Our First Day in Utrecht, Netherlands

A 40min journey from Schiphol airport to the Tjioe place in Utrecht, and our first glimpse of Holland – all flat land, much trees, straight roads, cool weather, bright sun, not to mention left hand driving and cars driving in the (wrong) directions! 2 windmills were spotted on the way, just standing out of no where from the expressway. But probably not significant enough? not too sure. Hopefully will see some really traditional and grand windmills at the end of this trip.

 

Both Eus and Lee are friendly; chatted about how things are like in Sg and Holland, and apparently Lee’s parentage is a mix of Indonesian Chinese (Indonesia was a former Dutch colony) and Dutch, which explains her exotic features and name. Eus is very knowledgeable about Holland and history and the likes, and we had a glimpse of Holland as they know it =)

 

The neighbourhood is quiet and quaint – I love the neighbourhood! It’s not too far from the City Centre, tucked away in the midst of shops, cafes and marts. A self-sufficient town, a far cry from the relatively busy City Centre where bicycles are just about everywhere.

 

Our Front door

The road in front of our house.

Walking down the road.

 

A school at the end of the road

Their house is lovely too! 3 storeys, with steep steps and its spacious and it has its little garden and backporch where they can lounge for meals in the middle of flowers, and the occasional ramble of the intercity trains , or rather, now its the carriages that carry goods that pass by the backyard in the evening.

 

They showed us our room – a spacious room with 2 beds, a desk and a computer table, a few chairs and a view of the lanes outside the house. The younger daughter, Mick, is such a sweetheart – she wrote on a blackboard “Welcome in Utrecht!” to welcome us (it’s her room by the way). Despite the grammatical error, they are really trying very hard to communicate with us in English, since Dutch is their first language. Really appreciate their efforts.

Lets go for a tour around our host’s family.  

 This is the living room. with futuristic and simple design, with some ornaments that carry some oriental flavour in it. The pictures on the right wall are the portraits of their daughters Mick and Max.

Its a 3 storey house,with a really nice kitchen, really nice garden, attic that’s Rob’s drum room and etc.

 

View of the garden from the living room. Photos in subsequent days will show more of the house. They actually got people to come and design their garden after they bought the house some 12 years back. And there’s an area in the garden for the 2 big dogs, Lara and Akira to stroll.

Xf with Kong zi in the living room. Most pictures will be of her anyway, haha since I think she looks better on photos than me anywae. haha

The garden. When the sun is warm and its not too cold, we have our dinner out in the open. Since the weather is usually cold and wet here, the people of Holland really love sun, and they stay out in the sun whenever they can. A rather different lifestyle compared to life in singapore, but I (jwen) really like it.

The dining area where we’ll eat when the weather’s cold. Notice the grand piano! hahah.

This is our bedroom.They were really nice to put a table for us with PC, with box of colour pencils, got us a clothes stand and gave us our own personal bathroom equipped with towels and etc… Really very hospitable!

I think the room is probably twice of our bedrooms back in Singapore. haha

 

Cycling is a way of life here – thank goodness I managed to ‘revise’ my cycling skills back home (okay twice) and I’m still wobbly but doing fine enough to cycle round the neighbourhood .. (Jwen: except that its the family joke that we’d take double the time to get anywhere. HA HA HA )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were still rather full from the breakfast we had on the plane, and the family didn’t quite have the habit of having breakfast together in the mornings, so after unpacking and calling  home to reassure everyone at home that all’s well, we decided to explore the neighbourhood on foot cos’ we didn’t feel like sleeping the day away. Lee gave us a map of Utrecht, circled the house and wrote all the phone numbers before we left with the map.

 

 

 

 

 Outside our house ..

To show that cycling’s really the way of life in Holland, the roads have a side section for bicycles! They even have traffic lights for the bicycles. And mind you, each bicycle here doesn’t come cheap. Its around 230++ euros (jwen saw in a catalogue and that’s equivalent to almost sgd $470 for a bicycle!). Check out the arrows on the photos for the directions that vehicles travel. Different frm Singapore?

 

 

 

 Sufficient to show that cycling’s really the way of life in Holland? U see bikes EVERYWHERE.Some decorated with flowers too.

 Apparently there’s Traditional Chinese Medicine here in Holland.

Walked around the bend, and most of the shops lining the streets have yet to open. People were cycling past us and we peeked into the 2 pharmacies that we passed by.

 The nice things abt Pharmacies here is that sometimes you get to see the really old bottles, and medicines and stuff, which is really interesting as it lets u know that Pharmacy has been around for many years, perhaps in a different way in the past.

We came by this shared courtyard among a few other houses. not too sure if this was an almshouse, which we were to see later over the next few days.But having nothing better to do, we attempted to do jumping shots. The problem with traveling with just another companion is that you can only take picture for each other , or act like an idiot and try to take a photo of you 2 together, or get someone else to take for you.

