Bonjour! This afternoon I got back from a weekend in Paris, and it was prety swell. You’ll have read before that I wasn’t sure if I’d like the city because it’s never been my top travel destination, but I saw the light, and I now appreciate the city of Paris (that time I said “Paris” in French).

Where to start? At the beginning, maybe? So we took train from Maastrich to Liege and then a “hi-speed” train from Liege to Paris (Gare du Nord–you know the stop). We were meeting our friends Hannah and Ben at the train station, but the problem was that nobody ever really knew exactly where we were meeting. We meandered about the train station for a while to the point that we wondered if we’d ever meet up and just have to have separate Paris experiences. But there, crossing some sort of bridge in the distance came the two of them strolling our direction. We met and exchanged pleasantries before purchasing a 3-day metro pass and taking the train to our hotel.

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People who have known me for a while and have cared to listen know that I’ve never been keen on visiting Paris. I’ve always heard people gush about how much they want to visit Paris, and I have always provided my snippy reply: “Ugh. Paris is the one place in the world that I have no desire to visit.” And until now, I’ve thought that. Something about it just hasn’t sat well with me. Perhaps it’s just that so many people dream of going there. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always bought into the stereotype of Parisians as aloof and pretentious. Perhaps it’s because the Eiffel tower is just a big metal thing. I don’t know.

I’ve come around, though. No longer do I scoff at the notion of visiting Paris, and in fact, I’m looking forward to it. As a one-time art student, I can look forward to France’s artistic offerings (the Loovruh, anyone?), fromage, and any number of things. More than anything, though, I can look forward to being in the city where Ratatouille was set. So, okay. Maybe the French will surprise me. We’ll just have to see.

But I think I’m excited for this weekend not for the wonder and majesty of Paris but because I’ll be meeting up with two of my friends over there. I’ll be meeting my high school friend, Lauren, who has been studying in the country for some time now and whom I haven’t seen in quite some more time. I’ll also be meeting up with my friend Hannah from Eastern as our European travel routes intersect for the weekend. For these people alone I’m excited! And if the art, history, and cuisine happen to make an appearance, well, I think that’ll be fine too.

For the last two weeks, I have been using the European currency, which as you may have heard in your travels, is different than American dollars and cents. Although my wallet isn’t quite the right size for the euro bills, I’m enjoying the Euro way of life. What’s strange is how many extra coins are involved. In the States, our use of coins stops at about the 25 cent point. Sure, you can get 50-cent pieces and dollar coins, but you don’t often use them. Here, though, you use coins all the way up to the €2 point (~$3).

At first it was annoying to carry around all the change you acquire (and it piles up quickly…think of all the one-dollar bills you carry around). It’s fun, however, to be able to pay for an ice cream cone with a coin. The problem is that it’s a lot easier to spend money. It’s a lot easier to lay down a coin to buy something than to lay down a piece of paper. Granted, a bunch of €2 coins don’t add up to a ton, but they do add up! It’s also easier to use vending machines; rather than pour a bunch of quarters in or worry about the machine accepting your dollar bill, you just plop in a €1 coin and out comes your drink (not that I’ve used a ton of vending machines here).

The most frustrating thing is to keep in mind the exchange rate. It would be nice if it were a simple 1:1 rate, but as of right now, €1 is about $1.40, so some things feel reasonably priced until you make the conversion. I’ve found, though, that it’s not worth converting everything to dollars. I know how many euro I have and budget accordingly. It seems that my fellow students have found the same mindset helpful too.

It’s also nice to have one set of currency when traveling. Already I’ve been in three countries (Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany…France this weekend) and I haven’t had to fiddle with extra currency exchanges. It will be different, though, when I’m in England next week because I’ll have to convert euro to pounds. Oh well! We’ll see which currency comes out on top by the end of my stay. So far, though, the euro seems to be winning.

Because Köln is sat on the Rhine river, which cuts through some historic parts of Germany, we thought it’d be fun to take a boat ride down the river. My friend Molly had been talking about taking the boat to see old medeival castles that sit along the river, and our professor told us where along the river we should take the boat. We took a train down to the city of Koblenz, and our timing couldn’t have been more perfect. We pulled into the station at about 1:40, walked ten minutes to the river, bought tickets, and got on the last boat of the day that came by at 2:00. We rode the boat for more than three hours (we got a lot of sun) down to the town of St. Goar.

