In July, I traveled to Europe for the first time in over 20 years. In fact the last time I went, I was way too young and I really only remember driving around in a Lego car at the Legoland in Denmark. This visit was for TwitchCon in Amsterdam, their first convention since 2019 since they others were cancelled due to Covid.
Amsterdam, July 14-18:
The trip was mostly to meet and hang out with friends from Twitch from over the past few years. I met up with three other streamers in Salt Lake City (Noglek, Spitfire0088, JaredMetalhead) and the four of us flew to Amsterdam on a 10-hour KLM flight. When we arrived, we were greeted by our friends from Europe and east coast U.S. (IamFericho, Mizzmacs, NoctisLP, and CzarOmega). It was super exciting to meet most of the people in person for the first time ever!
Almost all of us were staying at an AirBnB together, which is the way to go for big groups who travel together. The convention itself was a little bit of a let down when compared to the ones I've been in California (San Jose, San Diego), with small space and not as many exhibitors/sponsors as I've seen in the past. But I mostly just chalk that up to being in Europe and the first TwitchCon in 3 years.
Amsterdam is beautiful city and really well kept! The streets are super clean. If you go to Amsterdam central where the concave of the city is, it's absolutely gorgeous. I loved seeing all the small canals around the city roads and buildings. The Netherlands is not known for it's food, but their snacks are pretty good. I especially enjoyed the dutch pancakes and as a group we tried some really cool flavors like smoked salmon and cream cheese, asian teriyaki chicken, and fried egg and bacon.
Amsterdam was the highlight of the trip and definitely my favorite part, since it was the time all 8 of us were all together and you know how the story goes, the more the merrier. After Amsterdam, it was on to other countries, since I wanted to explore some of Europe since we paid so much for our flights out there...
Germany, July 18-20:
Driving to Germany was really cool, as it's true what they say about the autobahn that features no speed limit. We had a rental car (Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross) that I was only able to max out around 105mph, but that was good enough for me. Really fun to drive several miles at that speed. :)
When we arrived at Germany, we had a friend (NoctisLP) still with us and he basically showed us around two cities, Dusseldorf and Cologne. Unfortunately the weather was really hot and humid those two days, which made walking around during the day pretty uncomfortable. It didn't help that the AirBnB we stayed at didn't have air conditioning either, but I guess this is common in some European regions.
My favorite things about Germany were the food and beer! I especially loved this breakfast meal called "mett", which is literally raw pork served on a half-roll and topped with fresh chopped white onions. I guess the meat is taken from finer parts of the ham, so it's not dangerous to eat. But of course, it would never fly in the U.S., which is why it was such a rare and exciting opportunity for me. I also had a pork shank for dinner one of the days and you know I love the fatty meats around the bone! The two beers I liked were Alt in Dusseldorf and Kolsch in Cologne, and apparenty the two cities rival each other, which I found interesting.
Belgium, July 21-22:
We drove through Belgium and spent a day in Antwerp, which was an absolutely beautiful city. It was nice to have a viewer from Twitch show us around the city and be our tour guide for the day. I tried a couple Belgian waffles, and while they were good maybe they were too hyped up for me. Unfortunately we spent the whole day outside and barely spent any time at our AirBnB for the night, which was actually pretty cool being a section of castle (although the interior looks pretty normal).
As we exited Belgium, we toured Brussels and ended up doing a couple touristy things like Atomium and Mini Europa. And I will admit I really loved the Lambic beer in Belgium, which is a very sour beer, but for me it was really easy to drink. :)
France, July 22-24:
It was a 3.5 hour drive from Brussels to Paris and we got in pretty late on Thursday night. It was really stressful driving around Paris, their roads are literally webs of streets with no real order and some streets you have to merge across one another without any lines in the road. As much as I hated driving in this city, I will admit it was a sight to see. Probably the coolest architecture of all the countries we had seen so far.
We actually checked out Disneyland Paris on the first day, which had some noticeable differences compared to Diseyland in California, but I would say the parks are about 80% similar. A few rides are different such as Ratatouille, Cars, and Indiana Jones. We saw both parks (Magic Kingdom and Walt Disney Studios) in one day, so it was definitely a long day. The final day in Paris we took it easy and drove around the Arc de Triumph, checked out the Eiffel Tower, and ended the night with a dinner cruise that traveled the Seine river and you could see so many cool attractions over the course of a fancy 2.5 hour boat ride. I highly recommend doing this if you visit Paris.
I had a ton of fun in Europe, but I will admit that maybe I planned too many countries in the time we had. I think part of that was because I wanted to see Paris, but we also wanted to experience our friend's country of Germany, and Belgium was just on the way. If I go back, I would like to see less countries and spend more time in each. Regardless, it was still a great trip and again, it's always the most fun to meet friends that I make on Twitch since it's such a big part of my life now. Next up will be TwitchCon in San Diego come October, which is something I'm really looking forward to!
