Art Cafe, Luxembourg City

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you could say that this was serendipity; after touring the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the underground Casemates and the Esprit walkway, we stumbled upon this hidden treasure of a cafe  which was literally tucked away in a courtyard behind the bustling main streets of Luxembourg City.

the entire cafe was shrouded in red, illuminated by the sultry afternoon sun, and my, were we glad to be indoors! adore the eccentric furniture they have displayed all around; somehow the pieces add to the charm of the lil’ cafe, and we chose the window seats.

we had the cappuccino and movenpick’s vanilla ice-cream, nothing absolutely special but the atmosphere all but makes up for it =)

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i miss those times! =)

Day 8: Vrijday! (Friday)

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Goed Morgen! Woke up real bright and early this morning to catch Bus 11 to Utrecht Central Station and take a train to Alkmaar. The 3 of us had Cruseli (again!) and yoghurt for breakfast, and tried out the Vla that Yixin bought from AH – our soon-to-be favourite hangout in Holland! I love it! It’s thick and tastes something like melted icecream – chocolatey with a subtle taste of banana. Rob bought a new Cruseli flavour – Apple, Cranberry and Kiwi for us to try, seeing that Jingwen and I LOVE Cruseli – we have been having it every day for breakfast and sometimes lunch to munch on! And we all agreed that it was more yummilicious than the multi-flavoured and Winter type that we had previously.

And the typical us decided to have Cruseli take-away to munch on during our 1 hour plus train trip to alkmaar, so we hunted out plastic bags and scooped a bunch in. So I guess now the Cruseli is almost gone haha! We’re the “Cereal Killers”! Packed this raisin cinnamon cake we got from AH some time back to munch on the way too!

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Jwen and her cinnamoncake-killer pose

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So, off we went to catch our bus – and ran to the bus (again, we seem to be running for our buses/ trains all the time) and we used our Eurail pass for the trip to Alkmaar, which on retrospect wasn’t at all necessary cos’ Joris sent us back, and the trip there was only about 7 Euros, which means that it was a waste of a day We ended up missing the train we wanted to take, but the frequency of the train was high, i.e. 1 every 15 – 30min (now I can’t remember which it was), so we hopped on to another train to Alkmaar.

Decided to attempt to get away without writing the date of travel on our Eurailpass (validated just yesterday) just for the fun of it, and if we didn’t get caught we would have the day free! But the journey wasn’t at all pleasant cos’ we had to keep a lookout for the conductors and there were a few stops in between Utrecht and Amsterdam, which made us quite uneasy. In the end, the conductors – yes 2 of them – came up the train at Amsterdam so Jwen and I hurriedly scribbled the date into the pass and it was checked by the conductor from behind (we only saw the conductor coming up from the front). And I guess the checks at Amsterdam is quite common, so it’s not wise to push your luck – well you can try acting like the blur tourist, and if – IF is the key word – you are lucky, the conductor may let you off with a warning but you might end up with a 40euro fine, payable on the spot. Gamble wisely!

So off the train we went – a first on this type of train for Jwen and I, and we just had to have a glance at the toilets on the train! Pretty comfortable ride to Alkmaar, and just as we got off the train, Joris called to say that he has reached and will be meeting us right outside Alkmaar train station!

When we stepped out of the station, there was a guide at the lamppost who was handing out maps of Alkmaar and pointing out the general direction of the Cheese Market to tourists like us, which was pretty handy, cos’ it seems like most of the people are going to the Cheese Market, which starts at 10am and ends at 12.30pm on Fridays. Say Cheese, Say Alkmaar! J

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And Joris came! Was great meeting up with him after ONE whole year; it’s been quite some time. Cheese Market, here we come! J

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A stroll through the streets and following the signposts led us right to the Market Square where the cheese auctions were held. It was sure lively and crowded there.

strolling down the streets

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modern version of clogs – the (ugly) CROCS

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Rows of vendors selling their wares which are mostly cheese and souvenirs alongside the canal next to the Market Square, and the Market Square was surrounded by people trying to catch a glimpse of the auction process, and of course the huge, round cheese.

cheese vendors!

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pretty stained glass panels

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Got a spot at the back and we could finally see what was going on, cos we couldn’t really see past the rows of heads. And there! An almost clear view of teams (differentiated by the different colours on their hats) loading cheese from the rows of cheese in the centre of the Square to their wagons, then back into the trucks outside of the Square. Some girls were dressed up in traditional Dutch costumes as well, and we got to try some cheese samples.

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The Town Hall, which interior was used for storing and weighing cheese as well as conducting cheese auctions in the past. Now it houses the Cheese Museum.

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The front of the Town Hall is the Market Square, the only live cheese auction in the NL takes place every Friday morning from 10am to 12pm. The cheese for auction are displayed in rows and rows of bright, cheery yellow and auctioned off publicly, though albeit more for tourists to have a look.

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There are 4 parties, each distinguished by their hats of different colours such as green, red, yellow and blue. They first put down the carrier, load the cheese into the traditional carriers with curved bows, and carry them off with the harnessed attached to their neck and shoulders. It’s not as simple as it seems – the 2 carriers will have to work and walk in unison else the carrier will sway violently from side to side and dislodge the cheese from the thin planks across the curved bows.

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The cute Dutch boy offering cheese samples to the curious spectators to try. Interested parties can purchase cheese directly from them.

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Decided to pop into the Cheese Museum for a look. It was an interesting visit! The museum is rather small, but charming with its slanted roofs and floors, and we took our time browsing through the exhibits and of course, not forgetting to take pictures!

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view of the Cheese Auction from the comfort of the market

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old form of transportation for the cheese

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old records of cheese auctioned in the past years

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traditional Dutch costumes from various counties

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weights used to compact the cheese into their round, solid forms

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olden form of shredder we suppose?

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Dutch ladies from different counties, distinguishable by their headgear and dresses

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After which, we signed off in the guestbook and left for Zuiderzee Museum in Enkuizen!

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Stopped along one of the stalls that were selling cheese and we tried this milky cheese with herbs. YUMMY!!!!! Joris had a car, so the four of us could go together. I love how the Tom-Toms (something like a GPS navigator system and route planner all in one) work! The trip took us about 45 minutes, and we passed by this large strip of road which had rows and rows of flowers in bright colours, I guess it’s some kind of nursery where they plant flowers for sale. Joris stopped at a petrol station so the girls could go take a look and take pictures! Attempted jumping shots on the sidewalk and Joris refused to jump HAHA. But the shots were not exactly successful, but good try! Munched on the raisin cinnamon cake we got from AH in the car too.

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After which, it was on to the museum! J Reached the museum but couldn’t figure out where the entrance was though we could see part of the outdoor museum but it was separated from the main road to the museum by a short wall. Joris had to park his car somewhere else and it turned out that the entrance to the museum was on the other end of the street, we bought our tickets from there and headed into the museum.

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Joris and his cashew sugee cookies from Bengawan Solo!

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The weather was perfect – sunny with a slight breeze! The lake that stretches out to just about forever is actually ‘man-made’, cos’ part of NL is actually below sea-level, and if the sea is allowed to flow into the land, there is a danger of submerging most of Holland. Hence the dykes were built to contain the water and created a freshwater lake. There’s even a man-made island within the lake – Isomere.

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attempts at doing the laundry in the strong wind

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old fishing boats on the harbour

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Strolled around to explore the different houses and learnt a little about how the people used to live, and the different occupations; there were demonstrations such as rope making from the stems of marijuana plants at various places scattered around the village.

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their houses are really small!

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Delft Blue tiled house

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There was a candy shop in the village!!! Joris got some butter-milk like sweets for us to try J I still don’t quite like liquorice though the Dutch chew on them like candy.

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Lunch was at this restaurant-café like place, and we were in the shade under the sun – best of both worlds! Jwen, Joris and I had this salmon sandwich thing, and Yixin had just a soup. I had my first dose of caffeine in the form of a cappuccino, which wasn’t too bad though I usually don’t drink cappuccinos. Jwen had this Rose wine-beer alcoholic drink which tasted more like fruit juice haha. But it tasted better than the beer I tried the day before, which was bitter :S

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Popped by the post office in the town to mail our postcards! The stamps that was given to us were from the post-Euro times, so the denominations were different from the present Euro. Each postcard required $0.95 worth of postage, and the stamps came in two 70c and one 65c denominations. The postal man stamped a special Zuiderzee museum, Enkuizen postmark on the postcards, and they were ready to be mailed!

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The postage stamps were rather unique, so Jwen, Yixin and I bought some back for remembrance and for further mailing purposes, though I’m not sure if they will be accepted. And Joris was just looking on in amusement cos’ we took pictures of just about everything – even the postcards we were sending cos’ we were afraid they wouldn’t reach, so we will just have the pictures for memory’s sake. Which was what I did for postcards I mailed from Korea, and sadly only 2 out of 3 reached their destinations.

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We passed by an ancient Apotheek, and of course, being pharmacy students, we just had to have a look in there! There’s a symbol/ statue that indicates that the place is an Apotheek. It’s a figurehead of a man with his mouth wide open so that you can see the tonsils at the back of the throat. Apparently, the larger the figurehead, the more it will cost. We have yet to spot it at other Apotheeks (the modern ones), and we will try to spot if Lee’s pharmacy has it. The pharmacy that Joris is working in has one!

