I have officially been here for two weeks. A lot has happened since I stepped off the plane in Amsterdam and it all started, quite literally, the second I stepped off the plane. After I made it through the very busy Amsterdam Airport Schiphol I had to figure out the Dutch train system and it was a lot harder than I had anticipated.
I had to go, not once but twice, to a ticket booth to get instructions on how to get to the train and which train I had to get on. Even after the back and forth I still got on the wrong train and ended up going in the wrong direction. Luckily I met a very nice lady who helped me switch trains and get back on track. Two hours later I arrived at Horst-Sevenum train station and then it was a quick drive to Tienray and Milestone Farm.
I had to wait a while before I could check into the hotel, so in the meantime I went to the barn. Milestone is a beautiful farm that consists of 40 stalls, with four isles each consisting of 10 stalls, two wash racks, and a solar light. The farm has several grass paddocks, a walker and a lungeing ring, but my favourites are the riding rings. Milestone has a beautiful indoor and outdoor ring as well as a grass field and canter track.
Milestone Farm is just as amazing as Tienray, the town in which it’s located. The bed and breakfast I’m staying at is called Eten & Zo and their dinners are amazing, with something new every night.
The pretty town features a church (and ice cream shops!). (Photo courtesy Kieley McQuaker)
The best part of the bed and breakfast is actually their dog and two cats who have made me feel very much at home. The first night, one of their cats came to my room and it was like I was back home again. The bed and breakfast is located at an intersection that has a church and and ice cream shop at either corner. The church, like most towns in Europe, has an old clock that chimes every hour. It has taken awhile for me to get used to it and for the first couple nights it woke me up almost ever hour. But it is a very pretty church and now I barely notice the chiming. The ice cream shop has the best ice cream and desserts and it’s definitely the go to place whenever I go out.
When I first arrived here I had a list of things that I needed to get sorted out. Therefore, my time after work was spent driving around and trying to get everything organized while also getting used to Dutch life.
I first had to figure out how to find a SIM card and eventually I was able to get a ride to the grocery store and found one. Unfortunately it wouldn’t work with my phone and the only solution was to drive to Venlo and go to the KPN store. I had to admit I was terrified to drive here and even though I got over that fear, it came back pretty quickly when I accidentally drove down a pedestrian street and had to turn around. The funniest part was that no one seemed concerned that there was a car in the middle of Venlo, which makes me think I’m not the first person to do it! Unfortunately, even after all this I wasn’t able to get my SIM card to work, but luckily the farm has a phone for me to borrow.
Another thing on my To-Do List was grocery shopping, which you would think is pretty easy and straight-forward. It is now that I have conquered my fear of driving and can drive to the grocery store, but the first few days I was here I biked there, which turned out to be an experience in itself.
Biking in Europe is very different than biking in my little home town in Canada. Biking here is tricky, because you have to trust the cars to stop and bikes almost always have the right of way. At first I kept it simple: always stay on the safe side and let the car go first. Well, here they don’t have stop signs and because of this everyone is in a mutual agreement about who has the right of way ‒ and most of the time they barely come to a stop. Because of this it became very awkward when I would stop at an intersection and so would the other person, and we would just stare at each other until I eventually realized they were waiting for me to go. But I think I have got the hang of it now.
The next problem came after I bought my groceries and had to figure out how to bike back with a grocery bag and case of water. It wasn’t a very smooth bike ride, to say the least, but luckily it was a short trip!
The horses here are super fun and I’ve learned a lot in the short time I’ve been here. The other riders have been coaching me when they can and I keep learning all the time. So far I’ve been flatting a lot of horses, about four or five a day, and not just light flat work but trying very hard to work on every fundamental part of flatwork. It was hard at first, working on everything, every day, on each horse, but slowly it has gotten easier and I have started to feel improvements in myself and the horses when I figure out how to work them properly on the flat. One of the highlights is definitely taking the horses to the nearby woods and walking and trotting around the trails.
For the next couple weeks I hope to get fully accustomed to Dutch life. I also just found out the hotel owners are going on vacation for a week, so it will be very interesting trying to figure out dinners, but it will definitely be a learning experience!
I will hopefully be getting to a couple of shows in the near future which will be really fun and I can’t wait to write all about it. So far it has been a very busy two weeks and a lot to get used to, and although I miss my home, my family and my friends, I am having so much fun. So far it has been an amazing experience and I can’t wait to see what the rest of my time here has in store!
