Date:5/17/2025-5/28/2025
Destination: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg
Goal: Coasters, Culture
Distance: 4079 Miles
Means of Travel: Flight
Potential Credits: 39
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A windmill extends four latticed wooden blades from a colorful painted hub.
"You're too basic to leave Ohio," they said. "You're missing out, quit being a pussy and get amongst it," I was told. And in the face of awful, gatekeepy behavior from members of the CoasterForce forums, I packed my shit onto a plane and went to Sweden and Denmark last summer. And it was one of the best, most memorable experiences of my life. Traveling for coasters was not new, going internationally (even overseas) was something I had been around all my life, but getting to do something I love that much in beautiful Sweden got me hooked. I wanted to do more coasters overseas, much more.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A logo reading "BENELUX 2025" with the X being made up of a windmill, and three green and orange tulips in the corner. Below the windmill it reads "#Benelux2025." |
My bucket list has all kinds of cool places on it, but not all of those places have the coaster caliber you find in Scandinavia. So I figured I'd pick the next place I wanted to go based on their parks, as I couldn't pick from any other criteria. Between Untamed, Kondaa, Ride to Happiness, and amid rumors that Walibi Holland would be adding not one but two dueling Raptor coasters, the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) was practically screaming at me to go enjoy a few beers, see some windmills and castles, and get absolutely wrecked on some very violent, aggressive coasters.
My buddy John, who has done coasters with me as well as a few other shared interests, ended up doing this trip with me. He's even more seasoned as a traveler than myself, with country credits as far away as Southeast Asia. He's been a partner in crime before, but nothing on the scale of this.
Dag 0 / Jour 0
I had been running around like a chicken with its head cut off to get what I needed ready for this trip. New sneakers, a new card reader, new travel tracphone, and I hadn't gotten much rest but there's no rest for the wicked. Eventually, I was able to crash, shower, and go to dinner at Red Robin with my mother where a storm nearly ripped the place apart. But afterwards, I managed to sleep in, finish packing that morning, and my mother left her photography class early to drive me to DAY.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett, a 30 year old man with green eyes and sandy brown hair, sits in an airport terminal wearing glasses, a green Mystic Timbers hoodie, and a green lanyard adorned with yellow sunflowers. |
I love flying out of my home airport since it's so close by. But the downside is that you get through TSA in two minutes and then you're basically killing an hour and a half before you board. So that's what I did, it took forever, but I ended up aboard my flight as planned.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On the tarmac of an airport, two air planes can be seen beyond the blue tip of a wing. One is the green tail with the shamrock insignia of Aer Lingus, the other is an American plane with green snow-capped mountains on the tail. |
We landed at my connection in Chicago and seemed to kind of stroll around aimlessly on the tarmac before going to the gate. The pilot told us that a plane was stuck because a lady had gotten up to pee and it couldn't move until she sat down, disrupting a ton of air traffic. Did see this cool American plane though, despite their airline sucking ass.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A plate with a flatbread, a sandwich, cheese cubes, and some pasta sits next to a bowl of red soup. |
Upon arrival at ORD, I decided to burn a lounge pass to kick off Benelux 2025 in style. There was pasta, wine and cheese, and other typical airport lounge fare. I had a few drinks at the bar, realized my flight was boarding soon, and hoofed it across a crowded O'Hare to a chaotic terminal full of Dutch people!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Out a window is a plane painted with a Pikachu and a few other Eeveelution Pokemon. |
Also saw the Pokemon Eeveelution plane from the bar.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett sits in the aircraft. |
Boarding my flight I was told my window seat had been reassigned, a little annoying but at least I was in an aisle and not flying bitch. And I was next to a very nice Dutch couple who chatted a little, so they were very nice.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a blue tray on an airplane traytable sits a TV dinner labeled "PERI PERI CHICKEN," a blue wrapped Cheesecake Brownie, a pat of butter, a dinner roll, and a brown paper packet of silverware. |
Hey, did you hear that joke about the airline food? Some standup comic was laughing about how bad it is.
We all know airline food is the worst, and the worse the food, the better the airline. And this was confirmation I was right for liking United, this airline food is ass! The rice in this peri peri chicken was undercooked and had a gritty gravel consistency, the chicken was the same frozen grilled chicken breast in the lounge, and the sauce was like a generic red pepper sauce. But that rice? Blech! I told the flight attendant it was undercooked, but I always have a laugh with them over it if the food is terrible.
Dag 1 / Jour 1
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a cellophane wrapper sits a bagel sandwich with cheese baked over top of it. |
After gaming for a bit, I decided to try and sleep, and got 90 minutes of sleep (typical in a night for me), and woke up to warm red sunlight blazing in through the cabin at what would be ungodly hours of the night back home. We were served breakfast of these awesome bagel sandwiches.
When the plane dipped down below the low clouds that perpetually covered the turbines and polders of this country, I got my first glimpse at Nederland for myself. "My god, it's flat," I couldn't help but remark. From the sky, you can usually make out some texturing on the ground, even in the low rolling cornfields of Ohio, but this looks different than even a flight over the Midwest. Someone could've made a cardboard diorama with fake grass and little wind turbines and ditches out of that acrylic water stuff and stuck it outside my window and I wouldn't have known any differently.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a city street sits a large postmodern building that says "Schiphol." |
And just like that sequence in Fault In Our Stars, our plane hit the tarmac at Schiphol and that was country number eight for me! I got a flood of texts, including the Welcome to The Netherlands from Boost, and waited for my data to connect so I could hit John up and pick a meeting point.