 

Wandered about randomly, and a turn into the street across revealed a wall that had interesting graffiti on it(and graffiti is really nice isn’t it! It’d be nice if we can have that back at home); think it is something like a locksmith’s shop, and hence began our attempt at taking a picture of ourselves with the wall graffiti!

 The finished product.

 Preparing to get the camera ready for the shot!

 

 

 

Further down the street was a cosy little café; I’ve a good mind to return one lazy afternoon to just sit at the sidewalk, have a cuppa café latte and to scribble on postcards back home as I watch the people of Utrecht cycle by. (and poor jwen will be left alone. sobs )

 

Part of the University of Utrecht was undergoing renovation (our host, Mrs Lee studied in this University! In fact there’s only (if jwen is not wrong) 2 Universities in Netherlands that offer Pharmacy course. The Groningen and Utretch University …

 

 

We walked further down and came across this particular building which we thought was the Bibliotheek (a library in Dutch language) which sits just in front of a canal and streetlamps with red and pink flowers growing on top of it, and doing what we love doing – i.e. retarded poses – I came up with a ‘reading book’ pose – library mahhh… and Jwen was about to do another nerd pose when a guy came to unlock the door to the building. And it turned out to be an office complex for dance, theatre and music. Jwen was excited and asked if we could enter (coz she thought it was some place to learn dance)… but it was an office and we were definitely not allowed to enter. So much for our map reading skills – the Bibliotheek was just across the street. So after the guy went up, Jwen struck an arabesque pose (since there’a dance studio there) and we snickered all the way to the next street

The bookworm gf 

 

The attempting-to-be dancy gf.

A window on one of the houses was shattered.
Isn’t there beauty in destruction?
Maybe sometimes. Maybe not…

Strolled back down the street to our new residence, and there was an organic supermarket where we spotted our first stroopwafles, and rows of assorted candy! And we got quite excited over seeing fresh fruits and veggies cos’ we can whip up something at our place if we felt like it, and if we start missing soups from home haha! And down the street was another larger supermarket and there were rows of blueberries, cherries, raspberries; plenty of juices (though expensive) and assorted food – love looking at the things in the supermarket in foreign countries cos’ you’ll never know what they’ll have in there!

 Extreme left on 2nd right is their ’salad’. It has a slice of egg, tuna or something packed with cream? The good thing about their supermarkets is that there’s everything all packed and ready to be consumed, say during lunch,or to go into the pot. So it saves the hassle of finding herbs to go with their dishes since everything comes in a packet.

Wanted to buy a packet of stroopwafles to munch on despite it being near lunchtime, but the young, supposedly non-English speaking cashier didn’t (or refused to give us) have change for 20 euros. ArghhHhs. Possibly our first taste of ‘discrimination’. So much for shopping. So we went back to our residence, just in time for lunch with the family!

 

They do LOVE the sun muchly; lunch was in the backporch overlooking the garden, and we had warmed up bread rolls with sliced Dutch cheese – loveloves! – tomatoes, ham and the juice that is soon becoming my favourite – a peculiar but refreshing mix of strawberry and orange! J Got to meet Mick (Michelle) and Max (Maxim) as well as Rob proper too, interesting family! Mick and Max can’t really speak English, but they try to answer when we attempt to converse with them.

 

 

After lunch, Lee and us sat down to discuss our plans for the next few days. She has plans to bring us to her friend’s, who works as a hospital pharmacist in Haarlem and head to the beach after that and have a drink before heading back to Utrecht for dinner or the night. And a visit to another friend of hers who owns an automated pharmacy! Exciting! Really appreciate her thoughtfulness in exposing us to the different aspects of pharmacy in Holland, and we can’t wait to take a look! Popped by the pharmacy in the afternoon to have a quick introduction of us to the staff there and we were free to roam about the neighbourhood after that.

 

Rob and Eus brought out the bikes that we would be using for the rest of the time there and I attempted to cycle about – still not too bad! But yea I had some awful times during slopes and turns – an awfully embarrassing boo – boo was when I was following Max, and couldn’t make a not-very sharp turn – and ended up careening down another path at the roundabout. Everyone had to stop and wait for me to catch up *wince* But we made it to the pharmacy! And I definitely need more practice on the bike cos’ my cycling is laughable. Ughhhs.

 

The pharmacy is 3 storeys high and with frighteningly steep, winding steps up to the next levels, and it has pull out drawers holding medications (over 2000), areas for aseptic preparations of reconstituted medications, storage area, dispensing counters, and the levels up are offices, meeting rooms, rooms for on-call pharmacists (they used to run a 24hour pharmacy and the pharmacists will work on shifts, resting if they are not on call), the pantry, relaxation rooms – pretty huge I think, in comparison to the local retail pharmacy chains. But then again, we don’t have such community pharmacies in Singapore. In Holland, the doctors’ clinics will either be in their own homes, or situated in the same building as the pharmacy; and the doctors and pharmacists often hold discussions to review patients and the likes.

