Sunday, September 6thLast Sunday, Becca, Annika, and I decided to be adventurous and go to the St. Pietersberg caves (we had heard they were a fun place to go). Thankfully we went that day, because that was the day of the last tours that were in English! We took a boat tour along the Maas (the big river that runs through Maastricht), and it took us to the caves. We got off of the boat and had to walk up to the top of a hill, where we met our tour guide. We then walked through a bit of the back country until we came to the entrance of the caves. Us girls, got to be the lucky ones to carry one of the lanterns into the cave. Once we got into the caves, they were much larger than I had expected, they were probably 15 or 20 feet high and they were pretty much just walkways that had side coves that were used for many different things. Our guide told us that there was a hospital, bakery, and even a chapel (which we got to see) throughout the caves. The reason why there were these things, was that the caves were used by over 50,000 people to hid out in whenever there was some kind of war in Maastricht. All over the walls in the caves were different pictures that had been drawn by people who lived in the caves and were drawn by using charcoal. The drawings were really amazing. One of the drawings that we came to showed four monks, and our guide explained to us that the monks had come down into the caves. However, their candle went out before they could find their way out, and unfortunately they died in the caves, and when they were found, they had no fingertips. This is because they had walked around with their hands on the walls, once their light had gone out, trying to find their way out and had rubbed off their fingertips by the scratchy walls. So, to experience what the monks had our guide took all the lanterns and walked around the corner and left our group in the PITCH BLACK. The darkness was really scary and quite intense...if you closed your eyes, it was the same as having them open! You could not see 2 inches in front of your face! We made it safely out of the caves with the help of our lanterns! The rest of the day was spent relaxing and just taking in the city!
Monday, September 7thNo class on mondays, so I slept in and went off to the Maastricht Athletic Club (MAC), which I have signed up for while I am here. Its a cute little gym that is right in the town, just between some apartments, and you would never know it was there as it is just nestled into the rest of the buildings! Its a great little gym that has just three treadmills, a few ellipticals, and a handful of machines...SOO Maastricht! Its great minus the fact that all the information and buttons on each machine ARE IN DUTCH! Now, why on earth would they do that to me!! Once I somewhat figured out the machines I thought I should lift some weights..so I marched right on over to the weight selection and struggled to pick up the 20 lb weight...I know its been a few weeks since I worked out, but surely 20 lbs shouldn't be a struggle...right? OOOOO SHOOT I'm in the Netherlands, I remembered, and they use KILOGRAMS here! DUHHH! So come to find out I was trying to do my normal workout that I do with 20 lbs, now with 20 kgs which is roughly 45 lbs! OOPS! The joys of europe!
After my peculiar gym experience, it was time to do some Dutch Art History reading and a bit of relaxation. Then I rode my bike downtown to figure out where my class would be tomorrow, since I had not had it yet. All the buildings for the University of Maastricht are spread out throughout the city, so its always an adventure finding where you're class is! I found the building where my class would be, and went in to explore and find the actual room. When I came out of the building and go my book, something caught my attention...a small wooden bridge. There was an opening in a stone wall that had a wooden bridge...so I went on it! There I found ducks and geese swimming in the small river that is under the bridge. Then I looked straight ahead and found that there were deer and billygoats in a fenced off area...MAASTRICHTS OWN LITTLE ZOO! It is quite darling and its surrounded by a path where many people walk each day. I love this town! Later that night, we all decided to go to a Jazz bar downtown that had live music and was very quaint! We enjoyed the music with some beer and then headed home. Good day!
