Texas Girl Takes on the World: Outside My Window

Sometimes my vision of the way other countries will look is a bit skewed. I tend to assume their infrastructures will be light years behind ours in the U.S. and what I will see when going between countries is some "dirt-road-horse-and-buggy-fetching-water-in-buckets-while-wearing-clogs" side show. House Hunters International on HGTV is partially responsible - the stuff they show in Europe is sometimes ruins on a dirt path with a ramshackle hut standing there for 300K Euros.

Forgive me for that. That's part of the reason I love traveling, to allow reality to replace my backwards assumptions. And today, I guess the Netherlands and Belgium showed me and HGTV.

Mama and I took the Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris, about a three-hour ride that I was so excited to take because I wanted to see the scenery, the countryside, the way "regular folks" live. Plus, I really love train rides, a hold over from my life on the East Coast going between DC And NYC. Here are a few observations from our ride as we stopped through the Amsterdam Airport, Antwerpen and Brussels:

I'm pretty sure I found the "motherload" of marijuana farms just outside of Amsterdam. As we were rolling along, we saw hundreds of greenhouses that I assume housed all the varieties of marijuana sold in the country. Now yes, the country is also known for having beautiful flowers, so there were probably a bunch of damn tulips in those greenhouses. But, it's more exciting and hilarious to think that I discovered where the magic happens. Let's go with that. LOL
Pulling into Antwerpen reminds me of going into Grand Central Station in NYC. Graffiti lines the walls around the track. Actually, most of the train walls along the entire train ride were covered in graffiti. It looks like that's a universal spot for people to leave their mark, get out their frustrations or practice. It was actually cool to see that form of expression transcend culture and locale.
Brussels is really a booming city. From the train it appeared to have lots of corporations and slightly reminded me of pulling into the train station in Philadelphia or Wilmington, Delaware. Big buildings, mixed with high-rise apartments, clean lines, very nice and modern.
Some of the homes are very modern, awesome and glorious - I would totally live in them. It's like most cities, where the suburbs offer more space and sprawl than the city.
I hear Belgium has the best french fries in the region...I wish I could have stuck my head out the door when we stopped in Brussels to get a wiff.

Overall, beautiful, comfortable and quick train ride. Really excited to see if the ride from Paris to London will look similar. I definitely want to add Belgium to the list of places to visit next time. If a place makes great fries, it HAS to be awesome right?!