...and waited. Where is it? I thought, as my new travel phone searched for a signal. Eventually, I just linked to Schiphol internet and found him at baggage claim. From there we hoofed it to Avis to get our rental car, a green Toyota Yaris, and a very jet lagged John took the wheel to our first stop: Zaans Schanse.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Across a shallow ditch under a tree, one can see a Dutch town and green grassy field, with the skyline dominated by a brown windmill and a green windmill. |
For those of you who remember my visit to Skansen in Stockholm, this is basically the Dutch equivalent, and it's completely free sans parking. Lots of relocated buildings here, most notably windmills, on a typical flat, grassy Dutch landscape lined with little canals.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A wide expanse of flat, green, marshy grass divided by a ditch and water inlet. Multiple windmills can be seen on the water's edge. |
I had heard horror stories about Amsterdam's steep stairs, and this creaky, rickety wooden observation tower throws you right into that. You basically have to climb ladders dozens of feet over the wet, grassy mud below. Hang on and watch your step, try not to fall and break your neck if you're nodding off!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett looks into the camera with windblown hair atop a wooden tower, with a wide expanse of grassy polder, ditches, and windmills in the background. |
Fortunately, it was worth risking life and limb to come up here for the view. You can see the whole surrounding area!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A green windmill sits on the edge of the water next to a green Dutch-styled cottage. The top level of the windmill has two round windows and a yellow crown, which resemble a smiley face. |
John pointed out that this windmill had a smiley face on it. And the second we had a good laugh over this, we knew the jet lag was real. Both of us were overly tired and this was hilarious to us.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Two cyclists ride down a curving bike path through a field of green grass and yellow flowers next to a ditch, with two windmills in the background. |
Zaans Schanse has a known overtourism problem, and that was evident with how many tourists were crowding these paths. Many were walking in the bike path. It's a beautiful welcome to Nederland, but don't expect a quiet, lonesome stroll through history like you might get at another outdoor museum.
Some of the windmills were even turning! There was obviously a motor inside but it was cool to see these iconic pieces of machinery and symbols of The Netherlands in action.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a bike path of composite slats and graffiti, sits the muddy, rusty wreckage of a bike, with only the handlebars and front wheel still attached to the frame. |
There was a little path around this drawbridge you could take. After watching it raise up and let a boat through, we had a laugh over the random wreckage of a bike just sitting under the bridge.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A low canal with lily pads has several small green cottages set up on its banks, with many trees also in place. |
These canal houses were so cute but it was hard waiting for photos that weren't flooded with tourists.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A small green house's garden is vegetated and contains a few watering cans and a set of wooden clogs hung by the door. |
People actually live here and it's a real neighborhood, I couldn't do it. The overtourism problem in The Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, is glaringly obvious here.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A wooden display case says "Zondagse klompen, Sunday clogs" and holds several pairs of wooden shoes ornately painted with traditional Dutch designs, many feature floral patterns. |
Wooden you like to know where clogs come from? Most of the buildings here at Zaans Schanse were paid extras, but this clog shop was free. They had so many designs on display. Like many traditions, this is very regional and you can tell where a Nederlander is from by the design and decor of their clogs alone.
This guy also showed us how to make them with these power saws. It takes two hours to make a pair of clogs by hand, five minutes with a machine. This saw relies on having a premade clog loaded into one side, then a control arm reads the profile and directs the other side to cut the same depth around a piece of wood. Going up and down, that produces the outer profile of the clog, then a similar piece of equipment runs a ball cutter around the inner surface to cut that. He then blew into the holes of the clogs and showed us that water would still drip out, and they had to dry for two weeks before someone can wear them.
"Why would you wear shoes of wood?" He told everyone before stepping up onto a crate, showing off the wooden shoes he had worn to operate heavy machinery. "Put two pairs of thick socks on over them, they are very sturdy." And beat his foot with another clog.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a shallow canal sits a few green cottages going right up to the water. |
After a nightmare trying to pay for the toilet with my credit card, we got on the road. The landscape here was kind of boring, very flat, lot of bridges, lot of wind turbines, and a greenhouse was full of cannabis plants on the side of the road. Not gonna lie, I tried to stay awake to keep John company, but I nodded off more than once.
And it decided there was an unbuckled baby in the back seat because that's where I stuck my camera bag and it set off this horrible alarm in the car. This is even worse than the one in France when Dad took his belt off to get something!
We got to the hotel and I saw something very troubling on social media: a photo of one of the buildings in my apartment complex with flames shooting out the window into the night! The address was not exactly listed, but it said it was in my neck of the woods and it looked like it could be my building. Panicking, I call my mother and ask her to swing by and see if my home and car are still there. She informed me (and I found out through more social media photos) that it was not my home. But tragically, it was close to it, and I instantly felt terrible for these families I see out and about in my neighborhood. The Red Cross is helping them, those injured are being treated, but what happened is terrible. It was troubling information to discover all the way in the Netherlands, I realized in that moment how lucky I was to have an intact home to come home to, and my heart goes out to my neighbors. If it reaches me how to donate to help these families, the link will be going straight onto this blog.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A plate holds a bowl of gravy, a potato cake, and a duck breast atop some green beans. |
Upon checking into Fletcher Hotel near Efteling, both of us took a long, much-needed nap. Boost had told me to turn my phone off for twenty minutes and it would fix my mobile data problems, but it didn't work and my frustrated ass just went to sleep. Around 7, we went to thei hotel restaurant and got some damn good duck breast. Perfect after remarking how cute the ducks at Zaans were!
From here, we both went and passed out. Efteling needed us tomorrow, and we were both dead tired.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A large pond with a frog statue spitting a jet of water under a large green lantern. |
UP NEXT: Benelux 2025 is off to a magical start at Efteling! I drop a very expensive piece of my equipment right into Max and Moritz's station track, John finds a piece of home in the Netherlands, and one of us hits a milestone credit! Leg 2 is nothing short of a fairy tale!