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Guten tag! This past weekend, along with five friends, I visited the city of Cologne, Germany. I came to learn, however, that in Germany, it’s spelled Köln, so I’ll refer to it as that from now on simply because it’s cooler.  The train ride from Maastricht took a few hours, but it wasn’t bad.

We pulled into the Köln train station and found our way (by another local train) to our hotel, the Warsteiner Hof (Figure 1).

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The Dutch language hasn’t been the obstacle that people may have thought it would be here. Before leaving, our class was told not to worry about a language barrier because everyone in Maastricht also speaks English. I didn’t quite believe that at first, but it’s turning out that it’s the case. Regardless, I have been trying to learn whatever Dutch I can, and the people I typically go places with have been interested too.

In the months before I left, I was taking some Rosetta Stone software lessons in the language. I completed about twenty lessons, which is nowhere near enough to allow for conversational Dutch speech, but it was definitely helpful. More than anything, it taught me how the pronunciation of Dutch words works. Some of the letters in Dutch are pronounced somewhat differently than in English. Also, I don’t know if my accent is correct, but the lessons at least got me closer to speaking words more accurately. As an added benefit, a few of the lessons I took dealt with food (“eten”) vocabulary, so it’s been slightly easier to navigate a Dutch menu. Continue reading →

The other night, we went to a bar called The Bombardon (probably spelled wrong). It’s a townie bar with a bunch of elderly locals who drink, sing, and dance. Our friends Molly and Stephanie went there and when we went into town to meet up with them, we looked through the window of the place and saw them waltzing with two old Dutch guys. “This is the place!” we thought. Our professor, who told us about the place, noted that if anyone in our class were to go in there, the mean age of the room would drop at least ten years. No exaggeration there.

We go in, and everybody’s singing and dancing to accordion-laced music. The girls were getting a lot of attention from the old guys, and I’ll be honest…I was jealous. By the end of the night, we were at a table with a very drunk 70-something year old who kept doing tricks with his drinks, lifting stools in the air with one hand, and shouting. We learned that his name was Marcel, and he seemed to take quite a liking to us.

The place closed at midnight, and the last song was Sweet Home Alabama. About 15 minutes before it closed, a Dutch woman came up to me and said (shouting in my ear, of course, because the place was loud), “You people, you come in here, you look like you don’t know what to do, you are nervous, but you listen to the music, you drink, you dance, and you think this is a good place. You are good people. Give applause to yourself.” I’m not sure that everyone shared her sentiment, however. I think a few of the people looked at us wondering what these five young Americans were doing in their bar.

The girls got business cards from a couple of the guys, though (including Marcel), only adding to my jealousy.

We just spent about three hours in the computer lab booking places to stay for the next few weeks. I’m itchin’ for some dinner. While realistically, booking these hostels shouldn’t have been as big a headache as they were, everything is made more difficult when your fingers are pinching your pocketbook (i.e. we wants to spend not a lot of moneys).

So here’s the rundown…this weekend we have our sights set on Cologne, Germany. We’re not sure what to expect, but we’re looking to potentially take a boat ride up the river and see some old German castles.

The weekend after that, Continue reading →

Now that I figured out a way to get pictures up here, I thought I’d just post a bunch of pictures of Maastricht. Check out the post about Belgium too because I added pictures to that one. There are more if you click “more.” Continue reading →

In the U.S., we get really used to walking into a restaurant and having a glass of water free with dinner. Not only that, but if you want, you can sit there and have the waiter/waitress refill your glass a good five times before you leave and not pay a dime extra. Not so much here.

It costs just about the same amount to drink water with your meal as it does to have a pop, beer, coffee, etc., which can get really frustrating. It’s nice bottled water, but I’m really fine with some tap water. Not only that, but all of the drink portions are smaller, so you’re paying for a teeny bit of water that has to last the whole meal. I find that I don’t have to run to a bathroom after every meal, though, which is good because you have to pay for those too.