By Jackson Allen
During this last Spring Break, I was chosen to go to The Netherlands with the Dutch Touch CBC soccer camp. I went along with my dad, 6 of my friends, Coach Mo and Coach Vader, and for 11 days we toured around Germany and The Netherlands playing soccer against their teams. This experience was a once in a lifetime event, and I’m very thankful I got the chance.
In Europe, the whole scheme of things is different. Over there, everything is a lot more cultural and meaningful. First of all, they have significant foods that can only be found over there. For example, their fries are thick cut, and they serve stroopwaffles which is very well known over there.
This was my 7th time flying in a plane so I was used to it, but over half of my friends have not even been into an airport. First, we flew to Detroit which was a very nice airport. It is the headquarters of Delta which was a plus, but the only bad thing was we only have a 2 hour layover. When we boarded the plane to Amsterdam, I did not know that they gave free eye covers and ear buds, so although it wasn’t much, it was a bit exciting.
On the plane, I watched around 4 movies and they were mostly comedy. We arrived in Amsterdam around 8:30, and I immediately got Starbucks. We had to stay at the airport for 1 hour until the bus came and we loaded up. The ride was around 2 hours, and was very dreadful because we had not leg room, and everyone was so loud. When we arrived in Groesbeck (which was the town we were staying in at that time), we unloaded all of our luggage into are rooms, and screwed around until we had to go to training.
That night, we played out first “Voetball” game and we got demolished. They play a lot differently over there because of the coaching differences. They play a lot more physical, and most of them are 5’6” and just ran over us. After that game, we were all exhausted and just wanted to go to bed, but there were 3 kids that just stayed up until 2 in the morning, and bothered everyone.
Over the next few days, it was just the same routine over and over, until we went to Amsterdam. This was probably the most exciting day of the whole trip because we got to shopping. It was probably the busiest place I have ever seen and also the weirdest. When we were walking down the side streets, we walked past a coffee shop, which is definitely not the same as here. When we kept walking a little bit, we saw Cannabis shops which was awkward because it smelled very strong.
After we visited Amsterdam, we went to Germany where we went to the Borussia Dortmund stadium and it was amazing! It is called the most beautiful stadium in the world, and for a good reason. When we walked onto the field, it was so clean and sleek. We also went into the locker room and saw all of the professional player’s lockers, like Pulosic and Gotze.
After we visited the stadium, we went to Dusseldorf which was a very beautiful city. It was a great shopping district, and also had great ice cream. The most surprising thing there was when we saw 3 Super Cars going down the road, a Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Maserati.
For the last 3 days, we stayed with a guest family which was a great experience, because it showed us a little bit more about their daily life. Every morning for breakfast, we had break, Nutella, and HaselHag which is milk chocolate sprinkles. On the second to last day, we went to a place called bounce, which is like a Skyzone and we were the only ones there. After that, we played with the Dutch players, and we actually stood a chance, and won!
The morning we left, it was very hectic because we were at the airport for around 3 hours just going through security because of the terrorist attack that happened the day before in London. We would have missed our plane, but luckily it was delayed 1 hour. We had a 1 hour layover in Minneapolis and then, we got on a small jet and went home. It was a long night but worth it to see my family.