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Went behind the counter to take a peek at the bottles of medications and weighing scales, tablet and pill makers and the likes. Interesting visit! And we took a picture with the friendly pharmacist ‘on duty’ – he’s a real, licensed pharmacist who has been working as one for the past 50plus years, and is currently working for 2 days in Zuiderzee museum’s pharmacy as a guide, and works another 2 days in a small pharmacy outside of the town. Pretty cool huh!

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little girl playing with one of the traditional Dutch games, ironically named Chinese Checkers (or something like that)

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old schoolroom

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Joris and grilled herring! Herring is a very Dutch dish by the way; they usually eat it raw (and cleaned) with fresh onions. It’s a little salty and crisp with the fresh onions, and I like it very much!

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And there concludes our visit to the outdoor museum!

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Headed to the indoor museum which was dedicated to the whaling industry in Old Holland, which is now non-existent. Here, they have models of whaling boats, exhibits on whales and whale-spearing weapons. Didn’t find this as interesting as the outdoor museum though.

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It was still rather early after the visit to the museum – about 5pm, but there is nowhere else that we wanted to go see, or either that most places will be closed by then or too far away. So we decided to head back home to Utrecht, and invited Joris along for dinner with us after asking Rob cos Rob’s cooking Mexican food today and we didn’t want to miss that! J

modern windmills on the highway

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Joris drove on the road through the dyke, and across the reclaimed land, so we could see seawater on one side of the dyke, and freshwater on the other. The car stopped for the road-bridge to be lowered cos’ a ship was passing through, and it was the first time we’ve seen such a thing HAHA!

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Zevende dag in Nederland!

(Its the 7th day in The Netherlands). For those that don’t know, ‘Nether’ means lowlands, and the name comes from the fact that half of the country is actually below sea level. The dykes play an important role in ensuring the the country doesn’t get flooded with water. cool hur.

Early in the morning, Lee drove us to Amersfoort to visit this healthcare centre. We were late because of the jam, and because she took a wrong turn on the road. Apparently, she often gets lost when going there and the pharmacist in the healthcare centre was amused.

So here we are, at the Gezondheidscentrum (health centre). Its something like a stepdown care hospital, or perhaps, more similar to our polyclinic back in Singapore. In this building, there are dentists, physiotherapists, radiologists, speech therapists etc and the pharmacy there serves all these disciplines. Our main purpose for this visit was to see the robotic pharmacy. Had no idea what to expect, despite having heard about it in school. I was half expecting to see a robot in the middle of the pharmacy, with outstretched arms to grab the medicines.

The pharmacist, who was Lee’s schoolmate, gave us an explanation of how the robot works. The robot is actually the shelf at the back of the pharmacy.

So the flow of work in the pharmacy goes like this.

The pickers transcribe the prescription and do the necessary checks. Then she enters into the computer the medicines that needs to be taken out from the shelf.

The robot receives the signal, picks up the medicines from the right compartment of the shelf, and then sends it through the delivery channels on top, to where the picker is.

It then falls out and tada, the picker gets the medicines without having to walk!

Of course the medicines won’t automatically walk their ways to the shelf. So manual work is required to put the boxes into the shelves. The possible for improvement areas of this robot are:

1. How can we work to make stocking up automatically instead of manually?
2. Each compartment in the shelf has limited storage area. Hence, there is a limit to the number of boxes that can be stored.
3. For prescriptions that required loose number of tablets, the robot isn’t able to take the blisters out from the box and then cut it before delivering it to the picker.
4. If the medicine is placed in the wrong compartment, it will pick the wrong medicine when the picker choose that compartment.
5. Not all medicines can fit into the compartments of the shelf.
6. Being a new machine, the compartments are still pretty empty and the pharmacy is working on filling them up after the initial trial period.

The back of the robot where the medicines are manually slotted in.

At the top of most pharmacy (attic) are usually where the old prescriptions are kept. In Singapore, all prescriptions have to be kept for 2 years by law, and those that contained controlled drugs, for 3 years. But here in the Netherlands, they have to keep it for 6 year originally. Recent laws have changed that to 15 years, as there was a case of a mother who received anticancer therapy 15 years ago, and now her grandchildren suffer from birth defect, hence the new law to keep prescriptions for at least one generation so that during lawsuits or making claims from insurance company, there can be proof. So you can imagine just how much prescriptions the pharmacies have to keep in their attic!!!! The funny thing is, everything is electronised now and the prescriptions can be dug out from computer systems. So why is there still a need to keep all the hardcopies for so long? Food for thought.

We went back home and Lee went to work, while we had some spare time to spare. Took our first and only jog and the park nearby. Its shiok or maybe not that shiok for people who like to sweat it out (like me!) to jog here because its so hard to sweat! The good thing about jogging here is that because its so hard to sweat, you conserve a teeny weeny bit of energy i suppose. Xf and I jogged for 45 minutes,but apparently the family doesn’t think that’s long enough! Eus said should have gone for 2 hours jog! Then again, he might have been joking. hahaha.

Us in our jogging attire on day 7 before going out for a jog. The family made a bed for Yixin coz she’s coming later in the afternoon!

Along our jogging path, we would come by this railway track. Me being silly doing a jumping shot in the middle of no where to keep up with my jump-around-the-world shots! hahaha

On our way back, Xf saw this particular carplate with her intials!

Went back home, freshened up and had cruesli with yoghurt and fruits for lunch!

Our lunches!

Then we went out to the city and did our first top up on the prepaid card that the family got for us   Felt like a child learning to do all these simple things. hahhaha Albert Heijn, the biggest supermarket chain store here, has almost everything. And our top up was done there too! Bought some cruesli to top up the family’s supply too coz we cleared almost all their cruesli at the rate that we were eating.

We then walked to the city’s biggest shopping mall, Hoog Catherinje, which is attached to the train station that we were supposed to pick yixin up at. It was indeed HUMONGOUS. And the way that Lonely Planet described it was that its so HUGE people wish it will just stop! hahaha. Did some shopping there and then went earlier to the train station to validate our Eurail pass since we’d use it the next day for our Alkmaar cheese market trip.

Utrecht Centraal station had this board for you to check which train leaves at what time for where at which platform. Feels like im in an airport. hahah

 
We were suppose to validate our eurail pass/book tickets/buy strippenkaarts at the counters beneath the big board.

But smart me and Xfen forgot to bring our passports and hence, we took our first bus ride back to home t oget our passports, since Yixin would be late.

The list of bus stops along the bus service 11 line.
Every bus stop here has a name and the one at our house was Oosprongpark. Its quite a good service in the sense that bus stops can be used as landmarks. Also, when you get up the bus, all you need to do is to tell the bus driver which stop you would want to alight at and he would chop the suitable number of boxes on the strippenkaart (a strip of paper with 45 boxes that you stamp for each bus ride. Short journeys take up 2 boxes, longer one more. )

The interior of the bus. The buses here are in general more spaced out than ours, which probably making goin up and down with a luggage for user-friendly. The only difference with the bus is that the doors are on the opposite side because of the fact that over here they do right side driving.  

Went back home and we were greeted by the dogs. Doesn’t it feel good to have dogs barking to welcome you home? Then again sometimes it gets too noisy. hahaha

Got our eurail pass validated after a pretty long wait. met yixin. She got flowers for the host. Apparently its a dutch culture to bring flowers when you visit someone. And we also got poffertjes (mini pancakes) and a pie from Albert Heijn for the family. Yixin also brought us her dutch textbook together with the dutch cd so that we could learn some simple dutch. But to the last day that we’re here, we only managed to learn 2 or 3 lessons. oOopS. Nevertheless, I have to agree that the best way to learn a language is to be in the country itself. Coz you hear it see it everywhere, its much more easier to pick the language up.

Rob was cooking dinner when we were back. Cauliflowers in tomato sauce. wooO hoo. Not exactly chinese way of cooking cauliflower, but its yummy

The cauliflowers with the green leaves still on…

Robbie, our favourite cook! He cooks SuPEr duper weLL!

Lee bought some beer for us to try. She wanted to get Heinnekin, which should be green, but she accidentally grabbed the wrong one. Behind is Yixin’s flower for Lee. My first taste of beer. haha. I think i prefer wine more.

drie meisjes met bier. (3 girls with beer)

Since rob does the cooking, there’s nothing much that we can help except to help set the table

We even had candle lights for that night’s dinner. Attempted to take a family photo. But the photograph turned out bad due to the very poor lighting and my lousy camera plus poor timer effects. hahaha

After dinner, Robbie started playing on the piano and he’s damn good lar. So we just sat there, enjoying his music as though it was a after dinner concert. Its really impressive that he learnt drums, piano etc all on his own by figuring them out and he expects the same of mick too. He’s those geniuses who can listen to a song once and play it well next. We played Stephanie Sun’s 遇见 for him, and mick and him loved it. So we looked up youtube for them and he could play it the next day! Much more touching than the original version.