 

After the brief orientation about the pharmacy, we left with Max to explore their neighbourhood! Max brought us to Mick’s school (basic school or primary school as we call it here), around Wilhemina Park where we saw the 2 policeman and woman we met in the morning, chatting along our way back home. Apparently, they learn English, French and German in school, lessons are in Dutch, but they can choose to read either French or German and English.

 

Max had an appointment, so we lazed a while in our room before deciding on visiting Dick Bruner Huis near the city centre. For those who dont know, Dick Bruner is the author of Miffy the rabbit and she lives in Utrecht! Rob gave us directions (although it was to another museum, where students, including those from overseas, will go there to draw), and we left to bike around town! J Got a drink from the supermarket, and headed straight to the city centre of Utrecht; chained our bikes on a sidestreet along with plenty of others before exploring the rest of the city on foot. Bikes are part of life in Holland, and bikes are also commonly stolen here too to be sold in the black market apparently! Hence the need for double locks. One to lock the wheels, and the other to chain to a chair/railing/building.  Hopefully we don’t lose any of the bikes while we are here! haha

The first ‘expedition’ out with a bike.

 

And here we came across our first McDonalds in Utrecht – and of course, we just had to take a picture of it (and with it)!Its our personal agenda to take a picture with all the McDonalds we see on this trip. McDonald’s unite. In Jwen’s Place, Environment and Society module, the lecturer once said,”In places where there’s McDonald’s, there’s no war.” Kinda true if you think about it.

McDonalds at The Bijenkorf, Utrecht City Central, Netherlands

 

A walk down a few streets landed us at the heart of the City Centre where we slipped down into the canal banks, with the original intention to take a canal boat tour of the city (which we decided against in the end – Amsterdam would be a better choice), and sat by a bench at the canal backs just watching the birds and people lunching on the cafes lining the banks.

 

Opposite, people were eating and enjoying at the restaurants. On our side, people were eating ice cream cones/sandwiches/slack and while the afternoon away like us.

Timer photo again after many tries.

Watching others take the river cruise.

Explored the other side of the City Centre – a shoppers’ haven I suppose! With shops housing various European brands, clothes, food etc… plenty of window shopping we did, and we had freshly baked fries in a Turkey diner before heading out to locate the Dom, a cathedral from which it was possible to see Amsterdam on a clear day – after climbing some 400-500 steps to reach the top.

 

 

Our first restaurant stop in Netherlands. Turkish Restaurant for fries with alot of mayonaise. They love their fries with mayo. I (jwen) misses her chilli sauce!!!!

 

We did manage to reach the Dom, but it was closed by then. Hence we can only take photos of its grandeur and visit it antoher time.

Walking into the interior of DOM and we were greeted by …..

This statue in front of a glaring white background

The back of the church

 

 

The Dom from a distance. Notice the lady statue facing the Dom.

We headed back home on our bikes. The Dutch do love their flowers! Beautiful flowers, roses, pansies and others which we can’t identify grow just about everywhere, and there’ll be people selling flowers at a turn of the street, and you’ll meet people heading places with flowers in their arms.

On the way back to get our bikes, we saw…. 

 

this building which was pretty cool because it has (or seemingly looks like) an old building, with a new attachment built on top of it, or rather on the front facade of it. And there’s this pipe of water in front which had a sign that said ‘Geen Drinkwater’, meaning no drinking water in Dutch.

Went through a tunnel to get home . The Tunnel is really dark (as compared to spore at least) and we could see the drain on the road above us ..

Our return journey was not as smooth-sailing though – we got pretty lost while navigating our way back all because of one wrong turn at a junction – it’s not as straightforward as retracing our steps as the bicycle tracks have directions like the roads for cars. And if you get spotted by the police for cycling past a red light – you’ll be fined 50 euros on the spot.

 

Getting lost has its charm, and Utrecht is filled with pretty buildings, rivers where we spotted a boat sailing by with people dining on board, a mother singing while her baby hums along in the sling carrier, and through the park and across railway tracks. Finally made it back for dinner! Though we were slightly late. Dinner was out at the backporch once again, with noodles and they have wine with their dinner.

Had coffee after dinner, together with cookies and its a culture here to have coffee/tea at breakfast, during break, during lunch, during tea break, and after dinner before bed, as well as when you go to visit anyone. Caffeine round the clock.hahah.

 

The sun sets at 10-11pm in Holland, day s are long and nights are short. Coffee in the evenings are usual for them as well; perfect for me – a coffeeholic! We gave them the Cashew sugee cookies and Fouram cookies, as well as the mini prawn rolls we brought over from Sg. Met a neighbour who was visiting Lee, and after staying for coffee and strawberry cake, we headed back up to our rooms to shower, and finally turned in for our first night in Holland.