A Rough 24 hours

 A few days ago we were on our way back to our lodgings from Nijmegen and Nina and I were thinking that we would like to see what the healthcare system is like here in the Netherlands. We brainstormed and decided that the best way to do this would be to roughhouse on our bikes to the point where we would lose control of ourselves and crash to the pavement, hopefully injuring ourselves in the process. So we did just that, and Nina sustained a really excellent face laceration and I managed to escape with nothing more than a scraped knee and a bruised ego. 

After initial impact, Nina and I were sitting on the side of the road, waiting for one of the trip leaders, Floris, to come rescue us. We were quite the sight with Nina's head gushing blood, and our bikes strewn around us, yet none of the passerby's even glanced our way. We were prepared to remain on the curb for the next 20 minutes while Floris was on his way, but after about two minutes, this rather severe older Dutch woman came out of her house and demanded that we come with her inside to patch us up. 

This is the picture I took for Nina to see what her wound looked like (which lead to a bit of a freak out)

As we walked into her house, she started yelling in Dutch to her husband and adult son, the latter of whom came rushing in with about four different first aid kits. He cleaned out Nina's cut and informed us that she would be therefore known as scarface and that she would have to go to the hospital for stitches. 

After he finished with Nina it was my turn for doctoring. I resisted at first, insisting that I was fine, just a skinned knee, but our new mother insisted that I was "in her house so I'd better listen". Once bandaged up, Floris arrived and after a long and seemingly funny conversation in Dutch we were off to the emergency room to get Nina fixed up. 

When we got there the receptionist took a look at Nina's wound and told us that the operation would be pretty pricy since she was not on European insurance. We braced for impact and she informed us that it would be the hefty price of 150 euros. In the US the same service would be around $500! On top of that we waited for about 5 minutes before they called Nina back to patch her up. In total we were in and out in about 25 minutes. People were not lying when they said that the healthcare system over here is amazing. In the end, she only needed some glue in the cut and a piece of tape to hold it together, so no stiches needed. 

One thing that I will note though is that this country has an extreme lack of bandaids and antibacterial cream. It seems like these people never get injured. I had to go to two different pharmacies to find simple gauze and medical tape (two things which I was under the impression are staples at such institutions). On top of this, people just simply stop and stare when Nina and I walk around with me limping and her with an intensely bruised face and face cut. This evidence is another indicator that people never get hurt here, although it does make us feel like quite the celebrities