Tuesday, September 8thFirst day of my other class! I had my lecture for my Pop Songs and Poetry class at 11am. When my teacher got up to speak to the class, I thought she looked like a nice older woman who would be fun to take a class with...but when she started talking, things got interesting! She has a stutter, and especially stutters over "P"s, which is not the greatest when we are continuously talking about P-P-P-P-POETRY and P-P-P-POP SONGS! In our lecture, we watched "Dead Poets Society" and then after the lecture we break off into smaller tutorial groups and discuss different things. That day we talked about the different characters in the movie and how poetry affected each of them and what it meant in their lives. The tutorials are the main way that we learn at school, and they are very interesting, because there is minimal teacher-student interaction. It is mainly the students speaking, I would say that 95% of the time students are talking and discussing things together and the teacher only interjects to make sure that we are on the right path. Each class there is a discussion leader who leads the group on the topics that we had left off with the class prior, and each class ends with learning goals which we take home and learn more about. It is a very interesting way to do class, and definitely makes the students talk more and participate in the conversation. After four hours of this class, I was ready for a little nap and then a relaxing evening!
Wednesday, September 9thWednesday brought another day of Dutch Art History, and another excursion. We met at the Bonnefanten museum, which is a museum across the river and is very large with many different kinds of art. This trip we started out looking at modern and contemporary art. We all gathered around a piece of work and discussed different things about it, and why we thought the artist had done certain things, etc. Then we broke up into groups and had to find another piece to analyze and then present our thoughts to the rest of the group. I thought this was really interesting, because so many people had different ways of seeing the pieces and it was fun, because none of us were necessarily wrong or right. Then we moved downstairs to more medieval and religious art pieces, which is something we are mainly focusing on. After the museum, we went back to the classroom where we had another few hours of class.
After class, Annika and I went down to the town hall square, where we met Katya (another Tri Delt), who was visiting us for the weekend! She is traveling around before going to Seville, Spain for her time abroad. We made the trek back to the guesthouse and made a yummy dinner, then strolled around the city showing Katya all the great places we had found.
Thursday, September 10thNo class on Thursday, so yet another nice morning to sleep in! After Annika got back from class, and I had done some reading, Annika, Becca, Katya and I went to a sandwich shop, that we call J's and have become extremely fond of. I had a WONDERFUL tomato and mozzarella sandwich. I could eat them everyday! Then I went down to the train station, where I met Molly (another Tri Delt) who was coming for the weekend as well. So many tri delts in Maastricht! We walked around the city for a bit and then had Molly and Katya rent bikes, since that is the best way to get around the town. That night we made a big salad for dinner and then showed the girls out on the town that night. It was so much fun to be with familiar faces in a place so far from where we usually are.
Friday, September 11thI woke up early, early, early, for my first 8:30 am class since I've been here! Once I got to class, we were talking about different poems that we had studied on our own. We were supposed to talk about "analytical shapes" and "meaningful patterns", but apparently I didn't analyze the poem correctly. I was asked to talk about the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken". It talked about what I thought to be "analytical shape" and all that garbage but apparently I was no where near where I should be! The worst part is that the Dutch have no problem telling you that you are wrong, which is something I am not used to, but I was told I wasn't right. :( So with that, I decided to keep my mouth shut for the rest of class and hopefully next time we analyze a poem I will get it right.
After my class, I came back to the guesthouse and we had decided to bike to Belgium for lunch with our wonderful visitors. They were so amazed that you could do that, and frankly I still am shocked that I can just get up and bike my way on over to a different country! We found a cute place to have lunch in a small village called Kanne. Then we rode back home and put our feet up for a bit. Katya headed off to Amsterdam to meet up with some friends for the night, so Molly, Annika and I walked around the city a bit more that evening and got delicious french fries! We showed Molly the cute little "zoo" that we had found and then were off to bed early, because we were headed to Amsterdam in the morning.
Saturday, September 12thWe were up bright and early at 6:30, since we were going to try to make the 7:56 train from Maastricht to Amsterdam. We made some toast and headed off to the train station, which is about a 30 min walk from the guesthouse. We got to the train station with time to spare and found our train and hoped on...we were off on an adventure! There was a very long announcement on the train, but of course we couldn't understand it since it was in Dutch. However, a nice man informed us that we needed to get off the train, get on a bus, and go to another station, where we would get on another train that would take us on our way (how european?!)! Thank goodness most Dutch speak English and are extremely helpful. We got on the bus and were off to our next station, where we easily found our train and hoped on.