Here’s a video of him playing. Although I think it’s probably some classical music or something? hmmm

Its a pity we didn’t know who the artiste he was talking about. Otherwise it’d probably make appreciating his music even more great.

Us with Akira, enjoying the music.

We had dessert which was the apple tart we bought and the poffertjes. I like the european habit of sitting around the table together for koffie after dinner, chatting about the day over a piece of cake (if dessert is served) and just let time pass away. Life is definitely a much slower pace here. And it is indeed homely for everyone to be home for dinner every night.

They serve the poffertjes hot, with icing sugar on top. Xfen loves this…

More on Poffertjes …

Poffertjes [pɔfəɹcəs] are a traditional Dutch batter treat. Poffertjes look like tiny pancakes, but they are much sweeter. In contrast with pancakes, poffertjes are turned before one side is completely done, which results in a much softer core than pancakes have. Typically, poffertjes are served with powdered sugar and butter.

Poffertjes are not hard to prepare but a special pan is needed. This is a special cast-iron or copper pan also available in aluminium with teflon-coating with several shallow indentations in the bottom. In large restaurants, special plates are often used to prepare poffertjes. Restaurant chefs are quite skilled in turning the almost baked poffertjes with a fork.

Ingredients

• 420 g of self-raising flour
• 1 litre milk
• 3 eggs
• pinch of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla essence
• yeast

Instructions

• Dissolve the yeast in some milk.
• Put the flour through a sieve, make a small hole in the middle of flour and pour the milk with yeast into it.
• Starting in the center add the remainder of the milk, meanwhile whirling the batter. Finally add the egg.
• Put the batter away for 30 minutes.

• Place the pan on the stove and grease the pan with butter when it’s hot. Add a little bit of batter to each hollow, only filling them half way.
• Just before the topside of the poffertje is completely dry, turn it over. It should let go easily. Wait till the other side also has a nice golden brown color.
• Put them on a plate and dust them with the powdered sugar, till they are completely covered with sugar, and put a small piece of butter on top, this should melt.
• Serve immediately.

Variation

Poffertjes can also be baked without yeast and thus without the waiting time, but some would say that they do not taste as nice.

Supermarkets also stock mixes for poffertjes, to which only the eggs and milk need to be added. Usually they contain some kind of leavening agent, like baking powder to prevent the issue mentioned above.

They can also be served with other sweet garnishes, such as stroop (molasses), slagroom (whipped cream) or aardbeien (strawberries), for added tastiness.

Served with strawberries and cream they are known as ‘Poffertjes à la Bill Clinton’ in honour of his visit to Delft.

Our host, Lee, was very nice to arrange for us to visit a hospital pharmacy at Haarlem. So early in the morning,we drove from our house, to Ien’s house (Lee’s youngest sister), a village near to Utrecht city, before we made our way to Kennemer Gasthuis (hospital at Haarlem, north Holland).

Along the way, we saw modern windmills.

Modern windmills are practically everywhere in The Netherlands. They are used to harvest wind energy to generate electricity!

We finally arrived at Kennemer Gasthuis, which is one of the teaching hospitals in The Netherlands. The pharmacy is located in a separate building from the main hospital and it has a few stories for the picking of medications, small scale manufacturing, quality control and etc. One of Lee’s previous employee, Monique, who just graduated from Pharmacy and is now doing her training of 4 years to specialize as a hospital pharmacist, brought us around. To become a community pharmacist, they will need to do 2 years of training instead, on top of their 6 years of school.

Monique brought us round the pharmacy. It was pretty big, with all the rows of medications in the cupboard. Their medications are placed all over the place, and not classified according to class of drugs or alphabetical order so as to minimize chances of picking the wrong medications that may look/sound alike.

Unlike the hospitals in Singapore, where the freezers are just a few rectangular boxes, here, the freezer is one entire room. And in the picture, you see the door to the ‘ice’ room.

And then we went to another floor to see the manufacturing sector.
Here , along the corridor are the plastic gowns that the staff have to put on when they go into the rooms to make preparations.

The material for this gown are special such that there will be no accidents of fibre falling into the preparations.

This is the room where sterilized injection ampoules are screened manually by 2 staff for the presence of small particles. After they pass the quality check, they would go through this machine to be labeled and packaged into boxes.

We then went into this maze where we can see from windows what each room was doing. This allowed for supervision from the outside of the process without having to put on special gowns and bringing in contamination from the outside to the clean areas.

Prior to going to the room for checking, the ampoules are filled in this clean room with staff fully gowned. This man has to stay in a covered area so as to minimize flow of bacteria from the environment.

A machine that fills the ampoules and the seal them up with flame automatically.

This guy here is doing a report on the culture of the air from the work area. They do this periodically to ensure that the workplace is free from contamination.

These 2 guys are making sterile preparations for cancer treatment. They always work in pair, so that the one seated down will stay there for the whole day, instead of going somewhere to get stuff, and then having to swap his hands with alcohol again before he can go back to the laminar flow chamber to do his work. Basically, the standing guy does all the brain job and pick all the necessary stuff, while the seated guy will just follow instructions from the standing guy or from a protocol what he should do next.

 Then Monique brought us to this area where we had to put on ‘astronaut suit’ from head to toe so that we could enter the clean area where they made capsules, cream etc.

Beyond the bench, everything is suppose to be clean, before we step foot through the door where air flow is in one-way direction out to minimize contamination again.

All of us looking silly but fun!

Photography wasn’t allowed in the clean section and hence no pictures for those. But the trip had really been insightful to see how the hospital pharmacy worked in The Netherlands. And it was also great being able to see whatever we learnt in school being applied here. We may all speak a different language, but the practice of pharmacy is universal and that’s what brings us all together.

Monique treated us all to lunch at the staff canteen, before we went to see their outpatient pharmacy where patients that visit the specialist clinics will pick up their medications . Compared to Singapore, it was less busy. No hectic wars to fight. This could possibly be because they have several stepdown hospital/pharmacies else where and hence the patient load is distributed.

We took a final photo outside the outpatient pharmacy before we bade her goodbye.

Ien, Xf me and Monique

We then drove to the city of Haarlem to shop around. Parked the car beside a canal. Canals are everywhere in this country !

The first thing that I saw there was this shop Pas de deux with 50% discount! Being a dance freak, I wanted to visit the shop but the signboard was in the middle of a small lane and I had no idea where the shop was exactly.Plus, didn’t really want to take up everyone’s time and so gave it a miss.

Lee brought us to this serene place collectively known as hofjes. In Lonely Planet, this kind of places are known as Haarlem’s Urban Oases.

Some information for those who don’t know what we’re talking about. From Lonely Planet:

Haarlem is a peaceful city at the rowdiest of times, but even such a serene place needs its fair share of oases. Collectively known as hofjes – leafy tourtyards enclosed by rows of sweet little homes – these green spaces initially served as monastery gardens in the Middle Ages. Eventually they took on broader roles for hospitals and inns, or as refuges for orphans, widows and the eldery. These private squares also give clues about Dutch social concerns and the origins of the modern welfare state.

Most hofjes date from the 15th to the 18the centuries and are open to viewing on weekends only, but you can usually take a discreet peek any time.

Some of the hofjes in Harrlem:
Brouwers Hofje : Lodging for the brewers’ guild in 1472.
Frans Loenen Hofje: Almshouses built from a merchant’s estate (1607)
Hofje van Loo: A women’s hospital donated by mayor Sijmon Pieterszoon van Loo (1489); one of the most visible in Haarlem.
Hofje van Staats: One of the town’s biggest, donated by a Haarlem merchant to poor women of the Reformed Church (1733) and still houses single, elderly women.
St Joris Doelen: A provenierhuis given as a donation; almshouse, later a gentlemen’s inn (1591)
Teylers Hofje: Unusually grand affair, built by Pieter Teyler van der Hulst, founder of the Teyler Museum (1787).

The one that we went to was Hofj van Bakenes. It is the oldest small estate of Haarlem.It was founded intially in 1395.

View of the world outside from inside the hofj.

A water pump in the middle of the garden which they used in the past. Now, it has been locked and no water can be drawn from there. 

Flowers in the hofj. pretty flowers everywhere here in the Netherlands. 

walked along the streets and we saw this. Any guess for where this is?
yea… the red light district. Saw women dressed scantily in the windows. They have to rent a window and they’d stand there to attract potential customers. No pictures were taken because we read in lonely guidebook that we should refrain from taking pictures if we did not want to be thrown into the canals.

The McDonald’s of Haarlem.

In the centre of the city’s Grote Markt stands the 17th century Vleeshal, a former meat market and the Verweyhal, an old fish market. They both now serve as modern art annexes of the Frans Hals Museum. This picture shows the Vleeshal. Animals are weighed there to fetch a good price for the farmers.

A random shop window display. Nice masks

Next, we went to Grote Kerk van St Bavo. This is a Gothic cathedral with a towering 50m high steeple. It contained some fine Renaissance artworks, but the star attraction is its stunning Muller organ – one of the most magnificient in the world, standing 30m high with about 5000 pipes. It was played by Handel and Mozart, the latter when he was just 10!

