Hello Fellow Traveler …. If You Ever Visit (Insert Home Place) Come Stay at My Place - Tillburg

It seamed like a long time ago since I was in Florence the beginning of my trip and the wonderful friends I made at the hostel. Here I was waiting at Tillburg train station nervous and waiting for “Tweety Pie” to come pick me up. It was so casual back then offering people you don’t know the famous words ….

“If you ever drop by my place come stay with me”

I now understand what a privilege it is to receive that offer especially from a stranger and throughout my travels I have made less and less of such offer to others regardless of how well we laugh over a bottle of wine. Tweety pie barely knew me I realized and I barely knew her …. My brief encounter with her was like only a few hours in the dorm at night for two days having idle chatter of which place best to visit and here I was waiting to be pick up to go back to her place and crash a night before heading on to Belgium.

It did cross my mind that I could had entirely skipped Tilburg and come up with some excuse of not dropping by but I decided to keep my promise to a stranger that I would drop by once I was nearby. 

Tillburg University

She look just the same cheerful and always smiling as she ring her bicycle bell waving at me. I just grinned … immediately greeting was in mandarin and I had to pause a while tuning my head to reply back. First stop was the market … good thing my back pack was compact and light … so we went shopping for food. Tweety pie said it would be my dinner and kept asking what I wanted to eat. Anything was fine I answered …

Walking around the market I couldn’t help staring at all the stuff around. Somehow the apple didin look like it was back home and everything was slightly different. Some of it I never even seen before. I actually started visiting markets or local supermarket more often on my travels later on just to see what I could find.

“Have you eaten this fruit before?? ”

Tweety pie decided to buy the weird fruit just so I could try it …. If I didn’t like it she could always eat it she said.

Food checked …. Back to the house where she shared with a few other university housemates made out of entirely fully international or great mix of people. I was relieved for a while for I was not sure how I would have reacted if the whole house were to be Chinese speaking. Names were too short to remember but in general there was a black adopted brothers who grew up in dutch …. A lesbian couple … a few more girly girls, some wise ass guy and Tweaty Pie friend from china who came to visit her from another block.

Weird Fruit .... Definitely not peach !!

Soon it was time to cook for dinner and surprisingly I was cooking …. “HUH ???” Tweety could barely cook and I was rummaging through her kitchen looking for ingredients and making up stuff to cook as I go. Tweety and friend had big droopy eyes looking at me cooking asian food … My guess was they had only ever seen people cook spaghetti in Holland. Dinner was fun … with some over seasoned soup due too much salt accidentally spilled into the bowl.

Her housemate left us alone by 8 pm with all of them heading to Rotterdam for a nightclub. I was invited after a thought but turned it down as I could see Tweety was not the party type. So it was just me Tweety and her chinese girlfriend post dinner. I had to try the mystical fruit that I had never seen before … taste like peach … texture like apple … interesting …

By 10 pm it was time to crash the couch … my first crash in a stranger / new friends house …