Tales of The Bucket Book part 1: Skipping school

Guten Tag!

So as you can see I just posted my pre-japan blog, which is the fist blog since my internship last year and my profile needed to be updated a lot so I was updating my profile and the route-thingy in "maps" and I got this crazy idea to also post some stories about my bucketlist experiences, because some of them also include traveling and yeah Idk maybe you are interested in these experiences too.

THEREFORE I shall now start writing the Tales of The Bucket Book. 

Part 1 of ToTBB, this one, is about me skipping school with my mum and my uncle-person (it's a long story, he's not even family but I've always called him uncle for as long as I can remember. He feels more like a grandpa to me tho but I'm still going to call him uncle.) and we drove to Vaals. And just so you know: my mum was okay with me skipping school because it was another item on my bucketlist (Well, I think that was the reason why she agreed, but honestly I'm not even sure why she did that... maybe she is secretly a rebel, that would explain why I am so rebellious.) Anyways, so my uncle, my mum and I drove to Vaals, which is the highest point of the Netherlands AND it's the location of the three countries point AND it has a playground! So the reason why we went there was because I wanted to stand in 3 countries at the same time. The first thing we did was park the car and walk up to the intersection of the three borders. We stood in front of 3 poles and we thought that was the intersection, however it turned out to be the indication of the Hightest point of the Netherlands... We took some picture with the poles and walked some further. We saw one pole, surrounder by 3 flags and lines on the floor that indicated the borders and we coudn't be wrong this time: THIS was the intersection!. So after the tourists in front of us had left the spot, we walked up to the pole and the first thing I did was try to stand in all the countries at the same time. But the thing was: there were 3 countries and I only had 2 feet (which somehow I hadn't thought of before) BUT I MANAGED TO STAND IN ALL THE COUNTRIES ANYWAY!!. I had my left foot on the border of The Netherlands and Germany and my right foot on the border of The Netherlands and Belgium and I was secretly pretty proud of myself, eventhough it wasn't a difficult puzzle to solve. Meanwhile my uncle was teaching my mum how to take decent pictures with her new camera, so they took pictures of me being all happy about standing on borders :). 

After that, we walked across the sqaure that was the highest point of The Netherlands and we saw the playground. And because I have the mind of an 8 year old child, I went in and played in the highest playground of The Netherlands (Jeez, why do I keep mis-typing "The Netherlands"?!). 

When I was done (aka forced to stop playing) we walked back to café near the car. We had some hot chocolate because it was freezing and I was shaking so badly eventhough I wore my very warm winter coat and my uncle's beanie-hat (which was waaaay too big for me). After that we got back into the car and drove a few meters back to some tower we came across on our way to the highest point of The Netherlands.  The tower was a watchtower with a glass skywalk. It was 34 meters high and thankfully we had to take the elevator to get up there. (My uncle was recovering from a very severe pneumonia and wasn't able to climb the stairs). When we reached the top of the tower, it was very windy and I felt a bit scared because for a minute I thought the wind would blow me off the tower, but than I realized that that was not very realistic so I walked over to the skywalk. The first part of the skywalk was made out of iron grid and you could look down through the holes and it was pretty fascinating. It was like you were walking on air or something. The last part of the skywalk was made out of glass, and the idea of it was pretty good, however many people had already been up there so the glass was not see-through anymore due to the damage and the dirt. However, the view from that point was very pretty and we could see some villages in both The Netherlands and Germany, which I found pretty cool. 

When we were on the earth again, we walked back to the car and drove to Valkenburg where we went shopping and sight-seeing. We visited a cave in which artist had made sand sculptures from famous movies which was very interesting to see. The less-nice part of it was that my uncle was still trying to teach my mum camera-tricks so it took a while to get out of the cave. (Luckily for you, there is one really funny picture of me photo-bombing, which I'll add in the gallary)

When we were done in Valkenburg, I had turned into ice. I litterally felt like an icicle, even after my mum had turned on the heater in the car, I was still cold and shaky. However, it was completely worth it because I managed to complete 3 items on my bucket list in one day, which is kind of impressive. 

• stand in 2 countries at the same time (CHECK)
• stand in 3 countries at the same time (CHECK)
• skip school (CHECK)

To conclude: this was a very fun and succesful day!