Exterior of the church.

Entering the church, we see the interior of the church. Notice the floor of the church is lined with slabs of stones? And on them are inscriptions.

They are actually the inscriptions like on a tombstone. And beneath those stones lie layers of bodies of the rich and royal family from the past. The church has a whole list of details of who was buried where, when, and where they used to live for identification purposes. Its amazing that such details from centuries ago are kept till now!

A closer look at what’s on the stones.

Replica of ships were hung near the entrance of the church

The caretaker of the church was very nice and gave us pretty much ‘personal attention’. He showed us this particular part of the church where beneath the wooden plank lay rows of human skulls that belonged to the royalty in the past. They were discovered by the archaelogists and they remain where they were found.

A look now at the church and its magnificient pipe organs.

The back of the church, opposite the magnificient church organ.  

Looking in, this is what we saw. Where the lamp is lies the grave of Handel? Not too sure.

The ceiling of the church.

One of the postcards sold at the church had this particular picture too!

We were told that this being a Protestant church, does not have too many pretty stained glass windows as would be seen in a Catholic church. Most of the windows look like this.

However, there were some stained glass windows donated to the church.

We had the fortune to hear the church organ in action as the player was practising on it. Melodious music filled the serene church.

The Organ at St. Bavo constructed 1735-8 by Christian Muller from Amsterdam.The organ features 25 larger-than-life woodwork figures carved by Jan van Logteren.

We saw 2 chinese looking people when in the church, and apparently they were Singaporeans coz we saw their comments in the guestbook. Hence we left ours in chinese too! directly after theirs.

Left the church and we continued to walk around the city, coming into this souvenir shop. There was a huge wooden clog outside the shop. We thought this was big, but we saw HUMONGOUS ones in our subsequent stay in The Netherlands.

Ien and Lee were very nice to get us each a calender that had pictures of Amsterdam so that we would remember The Netherlands everyday of our life next year. Pretty touched by them

The guy at the souvenir shop told Ien about this attraction called “The Hiding Place”. We had plans to visit there when we were doing reading up in Maastricht about Netherlands. But there was no time and hence we had to give it a miss.

For those who are intersted, The Hiding Place was made famous by the motion picture in 1976 called The Hiding Place. It is a quaint little watchmaker’s shop established in 1837 at 19 Barteljorisstraat in the heart of haarlem. It was here in the shop and home of a Christian, Opa ten Boom, and his family that jewish refugees fleeing  the wrath of Nazi Germany were hidden for a time during WW2. A hiding place was built in a bedroom where the refugees could go in case the Germans made a surprise inspecdtion. The ten Boom family operated the refuge for more than 18 months, until they were betrayed on february 28,1944.

We then took the car to Zaanstad. This is us eating the almond biscuit. Lee bought it so that we’d have a taste of how the real Sara actually taste like. It has a tinge of almond in it. Kinda like a soft chewy cookie.

Took us quite a while to reach the place because of the jam, and we kinda got lost coz the original road was closed. Hence, we had to take a temporary ferry shuttle over to where we were to go.

And off our ferry went!

It was drizzling slightly. A really pathetic summer to be here in The Netherlands as what the locals said. Coz its been raining almost everyday and the summer is cold and wet!

When we arrived at the other side of the shore, what greeted us was some factory that made nuts. It was like an industrial area and if Ien and Lee were not around with us, we’d probably have thought that we were in the wrong place. We saw a bunch of tourists walking in the opposite direction and that at least let us know that we were on the right track to where we wanted to go.

Finally we arrived at Zaanstad, which is a municipality of Zaandam. The first sawmills were built here in the 16th century and promoted the development of the

The Zaanse Schans offers a variety of fascinating museums. The Zaans Museum houses a magnificent collection of regional artefacts and presents an innovative variety of exhibitions. The museum offers a complete historical picture of life in the Zaanstreek combined with stunning views over the Zaanse landscape.

Small, specialised museums situated in heritage buildings in other parts of the Zaanse Schans help to bring history to life the impressive history of the world’s first area of industry.

The Noorderhuis Costume Museum
Museumshop Albert Heijn Grocery 
Bakery Museum ‘In de Gekroonde Duyvekater’
The Dutch Clock Museum

More information can be found here.

Unfortunately because of the jam and the early closing hours of shops here, we didn’t manage to visit much, except to sight see and take pictures. Still, the picturesque scenery and the windmills were enough to satisfy our appetites.

Those green houses are typical Dutch houses.

Us with the windmills (molens in dutch). Over here there are many old windmills and no doubt this is the countryside.

Xf with a windmill.

The Netherlands is so closely associated with windmills, that it’s often the first fact people recall about the country. The Dutch built windmills for many centuries (and to some extent, the windmills built the country itself, since without them much of the land drainage could not have occured). In that time the mills were developed for corn milling, land drainage, saw milling, and in fact all manner of industrial purposes. Despite this widespread use, Dutch mills are in may ways quite primitive – using canvas sails, and turned to wind by hand (as distinct from the automated mechanisms that were developed for English windmills, including the fantail, and shuttered sails).

There are a very pleasing number of remaining windmills in the Netherlands – the number is about 1150 and rising, in that the Dutch only count complete workable mills, and in the past 10 years especially many extensive rebuilds have occured to add to this number.

Found this website online which actually allows you to locate a particular windmill and know its original function. Click here

 

A panorama shot of the place that definitely didn’t justify how pretty the place was.

Walked around, and we saw the first Albert heijn store here in Zaanstad. It was in one of those typical dutch houses. We also saw this shop that sold wooden toys, in particular, pinochio!

Wooden tulips at the entrance of the shops. So colourful! don’t they brighten up your days? It would have been nice to visit fresh tulips in the keukenkof, but sadly tulips weren’t in the season. They bloom from april to may and hence we can only settle for the wooden ones.

Went into the souvenir shop and we see delft wares. They are porceleins with blue prints, which were inspired by china wares.

A deflt violin. Exquisite and pretty isn’t it!

When we left the souvenir shop, it was raining again!   Braved through the rain and took the ferry back to the other side of the river and went home for dinner with Ien’s husband and children in the house. 

Rise and shine, we woke up to the second day of our work day here in Holland.

The host has been really nice. Offering to lend us their washing machines, and helping us to do some laundry together with theirs when they knew we were handwashing in the toilet. So we put out the clothes in the garden under the glorious sun before breakfast!

Xf doing the laundry!

We then followed Eus to walk the dogs Yara and Akira so that Eus can show us the place that we can jog. Its quite cool that they have such a ‘foresty’ path to walk, while in Singapore we can only do it in ulu places like p.ubin.

Went back after that for our breakfast. Rob calls us the ’serial killers’ coz we ate so much cruesli we kinda wiped out all their supply. Cruesli = CRUNCHY muesli. hahah and they eat it here with yoghurt which taste much nicer than with milk! Of course, breakfast can’t be without koffie, since they have it almost round the clock!

 After breakfast, we struggled out to work on the bike again. Xfen nearly crashed into the family car. *oOps*. Robbie’s heart probably dropped for that second although he didn’t say anything at that moment. But later in the evening at dinner, the whole family knew of the incident, and jokingly said that if we were to cycle, we ‘d better do it far away from the car.

At work today, Xfen and I split up. She did stockstaking With Ilse, while I had hands on session in making creams, lotions, capsules and suppositories with Jeanine. Jeanine’s a really nice lady who loves all things with rainbow colour. She’s really thoughtful, asking me if I wanted to take pictures, and helped me to take them even without me asking if I could take pictures! haha. According to their observations, Asians love taking pictures, and they like to have humans in it but for Europeans, they don’t like to take pictures and don’t really like to be in the picture too.

First up, I made hydrous eucerin cream. Rather simple preparation involving just mixing Eucerin anhydrous with water!

On the left and in my hand is the bottle of Eucerin cream anhydours, and on the right is the box of water for prepartion! It comes in a bag, put in a box, that allows you to dispense it like a water cooler.

And I thought it was a simple preparation. But the amount of cream was so much and water was so much, it took quite a bit of effort and strength to mix them well.

Finally after much effort, the cream is done and ready for packaging into aluminium tubes. My first attempt at putting them into tubes and then sealing them up, putting on labels and all ready to go out to the patients! Beside me is Jeanine measuring thyroid powder for making 4000 thyroid capsules. In the whole of Netherlands, there’s only 2 pharmacies that make thyroid capsules. Hence, they do this every week in bulk and people travel long distances just to get their supply of thyroid capsules.

First, Jeanine demonstrated how to use the capsule making machine. We can make 200 capsules at one go! no more filling of capsules one by one to ensure that they each have the correct weight as we do in lab classes. And then I had my try. fumbled with the machine for the first few times i used it. But now, I think me and xfen are both proficient in using it to make capsules anytime! haha.

Capsules that were hand made.

Jeanine also made paracetamol suppositories 60mg for this baby that’s 3 months old. The usual panadol is 500mg paracetamol for adults,and for children above 6 years old is 120mg, both of which are too high for the baby. 

