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Maastricht, Netherlands (Christmas eve!)
Earlier today, I took a bus from Liège headed towards the peaceful Holland outskirts in a small city thinly sandwiched between Belgium and Germany called Maastricht. I have heard a lot of good things about the place, previously, enough to convince me to spend Christmas Eve here.
Extremely tired due to full-packed walking in the last 24 hours, I decided to take a two-hour breather as soon as I arrived in my night's resting crib, intending to recover and charge-up some energy to properly celebrate Christmas later in the night. Hence, it was not until 1800H when I decided to leave my costl y cage to do a little exploration around. But holy crap, I found out that most establishments, including the Christmas markets, were already about to close because it's Christmas Eve. Food being my top necessity at the moment, and apparently faced with little to no options, I ended up settling for an expensive meal at a Chinese joint somewhere. Fortunately, it did not disappoint, and noche buena a la chino was not a bad of an idea at all. I had to pair it with beer to ease the sting of the biting cold, the warmest possible consolation, I would say so. Christmas spent in a far-off place, thousands of kilometres away from home, is surely not a thing for the weak.
By 1930H, I was practically done with my dinner, leaving so much time to kill. I decided to chill at a bar adjacent to the diner, where a few people were already having drinks. It was somehow comforting to learn that there were other solo night drifters like myself. Not that I really care, but apparently, I was not alone in this solo gaming thing. I took the last available seat on the last available table near the heater. By this time, people were probably already asleep in Ph, thanks to the 7- hour time difference.
I was more or less in the midst of contemplation and year-end self-retrospection when the sad news dropped: the bar was closing. Disappointed a bit, but I very well understood that normal people have families to celebrate with. I liked to believe that I could still turn the tables, even with the little of what I have, where I currently am, in the most general sense, as that strong, independent person that I believe to be. So I spent my remaining table time planning my next course of action since the night was still so young. Feeling lazy to hop to another bar, I decided to wander around a bit before ultimately deciding to just return to my accommodation, which brought me right here, right now, in the hostel's bar, writing and ranting to let off some steam.
It's a little past 10 now, and I am already midway through my fifth bottle for the day realising the need to make an important decision in the next few minutes: to beer or not to beer? The alcohol I consumed from the previous day still has a good grip on my system, but alcohol, doing what it does best, brings up all the unnecessary thoughts there are at an unpleasant time like this. And it occurred to me that this could be the saddest Christmas ever. The worst thing is I paid to get here, and nothing quite goes as I hoped, planned, and imagined things would.
On second thought, I think everything's rather okay. Or maybe it's just something I wanted to believe. Either way, I could not think straight anymore so I will let the alcohol do the thinking and deciding.
