Anslo — A Wedding, the Wrong Airport and Sandals in October

Two weeks in a coliving. First we annoyed each other, then it turned out we were on the same level of humour and beer. Bratwurst and ketchup, basically. Next thing I knew, I was invited to their wedding.

So. 2026 is a year of travel. You do what you have to do.

Earlier this year, at Burgas Coliving, I met two lovely, slightly crazy people. Somewhere along the way they became friends. I’m not entirely sure who agreed to that.

Then they invited me to their wedding. After knowing me for two weeks. Two weeks in which we first annoyed each other, then figured out we were on the same level of humour and beer. Same vibe, too. Like bratwurst and ketchup: shouldn’t need explaining, just works. Brave of them, still.

Timing, as usual

The catch: I’d already planned 2,500 km on the motorbike from Cologne down to Olhão for September. The south of Portugal. About as far from the Netherlands as you can get without involving a ferry.

The wedding was at the end of that trip. In the Netherlands. Which, from Cologne, is basically the neighbours.

So the plan became: ride two and a half thousand kilometres away from home, then celebrate arriving by flying almost all the way back. Efficient.

Still, why not. A social net this thin needs maintenance, and these two are worth it. There wasn’t much hesitation involved.

Rotterdam, allegedly

So I flew back up. More or less.

Turns out I’m very bad at planning. The goal was cheap and easy. I found a cheap flight. To Eindhoven. Which I had read as Rotterdam. The small print in a booking is always worth reading (says the man who doesn’t).

Luckily the Netherlands is small enough that it barely mattered. Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Eindhoven: all roughly the same distance to Anslo. The kind of country where picking the wrong airport costs you about as much as a wrong turn.

Roughly four days up north, then. Which, being German, I intended to use efficiently.

Fifty euros and the last pizza

Arrival evening in Eindhoven, and a decision. Option one: an unfamiliar public transport system, about an hour of it, and bed at the end like a hungry hungry hippo. Option two: a cab.

Cab it was. Airport to a hotel in the city centre. Fifty euros.

At that point I’d neatly spent everything the cheap flight had saved me. On the cab, on a non-refundable capsule hotel in Rotterdam I would never see, and on the new hotel in Eindhoven. Budget travel, the German way: precise, thorough, and wrong.

Mildly annoying. But not my worst idea. Most restaurants in Eindhoven close early, and the cab got me there just in time for a not-so-bad pizza at Pizzani. The last one. Literally the last pizza they made that night.

Expensive pizza, all things considered. Worth it.

Anslo, by campsite

Next day, up to Anslo to meet the two of them. It turns out their luck with planning is on roughly the same level as mine, so instead of a bed and breakfast, we were crashing at a campsite.

Didn’t matter. A bed, friends and a Dutch breakfast are enough to be going on with. And the landscape up there is genuinely good. Flat, obviously. But good.

It was also properly chilly. The sandals stayed on anyway, as they had for most of the trip. Late-summer Algarve on my feet, early-autumn northern Europe everywhere else.

Groningen, and the eierbal

The second day came with a road trip to Groningen.

Where I, after spending a good while in Portugal, had my first genuinely fresh pastel de nata. In the Netherlands. And burned my mouth on it. Rude, honestly.

Groningen is quite nice. But the best thing in it is small and round and called an eierbal: a boiled egg, wrapped in curry paste, deep-fried. The kind of snack that makes no sense on paper and complete sense with a beer in your other hand.

The wedding

Third day, wedding day.

I was seated between the bride’s family, talking Dutch, and the groom’s family, talking Spanish. The kind of seating plan where you smile a lot and start calculating how long it is until dessert. I had a feeling this would not end well.

It did. As soon as the right moment came I attached myself to a few groups and stuck around. Like I said: lovely people. Annoyingly, all of them.

The day after

The day after the wedding was the best day. Mainly because I was the only one without a terrible hangover.

All thanks to the groom, and a piece of advice he gave me back in Burgas: “You people are so weak when you drink. We Argentinians drink, and eat. Drink and eat.”

Well. I did. He didn’t. He suffered the consequences.

We wrapped up the weekend with some classic Dutch fried food, then they put me on a train back to Eindhoven. The next day I finally used that unfamiliar public transport system to get to the airport.

Two euros. For the same distance that had cost me fifty two days earlier.

Let that be a lesson. Probably not to me.