To make paracetamol suppositories, known as zetpillen in Dutch, we used 103g of witepsol as the base, and 6 g of paracetamol powder. This preparation can be used up till 24months from date of manufacture.

So we used a roterstat to mix the mixture, and we had to ensure that the mixture stayed at 35degrees celcius when it’s poured into the mould. Otherwise, it may take too long to solidify and the active ingredient will also sink to the base.

In order to ensure quality in the suppositories made, the last 2 supplies of every batch are thrown away since their concentration are probably very high.

The suppositories made,waiting to go into the boxes.

Other things made in this day were lidocaine-leveomenthol gel, Dexamethasone 1.5mg with cellulosum microcrystalline capsules and triamcinolone acetone with tretinoine cream.

Putting the cream onto a plastic strip so that it’d be easier to go into the aluminium tube.

Really appreciate the fact that they allowed us to make all those stuff for patient use, when it’s just our second day at work and we only learnt it in school, without any practice in real life in making all these stuff. Its rather interesting, and it is something that makes a pharmacy, a pharmacy, rather than just plain distributing medicines from the factories. Nethertheless, it is appparent that in Singapore’s health care system, there probably is a lack of manpower to do these since we’re still struggling to find more pharmacists and time to counsel patients.

Xfen doing stock taking.

The Dutch book of medical terms

Xf with all the medicines she picked.

The things that I made for the day.

We took a walk around the neighbourhood and we saw lavender. Flowers for grace

The street of the pharmacy.

And the pharmacy itself.

Further down the street, we saw a cake shop. Cute looking cakes!

Day 5 in holland!

Doing silly things .haha.

Eus came back after we finished dinner and there was no more food. so lee whipped up a salad for him based on what we had over the weekends at Maastricht. The poached egg kinda failed, but still the salad looked yummy!

One of the staff, Ans ( i think) was having her 50th birthday. In Holland, 50th birthday is a big thing and they celebrate it with a ‘Sara’, which is a cake in the shape of an old lady to symbolize wisdom. Ans commented a few months back that she’d like to have a particular sara and she worried that nobody will give her one. So the pharmacy decided to surprise her with many ‘Saras’ in the form of posters, flyers, etc and Lee made a Sara for her too. We helped out too Somewhat. haha

The supermarkets here, Albert Heijn, being the biggest chain store here, sells pretty looking cake decorations.

Lee cutting the shape of Sara from the cake she made.

Then put on the icing and decorations to have hair, necklace, skirt and etc.

For the remaining of the cake that was trimmed off, we decorated it with the decorations and icing and we had fun with Mick!

A happy xfen with her master piece.

xfen’s

mine.

Today is the first day that we did what’s really the purpose of this trip – learn through work the pharmacy profession. We began the day in the Dutch way – dressed up in office wear and cycled on the bike to the pharmacy. It is common to see men in suits or women in pretty dresses on a bicycle here. Being our first time with a handbag and pumps (that kept dropping off jwen’s heels) and since Xfen wasn’t fluent with cycling yet (although she’d improve tremendously after the next few days of training), it was hard to manage the bikes and we had several stops along the way before we finally reached the pharmacy. The journey that usually took 10 minutes probably took us half an hour instead. Each time we had to stop at the traffic junction, it was excruciating since we had to get the bicycles started again. Its a miracle that children who are shorter and smaller than us can manage the tall, big bicycles so well.

As we saw over the next few weeks, cycling around to work, to school, on campus etc was great exercise and a good way to avoid traffic jams. Perhaps Singapore and NUS should consider starting bicycle lanes to ease traffic congestion It’d be a good way to minimize carbon dioxide emission to the enviroment, healthy for the citizens to exercise daily (imagine going up on a bike the slopes of NUS) and we can cut down on all the ERP gantries and perhaps lower the cost of living slightly.

The layout of the pharmacy was simple. Starting from the front of the shop, there was an area in front of the counter for customers to wait to be served.

View from the customer’s position

View of the front of the shop from behind the counter.

Behind that is the working counter to pack the medications, print out patient information leaflet (Bijsluieters) and etc.

Directly behind this area is the work space to pack weekly medications for chronic patients who are non-ambulant and can’t make their way to the Pharmacy. It is also the area where cream, suppositories, lotion, capsules are made.

Behind this area is the office of the pharmacists, who also serve as the area for the typist to type the prescription, as well as where the staff have their tea break.

Further behind lies the corridor which also serves as a kitchen. It is common here to have dish washing machine and this includes the Pharmacy too. The corridor leads to a working space that has a roterstat (recall dosage form design module where we learnt about the different mixing machines) and a clean room where the pharmacists will do small quantity of preparations that require aseptic/sterile environment. It is equipped with a white area to swap clean all the apparatus before they are brought into the sterile environment.

Going further down the corridor will finally lead to the store where all the diapers, syringes, needles, bottles etc are stored.

On day 1 of work, we began with packing the weekly medication box for the chronic patients who are non-ambulant. This involves opening up blister pack of medications and then sort them out into trays (5 trays, 1 for each day), with 4 subsections (for morning, noon, evening and night) according to the details on the prescription. Like in Singapore, pharmacies in The Netherlands have many steps in place to minimize errors in picking medications.

Each medication in The Netherlands has a registered number printed on the box and this number is reflected on the label sticker. The picker is then required to write down the number on the box of medication beside the label sticker, which is to be pasted on the back of the prescription, and this ensures that the picker sees exactly what he is picking instead of blindly doing it. This will hopefully minimize error.

The pharmacy also has a location system for different drawers on the labels. For example, if the label says L5L10,the picker can just head to the drawer thats arrange in a coordinate fashion. By opening the really long drawers, several medications will be found inside and the picker will have to pick the right medicine. This procedure takes quite a long time as compared to Singapore’s yellow tray system where you can just stick your hand in and pick the medication, without having to rumage through the collection of medicines in each drawer to pick the right one. Perhaps, the slow speed might have been due to us being unfamiliar with where the medicine is.

1 plus point about medicines in ther Netherlands is that they are all packed in boxes of 30 (for a month’s use) and you can just stick the label directly on the box. This minimize the possibility of picking the wrong number of medicines, as in Singapore’s system of taking out the blisters from the boxes and the picker will have to pick them either by strips of 10, 14, 7, 21, 50 or any random number. Furthermore, it reduces the use of ziplock bags as what Singapore does, and hence is more environmentally friendly.

Back to packing of the medications for the non-ambulant chronic patients. Each patient has his/her own pillboxes that they leave with the pharmacy. They each have a box containing all the medications that they are on, and the picker will take out the required number of each medicine from that box each week. In a typical pillbox, there are 7 trays for monday to friday (mandag, dinsdag, woensdag, donderdag,vrijdag) and each day has 4 subsections for morning(morgen), afternoon (middag), evening (avond) and night (nacht). The prescription will contain the number and type of pills to pick, and the dosing schedule. The picker will then burst the blister pack and put the pills in the right boxes for the tright time, before sending the boxes for the pharmacists to check. Subsequently, they will be packaged and kept in the cupboard to wait for either patient’s relatives to pick up, or the pharmacy’s ‘courier man’ to bring it to the patients.

Waiting for pharmacist to check before the trays are stacked up, and then packaged, to wait to be collected. All of these medicines are stored in the cupboard by the last names.

We spent the rest of Monday doing the picking of medications. Despite the monsterous training in Singapore pharmacies, we were still quite slow, having to decipher the prescription and labels which were in Dutch, familiarize ourselves with the many new medications that are seldom seen in Singapore, learn to use their computer system to check whether medicines are in stock, as well as to locate the medications. Its interesting that most of the rules of validity of a legal prescription ties in pretty much the same in Holland, except that a prescription by email/fax is actually legal here, but not so in Singapore.

All in all, I think we did a good job for our first day at work.

Since everything here was in Dutch, we had to learn the language (and fast!) so that we know what was on the prescriptions (instructions/special precautions) and can paste on relevant warning labels.  Below is a list of Dutch instructions. List is not exhaustive.

1. Heel doorslikken, niet kauwen :  Swallow whole. Do not chew.
2. ’s avonds innemen bij de maaltijd: Take in evening with meals
3. Gebruik volgens scheme trombosedienst: Take at the same time as directed
   Bij dit middel GEEN grapefruit sap drinken: Don’t take with grapefruit juice.
4. Zonodig voor de nacht: When necessary at night
5. Pas op met alcohol: Be careful when taken with alcohol
6. Kan het reactievermogen verminderen: May slow reaction. Beware.
7. 1 maal per dag aanbrengen: 1 time a day on skin
8. Bezorgen: medication brought to patient. patient is non-ambulant and can’t come to the store.
9. Huisarts: Doctor
10. apotheek/apotheeker: pharmacy/pharmacist

They really have alot of labels to go along with the medications. Xfen is the sticker collector, and I got influenced by her to collect all the labels too.

It was also interesting to see a whole load of medications which we never use in Singapore. For example, in Europe, to thin blood, they use accenocumarol rather than warfarin. Apparently, although warfarin is cheaper, accenocumarol gives a more steady INR reading and hence easier for anticoagulation management.

