Back to Antwerp

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As some of you may already know I’ve actually just spent the 6-7 weeks camping out at a place in Antwerp (124 bed hostel). Two things lead me to this interesting situation, the first was a phone call whilst I was in Holland and the second was I needed a rest from travelling. Allow me to explain…..

You see if you ever get the wonderful opportunity to go travelling for an extended period of time you’ll soon realise moving around all the time, exploring new places and watching your back when you’re travelling solo can be very tiring…. I know this is going to sound crazy and probably drum up some hate mail from a few of you but seriously… it’s really is hard work sometimes.

Also as you may have noticed in my last few blogs I was starting to get a little sick of moving around every couple of days. Anyway long story short I had already stayed at this place a few weeks earlier and when I was in Holland the owner rang me up one day saying he needed help and wanted to make me an offer about something. For some reason I decided to go back and hear him out and the next thing you know we were deep in discussions …. about me buying the darn thing off him???

In the end we didn’t actually end up coming to a deal but I did hang around for 6-7 weeks in total and help him out a bit in the evenings… plus I had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone and being the resident party planner… The bonus was I got free accommodation, food, drinks and the chance to re-charge a bit. Also it was fantastic to unpack my backpack for a change and actually hang up some clothes up for once. So all in all it was a fair deal for both of us.

Plus for interest sake and because I can hear a few of you saying ‘why on earth would you think about buying a hostel in Belgium’, well there was some reason to my madness believe it or not. In fact there were three….

Firstly hostel life is fun (lots of fun) you have a constant stream a young travellers coming in the front door, secondly this place would have given me a great base to work out of. Antwerp is a fun place to live and within two hours on a train you can be in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. And finally and most importantly as a business owner in Belgium you automatically get a five year professional working permit (valid everywhere in Europe) plus after the five years is up you also can apply and get permanent residency in Europe… so as you can see the worst case scenario was still a pretty good one hey… The window of opportunity is still open down the track if I want it but for now its onwards and upwards… well Eastwards at least into Germany!

And yes in case you’re all wondering I had some good times there and met a lot of people during my stay. In particular these are a couple of the highlights. If you’re ever interested I can tell you the ‘full’ stories another day… after all it’s hard to fit 6-7 weeks of stories into one blog!

- First and foremost I made a great new friend there called Dave from Laguna beach in LA. He’s a singer song writer and a damn good one too I might add even if he does sing soppy love songs… but the girls all seem to like them so he is onto a good thing. He was there nearly the whole time I was and if safe to say he was my partner in crime most of the time… PS. Dave if you’re reading this… I’m still you’re manager right?… from memory we agreed on 20%?? Haha

- Plus I had a heap of friends come and visit me who I had met along the way this year… special thanks to Kelly, Ben, Mike, Matt and of course the Cuzman all the way from Australia! Hope you all had fun… I did!

- One definite highlight was helping to host 60 first year Entrepreneurial students from Holland (doing a Masters, like the one I finished two years ago) at the hostel. I had a ball with them and even got be a special guest speaker (with six other entrepreneurs at a big dinner on their last night and tell my life story (took 8 mins for interest sake!).. PS. Thanks for the wine guys!

- Oh and if you’ve never had the pleasure of trying to host/control 65 girls from Holland (from 3 different sorority groups/house too I might add) for 3 nights before… try it… it’s crazy!

- And the icing on the cake and definitely one of the silliest things I ever did at there was cutting a call for my business short with a new potential client (who potentially has over one billion carbon credits to sell) one day because I had to help open up the bloody front door for someone.. I tell you, if I ever get the chance, I’m going to write a book about this year one day… I’ve got some amazing stories to tell. But anyway you live a learn hey.

So at the end of it all, I simply packed my bag up again, said goodbye to everyone and headed towards the train station like I have so many other times this year. Next stop Germany…

PS. I’ve just about caught you all up now with my travels/blogging This is pretty much the closest I’ve got this year… how exciting.

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