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I’ve been away from my family during Eid celebration for the last 4 years. Alhamdulillah there are many friends with whom I can celebrate this special day. This year celebration was also special because I had some reunions with my old friends in The Netherlands, Belgium, and France. I made the trip with Vivi, a friend of mine from Eindhoven. Vivi had never been to France, so we planed to include France in our short round trip. It’s the best thing of living in a Schengen country, everywhere is so close!

We started the trip by visiting Mbak Wiwi in Rotterdam. Mbak Wiwi is an old friend from Muslim student association in Rotterdam. She kindly invited us to break the last fasting together with typical Lebaran food such as lontong and gulai Padang. The next day we went to Santoso Center and celebrated Eid with the Indonesian community there. Santoso Center is a special culture center where you can find a large group of Indonesian, Dutch and Surinam Muslim people mingle together. No wonder the Eid speech was given in three languages: Dutch, Indonesian, and Javanese!

In the afternoon we departed to Brugge in Belgium to visit Mbak Imelda and her husband, Bang Nico. Mbak Imelda used to live in Rotterdam and she is going to deliver her baby soon. Brugge is a famous and touristic city in Belgium. Its city center looks like an open museum where buildings from the 17th centuries are still well preserved in their original shapes. However, due to railway construction, we arrived late around 7PM. We went straight to the city center and took a couple of pictures in Brugge city centrum before Mbak Imelda and Bang Nico, picked us up. We visited their home in Beernem and ate Belgian fries and fish sate! It was a nice reunion since I haven’t et her since Feb 2006, too bad it’s too short.

Around 10PM they drove us to Fatima’s place in Deinze. I lived with Fatima for 2 months when I did my Master in Rotterdam. In December 2005 she moved to Belgium to study nursing. At first we planed to go to Euro Disney in Paris, but due to time restriction (since we have to catch an early train to go back to the Netherlands) the plan was changed. On Sunday morning we went to Lille, a city near the border between Belgium and France. The city is beautiful, especially the Vieux (Old) Lille. After a few hours walking around, we returned to Belgium.

To our surprise, on the train there’s a French lady who politely talked to us in Bahasa! "Halo Mbak, datang dari Indonesia, ya?" asked Melanie Martini to us. Melanie was so happy to have chance to talk to me and Vivi in Bahasa. She lived in Jogja for 2 years  and she told us how much she loves Indonesia: the country, the people, the culture, and the food. How proud we were to hear it from a turned out to be a former CCF Director. Before saying good bye Melanie gave us her name card and invited us to come again to Lille, how sweet of her.

After almost 2 hours trip by train we arrived in Antwerpen CentraI Station to change train to the Netherlands. We took a small round tour nearby the station. Antwerpen is the city of jewelry. The first things we saw when we walked out the station are diamond shops along the way its main road. Too bad they are too expensive hehehe… The second thing we recognized was the strong smell of Belgian wafels; so tempting! So we indulged our self with some wafel and ice cream!

It’s almost 9 o’clock in the evening when we finally reached Hertogenbosch, a city located 10 minutes by train from Eindhoven, our final destination. In this station I was almost separated from Vivi when the train door was closed in front of our very eyes while Vivi was still on the platform. Vivi rushed to one officer and persuaded him to open the door, and thanks God the door miraculously was opened and we laughed all the way imagining how things would be if we were separated.

So in overall it was a pleasant trip although we felt so tired on our trip back. I slept over at Vivi’s place in Eindhoven and on Monday, after making pictures with the giant bowling, one of the Eindhoven’s landmark, I took a morning train back to Utrecht, straight to my office.

To Vivi who is going to leave for Scotland to start her PhD in November, all the best for your study. I really had a fun trip! Hope I could visit you in Dundee before I leave the Netherlands