Interesting things seen/learnt:

1. A person with the name L van Kasteel (Kasteel = castle) could either mean that he used to live in a castle long time ago, or he was a servant of the castle.
2. It is common to have Restless Legs Syndrome in the europe. Adartrel (ropinirol) is used to treat this syndrome, and the catch phase for the product is,”Turn restless legs into restful nights” Apparently this is a neurological disease and 500000 patients are inflicted with this.
   Dosing scheme is as follow:
   Loading dose:  Week 1 day 1-2 0.25 mg
                           Week 1 day 3-7 0.5mg
   Dosing Scheme: Week 2            1.0mg 
                             Week 3             1.5mg 
                             Week 4             2.0mgTo know more about Restless Legs Syndrome,

   Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a neurological condition that is characterized by the irresistible urge to move the legs. In order for you to be officially diagnosed with RLS, you must meet the criteria described in the four bullets below:

   • You have a strong urge to move your legs which you may not be able to resist. The need to move is often accompanied by uncomfortable sensations. Some words used to describe these sensations include: creeping, itching, pulling, creepy-crawly, tugging, or gnawing.
   • Your RLS symptoms start or become worse when you are resting. The longer you are resting, the greater the chance the symptoms will occur and the more severe they are likely to be.
   • Your RLS symptoms get better when you move your legs. The relief can be complete or only partial but generally starts very soon after starting an activity. Relief persists as long as the motor activity continues.
   • Your RLS symptoms are worse in the evening especially when you are lying down. Activities that bother you at night do not bother you during the day.

   RLS can also cause difficulty in falling or staying asleep which can be one of the chief complaints of the syndrome. A substantial number of people who have RLS also have periodic limb movements of sleep (PLMS). These are jerks that occur every 20 to 30 seconds on and off throughout the night. This can cause partial awakenings that disrupt sleep. Sleep deprivation can seriously impact your work, relationships, and health.

The work culture here is that they have breaks during work, and everyone MUST go for their breaks. There’s one at 10am, and then another one at 3pm and lunch is at 12 or 1. 

We had our first lunch at the work place the Dutch way too. That is, to pack a sandwich, warm it up with the toaster at the work place and make some hot soup in the pantry. Lee gave us an apple each for our vitamin dose.

Our first packed lunch!

After a day of work, we went home to dinner of leftovers from chinese food the day before, with some cauliflowers in tomato sauce whipped up by Rob.

 

We had to get up bright and early today cos’ we were going with the family to a place near Maastricht, where they were having a golf weekend with Lee’s 2 other sisters and their husbands, together with a couple of other friends. It was their annual Golf Tournament, where they compete for the “Tjioe Cup”. Max, Mick and the dogs went to their grandparents’ place in Eindhoven to stay for the weekend, while we went along with Lee cos’ they had booked a room for us to stay for the weekend, and while they were golfing, we could visit the Southern part of Holland. The South is supposedly pretty because there’s rolling hills there, which are rare in Holland as it is mainly a flat land below sea level all throughout.

The 2 men in front

 Us at the back.
Dry skin and poor lighting made our skin really bad

Met Ien, Lee’s youngest sister, who was here to bring Max, Mick and the dogs over with them to their parents. The plan was that Lee would drop us off at Heerlem train station so we could take a train to Maastricht to spend the day as they would be playing golf and we would be really bored (doing nothing) in the golf resort.

Lee bought train tickets on our behalf from the machine cos’ we don’t have a card to pay for the tickets and we wouldn’t be able to understand Dutch, and sent us off on the train – and we were just in time despite taking pictures of our first train ride!

Our very first time on an intracity train! The train only has one level, as compared to the other trains which had 2 levels, with different structures. No idea why the difference.Maybe different companies? Not sure. We passed by beautiful countryside on the way to Maastricht, with little brown and white houses with the typical steep roofs, towering churches and grazing animals by the road. Apparently, the train has several stops before ending in Maastricht; but we didn’t realise that (and call it bad luck for us, that particular train didn’t have the voice over system to inform passengers what stops they were at) and got off a stop too early – and ended up at Meersen instead of Maastricht.

Not doing things the right way on the first try always seem to bring better/interesting surprises (or so we realized in the subsequent days). While poking around at Meersen train station and realising our mistake, we decided to explore the park near the station while waiting for the next train to arrive, which we presume that would travel to Maastricht in about another 20 minutes or so. A couple was taking wedding pictures in the park despite the slight drizzle, and the park had a lake with wild swans and ducks swimming about and coming up on shore and staring at you with unblinking eyes. An elderly couple was strolling there with their grandchild in a pram, and a few people were walking their dogs along the lake. Blissful sights from the simple things in life.

 Little house selling flowers Flowers are aplenty here! Sweet!

Their wedding car!A beetle! heee

 

 Church in the background

We heard a distant rumble of a train pulling into the station, and much to our horror – faster than we thought it would take. And RAN again (hahha. I do not understand why we are always running after things), through the park to the station and stopped the conductor from giving the go ahead to the train master to pull away from the station. Guess we were pretty lucky, cos’ the train did go to Maastricht, and the frequency of the train wasn’t too long and in no time we were on our way to Maastricht!

 At Maastricht train station!

Many tracks of trains!

Jwen was fascinated by the fact that dogs were allowed on the trains. Wonder whether the dogs need a train tickets to get on the train.

We went into Albert Heijn To-Go to take a look and to get something to munch on during our day trip around Maastricht. We bought stroopwafles in the end, and munched on them while strolling around the city!That was also the snack that lasted us throughout the whole of next week. Haha. Talk about being budget travellers (as much as we try to that is). Albert Heijn is the biggest supermarket chain in the Netherlands. They have almost everything. Including pre-pack boxes of veg, with condiments and all things that can go along. Just buy a box, open them and throw them all into the pot, and you get a simple dinner. Not that we’ve tried it. But seems like everyone’s doing that! During lunch, its also convenient to just go in, grab some juice, bread, cheese, ham and what not, and then go onto the grasses or office for a simple lunch.

 Interior of the train station.

So here we are, at Maastricht.  A brief introduction of this pretty city.

The history of Maastricht goes back to c. 50 B.C when the Romans built a settlement by the main road, near a ford in the river. This makes Maastricht the oldest city of The Netherlands. The city’s name is derived from the Latin ‘Mosae Trajectum’. The site where the river Maas could be crossed. This settlement grew to become a walled castellum, which was abandoned towards the end of the 4th centuryA.D. Maastricht had its first outer walls built in 1229. Before long, the town was felt to be too cramped, and at the beginning of the 14th century construction work on a new series of walls was commenced. The city was important strategically, and had to withstand many attacks during its history. 

Maastricht is located in the south of the Netherlands, close to Liege and Aachen. It has a more southern, relaxed atmosphere than other parts of The Netherlands, and attracts many international tourists not only for its rich history (founded by the Romans) but also for its beauty. the city center is split in two by the river Maas, with the train station located in the smaller part of the center.

The buildings in Maastricht are a combination of French and Belgian architecture, cos’ Maastricht is at the far south of the NL, which is near to Belgium. The name ‘Maastricht’ originated from the name of a French town as the culture of the town is still reflected in the way of life of the people there today; simple, relaxed and the penchant for sitting by cafes along the river, wining and dining;
and also for the River Maas that runs through the town of Maastricht.

 

 

It was easy to navigate and to find the VVV (stands for Information center for tourists) with the signboards around.

There was a flea market just outside of the station, and being curious people, we crossed the street to take a look. The flea market had people selling antiques, books, craftwork and even stacks of postcards that didn’t reach their destination at 30 cards for 5 Euros. Made us wonder whether postcards were ‘lost’ on purpose or were they accidentally lost, to explain why there were so many of those postcards in the flea market. 

 We continued to walk on the streets towards the VVV after going through the flea market.

  Statue of the Founder (probably?) of the city.

A lone violinist plays at a corner of the street, seemingly un-noticed by those who walk past. Yet his beautiful music added a touch of class and beauty to the old city. 

With globalization, you see the same shops in every country. Here in the Netherlands, Subway has Belgium Waffle, and I have in my hands the Netherlands Stroopwaffles. haha 

 Being silly in a foreign land. Youth is the only time for all these stupid things before we go full-fledge into adulthood and have to consider how we hold ourselves in front of people.

Alot of lavender for Grace !  

As pharmacists to be, we are always attracted to Pharmacy related stuff. 
Here there’s the Apotheek (pharmacy) and its kinda weird to see those red MacDonald’s Flags in this old city. Somehow it had that communism feel. And yup, McDonald’s in Maastricht. Add on to our MacDonald’s collection.  

Roads of the city. Finally a picture without humans in it.
Its so hard to really stop and put our hearts into taking pictures for this trip since we’re always rushing from one place to another, or there’s always a sea of people/tourists around.

A seemingly chinese looking door.

Meandering the town and entering little alleyways led us to a church and a basic school (something like our primary school), and from there, we crossed the River Maas on one of the bridges that spans the whole body of water that seems to stretch out to just about forever, save for the bridges that cut an awning arch over the horizon.

