Maastricht

This past weekend we rented a car and drove to Maastricht, which is only a couple of hours away. As the car-rental place was all out of the teeny car I had reserved, they gave us a VW Scirocco (6-speed manual, navigation system, Star Wars looks). Here it is in the nicest underground parking lot I have ever seen. The painted floor was so clean that the tyres squeaked. The concrete ceiling (the ceiling!) of the garage was painted in a light-blue pattern.

Sporty Scirocco

Although Saturday was cold and drizzly, we wandered around the downtown. It's your typical maze of cobblestone pedestrian streets packed full of people who are similarly window-shopping. This photo of an alley is typically Dutch: narrow alley, lots of bicycles.

Of note is the large bookstore located inside an old church.

 

The café in the bookstore

Christine remarked that the interesting Europe she remembered from previous travels was somehow missing there. Maastricht (or at least the old, downtown part of it) has fashioned itself into a one-dimensional shopping destination (perhaps because of its location between Germany and Belgium: there might be tax advantages). So after a few hours it feels a bit artificial, like a shopping mall back in Generica (but nicer). The décor of old buildings and quaint little alleys is the setting for hyper-consumerism. I got sucked into buying a shirt that I didn't really need (but it was on sale!).

The following day (Sunday) was much nicer and sunny. We went to the Bonnefanten art gallery. Then we had to scoot back to Bonn (briefly hitting 160 km/h on the Autobahn). Just over the border in Germany are a series of gargantuan windmills. Really impressive and even mesmerizing when spinning. There's also a large nuclear reactor a few kilometers further along.