The Netherlands – 3 Cities, 3 Friends, 3 Generations Part 3: Eindhoven

While visiting my friends in Amsterdam, I took a quick trip down to Eindhoven to visit one last friend in the Netherlands. Her name is Manon. Karen and myself met her while travelling in Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia.

In comparison to my friends in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Manon is also from a completely different generation than them. My friends in Rotterdam are in their late 30s to early 40s and is building a family. While my friends in Amsterdam are in their late 20s to early 30s travelling the world while building up their career. Manon is just a little bit over 19 years old just starting her university studies while backpacking whenever she can.

She gave me a glimpse of a carefree life as someone just starting college/university while showing me what life is like in the Eindhoven area.

Eindhoven

I took the train from Amsterdam central station to reach Eindhoven. From there, Manon picked me up from the station and showed me around the area.

Eindhoven is a popular place amongst the Dutch people as a shopping district. There are many street vendors in the area, especially around noon time.

The city also has many different variety of cafes and international food options. Manon took me to one food court area full of international foods for us to eat.

Afterwards, we did a bit of exploration (and when I say a bit, it’s because Eindhoven is really not that big) before heading over to her house to hangout with her family.

Life in a small town Dutch household

When we arrived at her family’s home, she introduced me to her sister and her golden retriever.

Playing cards with her family was very interesting because the Dutch people call the suits in a deck of cards differently than we do in North America (or even in Asia).

For example, to them, Diamonds is called windows. I guess if you turn your head sideways, it kind of looks like a window. And spades is called “kicking it”. No matter how many times I turn my head, I can’t picture spades looking like someone is kicking something. Anyhow, no judgement for the Dutch people. I suppose someone was under the influence of something when they made that name and it stuck.

Cloves and hearts is the same and off we go as we shared different card games from each of our cultures and countries. Manon’s family taught me a card game that was quite complicated so I won’t go into detail because honestly, I already forgot how to play it.

I taught them how to play BIG 2, which is popular both in Canada and in Asia. They learned the game quite fast. While shuffling the card, they were amazed at how different I shuffle the cards from them. I taught them my shuffling method and they were very amused.

Saying goodbye to the Netherlands

After spending an afternoon playing cards and eating snacks, it was time to go. I invited Manon to come visit Karen and myself in Canada and she seemed eager to come see us.

I head back to Amsterdam to spend my final evening there before leaving the next morning to go to Germany.

The Netherlands has been awesome and I really like the Dutch people. They are hands down, one of my top five favourite people in the whole Europe.

Next stop…Fussen, Germany and Rome, Italy.

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