A basic school, equivalent to our primary school.Its interesting in that the schools in The Netherlands have vacations at staggered times. For example, the Northern part would begin holidays two weeks ahead, then the west, followed by the South and then the East and every year they would rotate this arrangement, just for the sake of ensuring that there’s not alot of congestion on the roads with everyone going for holidays.

Standing on one side of the River Maas, we took a panorama shot of the area.

On the extreme left of the picture, there’s a bridge. So we crossed the bridge and went up to another side of the river.

 The bridge was built in the 19th century by the Romans and was bombed during the war. The one that we were on was rebuilt around 1950s-1960s (I think)

The view of another bridge from the bridge we were on.

And there we were; at the heart of one of the most beautiful towns in Holland, and just about the rare few places in the entire country where softly rolling hills can be seen in the far distance.  

 The city central with all the cafes and big shopping malls

We went into the VVV and got a map of Maastricht for 1.25euro so as to know what we can do there. The person at the counter was nice enough to point out to us the things we could do, introduced the St Pietersburg caves, and guided us on how to get to the pier. Headed down to the pier and got ourselves tickets on a river cruise to go to St Pietersburg Caves. Before the boat ride, someone took a picture of us and wanted to sell it to us at 8 euros after the whole journey. Found that rather stupid because it was just a picture of two of us with no significant background or special mascot, and secondly, they rather throw our picture away instead of giving it to us despite the fact that it had already been developed. I personally think that it would make more sense for them to give us that photo and to charge for subsequent pieces that we re-developed.

The boat. Again it was a mad run to the boat as we got our tickets at exactly 1 pm when the boat was suppose to leave. And that was also the only trip of the day with English guided tour.

The boat was rather huge, and it has a restaurant like café lounging area in it for the passengers to order drinks from the bar and enjoy their beverages while sailing down the river with the commentary running in Dutch and English throughout the journey.

Again , dogs can go up on the boat!

Tickets for our river cruise and into the St Pietersburg Caves.

It was just a short 15 min journey on the cruise with the cool wind brushing against our faces,and we had to get off at the first stop.

And then we had to take a short walk to the meeting point where we waited for approximately half an hour for the tour guide to come and bring us on the hourly guided walk.

We had to wait in the slight drizzle for the walking tour of the caves to begin (at 1.50pm), and when the guide came, we walked a short distance through fields and miniature farms with am old man farming in the sun to reach the entrance of the caves.

The first sculpture we saw was this. Not too sure what it was.

After being ‘picked up’ by the tour guides, we took a short walk through the forest… saw some countryside scenery and reached the entrance of the cave.

Our tour guide for the English guided tour at the entrance of the cave. He’s really good, clear and quite humourous!

After dividing the crowd into the Dutch and the English groups, we all went into the caves.

The famouse ‘St. Pietersberg’ caves are the result of centuries of excavation of marl, a building stone. What we now see is an enormous labyrinth of more than 20,000 passages. The stone-hewers have left their marks. On the walls are interesting inscriptions, some extremely old; artists too, have been at work here. During the many sieges Maastricht has suffered, and also during the last world war, local inhabitants used the passages as a shelter; some of the emergency provisions are still to be seen.
The temperature in the caves is 9-10 degrees Celcius; visitors are therefore advised to take a cardigan, pullover or coat with them. The round-trips, which last about an hour, are led by official VVV Tourist Office guides. Two sections of the labyrinths of Mount St. Pieter are open to the public

The cave stretches for 200km underground and is 600m wide approximately. It spans all the way from The Netherlands to Belgium, where one part of it is. In the tunnel, it is 100% darkness, 90% humidity and there are limestone quarry at the back. The passageways were constructed as a shelter for the villages in times of War as the poor villagers living outside of the City were not allowed to enter the fortresses of the City during War, so they had to find alternatives. Then the caves were mined for limestone, chalk and granite for construction purposes, and later they were used by artists to express their artworks as they could not afford to hold exhibitions in the City. Sundays were days for the rich to go to Church and to parade in the City Square in their best clothes; but for the artists, they headed into the caves with their lamps and material to paint. The tour guide joked that ladies beware of limp hair coz it’s humid inside (probably coz he saw my curry puff hair).Without a lamp, you can absolutely see nothing and hence its better to follow closely with the tour guides. It has been shown in an experiment that if you are put in absolute darkness for 15 hours, you would probably die out of exasperation and the body will be disoriented. Eventually, you will give up struggling and just think that its the end of your life. And death would eventually happen, probably.Apparently, many people have died or never have been found after they entered the caves, either out of mischief or during work (mining etc) and so now the caves are closed and only visitors are allowed in with guides.

Following the tour guide in the darkness.

Stopping by sites to listen to the tour guide’s explanations of the pictures in the caves.

The cave was a shelter for the villagers during wars. Hence there was a chapel, shops that lined the tunnel, clinics and so on so forth within the cave. The chapel here was a testimony of the village back then. And a few years back, someone from the Netherlands Tourist Board got married there with thousands of candles on the floor. Apparently if you wish to get married there, it is possible to do so too. romantic huh.

The black marks on the ceiling shows the presence of the stone hewers many years back. Those were marks made by the kerosene lamps which were hung on the ceiling as the stone hewers worked from top down, row by row.

Since artists love to go to the cave to do their paintings, it was no wonder that we saw the works of many and one interesting one was this by Salon, who actually had his ‘own’ museum by cordoning a part of the cave and carving it such that it look like a chamber.

The door to the ‘museum’ of Salon

 Salon’s works of beautiful Greek Goddesses.

Other paintings (not exclusive) in the caves.

From top left clockwise.

1. The painter wanted to show his father working in the caves and always having to bend his back.
2. Because the rocks were soft (when not exposed to air), it was easy to carve them to get the man sculpture. The guide joked that he was the model for that sculpture.
3. Religious paintings.
4. Because many people visited the caves on Sunday back then, the companies thought it’d be good to do advertisement within the caves. Hence we saw the advertisement for margarine.
5. Advertisement for van houten chocolate.
6. They found the fossil of some creatures on the wall in the cave. Not too sure what was it though.

The guide (as described in lonely planet ) asked if we wanted the easy route, the extreme one, or the partially extreme one. Because there was a little boy in the group, hence the decision was to go for the partially extreme one. The guide informed us later that if we wanted to go for the extreme one it’d mean we would go into the caves to explore in total darkness, without the guide. The partially extreme one was at a particular part of the cave, the guide  would go elsewhere with his lamp and we were to line up against the wall, and using the wall as a guide, move along the entire square pillar in darkness.

Here’s a video of part of the guided tour in the cave.

The tour was soon over and it was back onto the boat for the remaining of the boat cruise before reaching the main city again.

XF fascinated by the cuteness of  the small safety boat.

Toured the city and did window shopping. We saw this shop Pipoos which sold all kinds of craft material. Super pretty. We were both tempted to buy, but we decided against it. Photos shall make us happy ..

 Us with our personal agenda of taking a picture with the McDonalds’ of all cities.
presenting, the McDonald’s of Masstrict

 The former Dominicans Church is one of the oldest Gothic churches in Netherlands and it dates back to the 13th century.

The corridor of another church that we went in to take a look.

Continued to stroll through the city. What better ways can there be to feel the city more?

 And we saw this. Notice anything strange?

Most of them sit on one side of the table (ie. the side that faces the road/sun). The difference between people who have the sun everyday and people who has it once a year .

We proceeded to heerlem to wait for Lee and Eus to pick us up at the train station to go to the golf range for dinner with their family.

Our accomodation for the night was at Golf Residence Hotel. Its located in the middle of no where except for golf ranges. Not much entertainment except for golf courses and hence it can be understood why the children did not follow their parents.

Our room is the second floor with the balcony.

Excited at our first hotel room, we took a series of silly photos. hahah presenting our model with our room!

It’s almost like the size of a 3 room flat, equipped with a kitchen, a dining area, a living room, 2 basins in the shower room, a bathtub, a balcony, and two tvs. Very much thankful to Lee for getting us a room for the weekend

Dinner at the restaurant was an atas affair. With wine, and 3 course meal. Starter was a salad with poached egg, bacon and some veg. The main course was a meat patty with potato and dessert was strawberry pie with ALOT of cream on top. Super sinful. And then it was a night at the table seeing how their family interacted, laughed the night away. We were seated opposite Lee’s brother-in-law who was super chatty and talked to us about many things, of which, the Italian style of drinking coffee. In the morning, they drink cappucino, in the afternoon they drink normal coffee, and at night before going to bed they drink expresso. Hence, after dinner when everyone ordered Cappucino, latte or normal coffee after dinner, he proclaimed that was the wrong way to do things. Haha. Interesting to learn about that. We have fallen into the land of koffie,thee and more of those. Where koffie seems to be the equivalent of water.

Both of us were tired and we slept soon after we returned to the room. Buffet breakfast in the hotel the next morning. After slowly enjoying the warm cuppa of koffie, we went back to our room to do planning on where we would like to see in Netherlands in the subsequent weeks. Decided that we’d not want to stay all our time in Harlem in the hotel room, we decided to venture out to take a stroll. Sadly, there was no where that we’d go since there was nothing but greens down the entire stretch of roads and we had no idea exactly where we were and what buses to take (being all new in the environment). So we took a 100m stroll down the road, and took pictures with flowers, before venturing to the roof top of the hotel, to take picture.

