Across the Ocean I...Stay?

Before I talk tell you all more about my travels, I'd like to tell you about the village in Germany that I lived in. It was a little place called Susterseel. It was a really small town, but it had everything you could ever need. The people were so friendly too. My neighbours were some of the nicest people I had ever met. Anyways, my house was at the bottom a big hill which was really cool. The house we lived in was brand new, we were the first people to ever live in it. It was a pretty nice house and had four floors. It was really modern and I loved that. They don't really like to have carpeting in houses over there so our floors were entirely ceramic. Yea, it was kinda weird and also pretty cold sometimes. The ceramic floors were actually pretty nice though, they allowed us to move furniture really easily so we'd always switch up the layout of our house just to keep things exciting. The only downfall was that if you dropped something, it was pretty much guaranteed to break. We also had to take a couple trips to emergency due to falling down the stairs.

Our house kind of stuck out in the village because most of the houses were classic European architecture so everyone kind of knew that we were the Canadians. Our backyard was really big which was awesome. We had a trampoline but also had enough space in our backyard to play soccer or football or something. Behind our yard was a huge field for cows. My brothers and I would always accidentally kick our balls into the field and to get them, we'd have to climb under the fence and through the cows. It was actually really neat. Some of the braver cows let us get close enough to touch their noses. Because of this, I had kind of become cow obsessed, but that's a totally different story. Oh and just a little fun fact, The Netherlands was also about 30 seconds away from my house. From our backyard, you could see the town of Jabeek which is in the Netherlands. You could simply go from country to country without having to wait in huge lines with ID and your passport. Pretty cool.

The weather is super mild over there which was really awesome cause you could pretty much bike all year round. At the top of the hill we lived on, there was this huge forest filled with hundreds of little bike paths. It was so much fun because you could take a different route every time. There were also some pretty sweet parks along the paths. I must say, Germany definitely wins the award for best parks. They have giant chess games, huge slides, zip lines and HUGE play structures. Yes, these parks are free. Considering I was 8 or 9 when we moved there, it was pretty much heaven and to be honest, I'm sure I'd still enjoy myself just as much. 

Like I said before, the town was really small but had all the essentials. We had small grocery stores and all that good stuff but we had the most amazing pizzeria ever. Its name probably changed about 4 times during our stay, but the food always stayed the same. To this day it is still the best pizza I've ever had. We also had a family owned bakery like 100 m down the street and the pastries were so good. My favourite thing from there were the nusseckens. They were this nutty, chocolaty, yummy goodness. I definitely have to go back there. 

The last thing I wanna mention about Susterseel is the Diddl store. Now I'm sure no one has heard of Diddl, but in Germany (when I lived there anyways), Diddl was huge. Basically Diddl is this cartoon mouse character. It wasn't an actual show or anything, there were just collectible items such as paper and stamps that you would trade. Along with Diddl, there was Diddlina, Mimihopps(rabbit), Pimboli (a bear), Galupy (horse) and others. I'm not sure what a North American version would be, but basically you would trade Diddl items or just collect them and this was the cool thing to do. I had an absolutely huge collection and going to the Diddl store was always so exciting. I still have all my Diddl stuff and love looking through it all. 

That's all I'll leave you with. I could go on forever but I wouldn't want to bore anyone. These were just a few of the things that really stood out in my mind. Susterseel was the perfect little town to live in and I would pretty much give anything to be able to go back. One day.