Finally, we made it to Amsterdam around 11:30. We met up with Katya and went to the Van Gogh museum which was really interesting. I really liked how they had the pieces set up throughout the museum, because it showed the different stages of his life and how his art had changed throughout each one. To begin with each of his paintings were muddy looking, since he used mainly dark browns and dark greens to paint, but then they began to be more colorful (these are the ones I liked best). There were so many different paintings and they were all beautiful. There was a lot about Van Gogh throughout the museum, and I learned that he kind of one day just decided that he wanted to become an artist..and voila he became the famous Van Gogh! He did not have much of any training and evolved over time and was able to produce magnificent pieces of work. After the museum we went to the Heineken Brewery, where we went on a tour. It is called the Heineken Experience, because it really isn't a tour (since it is self guided), but truly it is an experience! They showed us the vats that they used to use to make wort, which is water and barley mash. Once they have the wort, they add the hops and then the yeast, and a beer takes about 18 days until it is ready. We even got to taste wort, and its not so good! There was a section called "Brew U", where we all became beer! It was like a 4D theater where they splash a little water on you, when the water gets added to the mixture, and there was wind when we were bottles wiping around the conveyer belt, etc. It was really neat. Then we got to have a taste of the beer, and there was still more to guide ourselves around. We saw some of the bottles getting bottled and so much memorabilia from when Heineken first started.
We went off to find a place to have some lunch, and we found a cute cafe where I got the most delicious sandwich I have had since I've been here. It was a round roll that had some goat cheese, grilled zucchini, red and yellow peppers, and onions on it. And the best part, was it had been warmed, so the cheese was a little melty...YUM YUM YUM! We then walked around a bit more, and naturally had to go through the red light district to see what Amsterdam is truly about! Once we had had enough of that (which didn't take too long!), we headed back to the train station. We were going to try to make it back in time to go out with some DU friends and to celebrate one of their 21st birthdays. We got on the train at 7:30 and were told that we could be back in Maastricht around 10. But of course, the train that runs to Maastricht wasn't going all the way there since they were working on the tracks! So they sent us on our way over to Rotterdam where we would transfer and then be off to Maastricht. Once we got to Rotterdam, we changed trains quickly and were off! We were making a stop at a station, and we noticed that everyone was getting off the train, and we were kind of confused, so we went to the door of the train. We were about to get off, but were trying to check the boards out the door to see if the train was still going to Maastricht when all of a sudden the doors to the train closed, and they wouldn't reopen. We just started praying that the train would keep moving the way that we had been going...the train started moving...and we were going THE WRONG WAY! O NO! To make things worse, the two (Molly and Annika) that I was traveling with were freaking out. Annika was having what seemed to be a panic attack and Molly goes running through the train to try to find someone. So even though on the inside I was freaking out I kept telling these girls to calm down and that everything was going to be fine...even though we were the only ones on a train that was going the wrong way! While we were trying to follow Molly who was running through the cars, Annika was still behind me freaking out, when the train all of a sudden stopped. We were in the train yard, where the trains sleep. Im sure the same thought was going through all of our heads: We are going to be stuck on this train all night long. But then there was a man at the door we were at, it was a maintenance man, and we let us off and radioed to someone that three girls were on the train. Im sure the person on the other end got a kick out of that! He told us to walk along the tracks until we got back to the platform, which we did! PHEW! Once back on the platform, we were informed that we were going to have to get on a bus and then on another train to get back home. We finally made it home at 12:30am, and by that time were all exhausted. We came back to our rooms and passed out from the long adventure filled day!
Today: Sunday, September 13thIts a gray day in Maastricht and Sunday, which is usually a homework and lazy day around here. I woke up this morning to see Molly off to the train station and then went to the gym, where I remembered to pick up lighter weights for my workout...I had learned my lesson! I have to get some reading done for this coming week, but I have tomorrow off as well, so maybe today will be spent being lazy! The only bummer about Sundays around here is that the markets are not open, so you better hope that you have things to eat! Well, I think I have written enough for now...hope all is well for all of you reading this.
XOXO
Betsy