Nothing on the roads! We are going crazy with boredom. oOps. haha

Staircase to the roof top from the outside of the building. Xfen called this ‘The Stairway to Heaven’.

View of the golf course from the roof top

ducks swimming in the pond.

Flowers on the road. Reminds Jwen of 2 songs.

“故事的小黄花…”
and
“路边的野花,你不要摘”

 

We left the Golf Residence Hotel at around 5 in the afternoon and took a long car journey back to Utrecht. Xfen had cramps on th car and was in pain. Lee was super worried and the hosts worried that it was because we were not used to the food that they prepared. They discussed in dutch what to get us for dinner. And in the end, dinner was Chinese take away food. As usual, Chinese food in a non-chinese country always don’t taste quite the same; but it was nice nonetheless. We had spring roll (a super duper huge one), pineapple with chicken, fu rong egg and keropok. Interesting to see keropok here in chinese food. Their food is kinda influenced by Indonesian food since Indonesia was a Dutch colony too. Hence, it was great to be able to taste sambal and chilli sauce, although their very hot isn’t exactly hot by Singapore’s standard.

A great weekend to begin our stay here in Holland. And work will begin on Monday

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.

 

 

 

It’s day 3 now, and yes, we’ve arrived in Holland safe and sound, if not a tad tired. Afterall it’s now 2.40am, Holland time. And after much procrastination and mucking around, I’ve finally started to type out entries despite the lazy bug biting! Jwen has uploaded most of the photos and have done quite some editing – time for me to catch up!

It has been a mad hatter rush – we’ve started planning on Monday proper, and got most of our packing done within what little time we have. And much to our relief – despite the luggages bursting at their seams, mine was finally a light 17.4kg, and Jwen’s 19.2 kg, with some room to spare! I had with me 2 hand-carries (a bag and a track bag) and Jwen was armed with a backpack and a laptop in tow.

8.45pm on Thursday came and went, and we met at T1, Belt 13 (KLM) and the process was much faster cos’ Jwen had done online check-in and chose our seats 18A and B (Jwen: not that we could choose. The other seats left were individual seats scattered everywhere. Not much chance for changes). The lady at the counter forgot to stamp on our check-in receipt and came running after us haha!

Miao Juan, Lin Qun and Bao Hui came down to send us off – thanks girls! =) and I guess MJ should be in Canada by now – give us a tag when you’ve arrived alright? =) (Jwen: Thanks also to everyone else who dropped us sms/call us to send us off even though you guys can’t be physically around )

We were supposed to board our plane at 9.55pm, and we lost track of time and only entered the gates at 10+pm – and much to our horror – the screen announced that the gate for our plane was closing, so hurriedly did our check-ins at the Departure gate, checked our gate number and RAN like 2 idiots past amazed travellers, hitting some on the way with my hand-carry, and cutting ‘lanes’ on the travellator to reach the gate.

In between taking in breaths, Jwen commented in amazement that she has never seen me run so fast (faster than her) ever in her life HAHA! The power of the human mind in times of desperation HAHAHA! And the good thing about wearing sports shoes on board the plane – to run (like idiots) in times of emergency as such. And hence, this made us realize why exactly many people have the habit of wearing sports shoes to board planes despite pumps being more convenient and would ensure entrance to everywhere else– to ensure we can run after trains/planes/whatever.

And we ended up feeling like idiots cos’ there was a lOoOong queue of people at the gate, and we needn’t have ran. But still, better to be safe than sorry. While running, I had the sorry picture of us standing at the gates, helplessly watching our plane (and the $2K we had to each fork out for the tickets) fly off without us.

So WE MADE IT to the plane! =)

Day 0 together 

KLM exceeded our expectations – it has individual screens, not to mention the multitude of movie, TV shows, music album selections to choose from! And their service was efficient and good; we requested for milk and the friendly air stewardess remembered our milk and delivered it to us after she was done with her rounds. The milk was rather thin though. There was also ample supply of fluids throughout the flight, and hydration’s one major contribution towards prevention of jetleg.

Food was aplenty on the plane. In that 13 hours, we were fed countless times. We had servings of roasted peanuts as a welcome snack. Shorly after, dinner was a relatively thick and spicy tomato soup, cold pasta like salad and a side dessert of muesli bar and watermelon slice. Packaging of our food was good, just as what Jingkai had showed us in the link in the previous entries…. 

Jwen with the nicely packaged dinner

Xf enjoying her hot soup

The soup and pasta had Jwen’s favourite sunflower seeds as well as croutons that were specially prepared for high altitude consumption. Dessert was this muesli bar thingy which was similar to what Wendy made for us at CGH. very nice Jwen got her usual dose of wine on the plane White wine this time round in a glass bottle.

Hours later, supper was ice-cream! =)

XF watched 10,000BC and The Other Boylen Girl but fell asleep while trying to attempt to watch Away From Her Flipped through the albums – they had Maroon 5!! Loveloves! And Justin Timberlake’s, Pink (Xf’s likes!) and others’.

Jwen caught a dutch movie called Afblijven which was about this dutch teenager who loved to dance and abused drugs and in the end was happily attached with her childhood friend. haha. not too bad a movie to know a bit of the dutch culture and the dutch langugage.

Highly entertained throughout the flight and hardly got much sleep though the coffee (XF had 2 cups) weren’t very strong.

Let’s look at the list of movies, songs and games that were available.

List of movies was never ending.  

The inflight magazine was great! Not any bimbotic crap magazine. We learnt about the Dutch Light, how the Dutch sportsmen are training with artificial light to due with the problem of jetlag for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing. There was information about the possibility of using our mobile device to do a paperless check in and boarding pass on our way home. Something trivial. If you are traveling towards the West, you should sleep later than usual before the trip to adjust, and vice versa, so as to avoid jetlag.

Any idea what the cube in the picture is called?

It’s called a Rubik’s cube.

Jwen saw this and was super duper EXCITED. Imagine sending sms from the plane. So she went to explore

OOOOH hoo. jwen was still very excited and wondering who should she sms to…..

she pressed the button to inquire more.

Okay.. disappointed. no credit card. maybe next time when im rich. hahah

 Loads of drama to keep Xf occupied. Including:
CSI; Grey’s Anatomy and Heroes.

For those who know me well, I seldom watch Tv since im usually not at home, or I watch them halfway and have no idea what’s the show title.

This was our conversation:

Jw: What’s heroes? A Japanese show? (Coz I was thinkin of grace)

XF: Obviously someone is from Mt Bromo. Its from USA.

Jw: hahaha (Thinks of yy)

Breakfast was GOOD – XF had the sweetbread combination, which consists of sweetbread (something like bread pudding) – loveloves! – and a salad, muesli cake and the standard bread, butter and jam and mixed fruits. Jwen had the egg and sausage combination, which wasn’t too bad either! =)

Happy that we got the window seat. But sad that the sun rose from the other side of the plane and this was what we caught of the first ray of the sun.

Enjoying our cup of KLM coffee. 

Day 1 together!

The inflight entertainment system allowed us to learn the Dutch language too. so cool

We sat next to an Indian guy, and chatted for a while during the flight and after, and who turned out to be a Singaporean visiting his daughter (a research pharmacist) who is married to a Hollander and now lives in Holland.

The 13 hours of flight was no joke – our poor butts were aching after a few hours, and the only times we could get up was during toilet trips which were inconvenient for the Indian guy cos’ he had to get up and out of his seat and wait for us to return before sitting down. Leg room was pretty small, but since it was Cattle Class that we were taking – no complaints haha!

So it was nearly 6plus am when we reached Schiphol airport, with a temperature of 12 degrees celcius as it was drizzling earlier on. Schiphol is a short distance from Amsterdam.

Being pharmacits to be, obviously such things catch our eyes fast.
The first drug related shop we saw in the Netherlands.

After much queue-hopping – cos’ the stations opened one after another and we hopped to the seemingly shorter queues which did not move much, hence the ‘hopping’. And we finally cleared our bags and headed out to the Arrival Hall to meet Mrs Lee Tjioe, our host who took us up and out of Schipol airport to meet Eus, recognisable by his thick moustache who helped us with our luggages and drove us back to their home in Uretcht =) We were surprisingly not that jet-lagged! =) Must be due to the odd sleeping hours we had back in Sg. Like 5am nights due to planning and whatnots. HAHA!

Btw this comp is SOOoo lag, it’s driving me nuts. Ok at least our room has a desktop for us to use, really kind of the host to think of all these. But seriously, if I have to blog from here EVERYDAY, by the end of 4 weeks I’ll have the patience of Job. Or Buddha.Whatever. It’s now 1.51am! And there’s SO much more to update on. Just feasted on stroopwafles cos’ I daren’t go down to the kitchen cos’ I’m afraid of stepping on the dogs (2 of them) in the dark. Or if they bark and wake everyone up, I’m meat. HAHA. *sigh* I want something warm. Haha!