As I said in my last entry, I went to Groningen in the Netherlands yesterday with Orion and Rieke. One of Rieke’s roommates also went along with us. We decided to catch the bus to Groningen that left at 7:40 am so we’d have as much time as possible in the city since it was just a day trip. I got up at around 6:45 or so after having slept for about 3 hours. Despite not sleeping much though, I still had a really good time.
The trip to Groningen about an hour and a half. Crossing the border was strange because it wasn’t any different than crossing the border into another state in the US, except for the fact that all of a sudden I couldn’t read anything anymore. When we go there, we got off across the street from the main train station. From there we went into the city center where there were large open markets selling vegetables and random tourist souvenirs. Unfortunately it was raining heavily, so we decided to go to a small cafe called Der Witz (a German name, meaning ‘the joke’). It was in an old building probably built in the early 1700’s or earlier. The waiter came over to us and asked us something in Dutch. Rieke could do a little bit of Dutch, but that’s it. The waiter couldn’t speak a whole lot of English either, but fortunately he could speak pretty good German, so we spoke to him in German. He was the only person we encountered (and had to talk to) that couldn’t speak English well.
After we had something to drink there, we left and wandered around the market for a while. It had stopped raining and even got clear and sunny later in the day. We also went down the main shopping street in Groningen which is a pedestrian-only street with a bunch of stores on it. After going in and out of several stores (including a Dutch bookstore where I had to refrain myself from buying a book in Dutch), we went to a place called the News Cafe. There we ate lunch and I had the best hamburger I think I’ve ever had here in Europe. I tried reading the name of the hamburger when I ordered which was long and all in Dutch, but I gave up when the waitress had gotten the point. Dieuwertje has taught me a little bit about reading Dutch, so I do have some sort of an idea.
After that, Orion suggested we go canoing in one of the canals. I had absolutely no desire to do that because I wanted to see more of the city instead of paddling around the canals and not seeing much plus I didn’t want to get wet. Rieke and her friend wanted to go, so we ended up going to do that. When we got there though, we discovered they had paddle boats, so we decided to do that instead. We rented 2 paddle boats for 2 hours and just went around the canals. Rieke and her friend sat together in one boat and Orion and I were in the other. Before we left, the guy who rented the boats to us told us that one of the boats kept filling with water, but wouldn’t sink. For that they provided a bucket to empty out the water with. Orion and I quickly got into the other boat and left the boat that filled with water to Rieke and her friend. For the 2 hours, we paddled around the Groningen canals and saw lots of house boats. They are boats that are permanently or not permanently docked in the canal that people actually live in. They are almost like trailer-houses I think. That’s all we really saw though which was really frustrating because Dieuwertje had recommended several other things to see that I wanted to see, but didn’t get to. Hopefully I can go again before I leave.
We returned the boats, then went to McDoanld’s of all places. I managed to scrape up enough Dutch from somewhere in my head to order my meal without using any English or German. I was quite satisfied with it. After McDonald’s, we wandered around the markets again for a while, then we went to the train station to see it. The building was an old building and quite beautiful. I took some pictures of it which I posted with the others. In front of the station, they also had what looked to be several thousand bikes which was quite impressive. We sat around at the station for a while before then catching the bus back to Oldenburg at 5 pm. Dieuwertje met us at the bus stop here in Oldenburg and then her and I hung out for the rest of the night. Of course she wanted to hear everything that we had done. She said she really wishes she had decided to come after I told her about the stupid paddle boat trip and not really seeing anything other than the canal and the market.
I posted photos of the trip here.
Later today, Dieuwertje is coming over again and we’re going to watch the final for the Euro 2008 soccer tournament. It will be Germany vs Spain so it should be interesting.
