our favourite bar was Chupitos – think 'Shot Shack' in Wellington, but with more epic shots. Shots that light the whole bar on fire, shots with flames on which to toast marshmellows, shots with flower buds which numb your whole mouth… Lots of shots. Due to this we don’t have very many photos of Groningen, but we would recommend a cheeky visit!

Money saving initiative #5: Buy your food from the wall! It's cheap and avoids human interaction. Here Phoebe is opting for a delicious kroket, which resembles a burnt, crumbed sausage filled with mince and gravy. Mmmm.

Lol. Geddit?

Next time: Continuing north for some Scandinavian adventures.