This weekend we went to visit my sister in her university in Maastricht. Jim caught up to on the ICE to Liege in Belgium. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a problem with the tracks, and we had to take a route that was 25 minutes longer than normal.
As a result, we pulled up to Liege just in time to see our next train leaving the platform. The next train would come in an hour, so we used our unintentional layover to get some Belgian waffles. The little smattering of French that Jim could remember came in handy; "Nous voulons deux 'waffles.'" I think we were asked what type of waffle we wanted, but I wasn't really sure what to say; we ended up with a delicious, gooey, possibly honey laden treat.
Jim and his First Belgian Waffle
When it finally came, we hopped on the rickety old regional train and rode off through the thick fog towards Maastricht.
When we arrived, Maien was waiting for us, and even brought along her friend with a car so that we didn't have to trek 22 minutes through the dark fog to get back to her apartment.
We had a nice dinner consisting of home made burritos, and then skyped my parents. Maien turned in a paper that was due at midnight, and we all turned in for our trip the next day.
We met up with Meryl (Maien's friend) and Koen (Maien's boyfriend) at the Maastricht train station, and Jim had a little camera envy.
Meryl had one of these:
Which makes Jim want one of these:
Since it was such a long trip to Amsterdam we got out and stretched our legs for a bit, we decided to hop off in Utrecht. Glad we did too, as the weather in Amsterdam was no where near as nice as here. Turns out a little storm system was rolling through in the afternoon, making Amsterdam wet and cold.
Enormous wheels of cheese in the open market.
An awesome street organ. Sadly, it's partially covered for fear of rain.
Amsterdam ended up being up cold with the precipitation switching between rain, snow and small hail all afternoon.
Jim didn't take a lot of pictures, for fear of getting the camera wet and we took refuge from the storm by heading into a photography exhibit at FOAM.
By the time we came out of the Museum, we were tired, and it was dark, wet and cold. We decided to call it a night.
Here's a few pictures to actually prove I was there though:
On Sunday, we headed out to Maastricht on bicycle. It's a cute town, I think I would like it better than Amsterdam if only because it was a little bit smaller and less crowded. Their Christmas market was in full swing. More German than anything though; as a snack we had "Champignons mit Knoblauchsauce," and Gluhwein stands were everywhere.
A windmill? In the Netherlands?!
I decided that I wanted this bike because it looked soo cool :)
I've already covered Dachau in an earlier post, but I do have some new pictures of the grounds covered in snow
We also went to the city of Augsburg, which has a very opulent "Golden Hall" in it's town hall.
The Augsburg Christmas Market was also in full swing.
It seems crazy that my time is ending here but I wouldn't trade it for all the world.
For now Laters
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