Day 3

Had a lovely evening in last night. This feels a bit like camping; I have a 2-element propane stove that I have to light with a match, I have to bring my own toilet paper to the bathroom...but it is actually quite homey, which is nice. But I made a nice dinner of rice and some sort of mystery meat (chicken? beef? pork? horse?...not sure).

Here is the hallway of my building....

I downloaded Skype and it is amazing! You just add credit to your account and you can call anywhere and it's cheap! Except to European cellphones. To Chrissy's cell in Paris it cost 2.50 E for an 8 minute call, but only 1 E for an hour-long call to a Montreal landline. Amazing!

Went out for a walk as soon as I got up....which was not early. There were a few things I needed to get...some essentials like shampoo, soap, a sponge for the dishes...but apparently this entire town shuts down on Sunday. Nothing, NOTHING was open....except McDonalds and a few other cafes and restaurants. And there is this almost eerie but peaceful silence throughout the town. The only sounds to be heard are footsteps, bicycles, and talking. Barely any cars (there are many roads where cars aren't allowed), no music...but a lot of people out on the street despite everything being closed. Is it people going to/coming from Church? Just walking around? Groningen is also very clean
Here is the town square where the market was on Saturday....empty on Sunday

There are a lot of canals here, and people live in houseboats...I guess most of them are anchored and never leave that one spot.




I ended up walking around for hours. At first I just wanted to walk around, and then I just got very very lost. But I did get to see a lot more today then I did on my last few walks. I even found a mini red-light district (sex shops, "koffieshops" (very different from cafés), tatoo/piercing...record stores...and the lingering scent of 'grass'), as well as two movie theatres. One is just a big commercial chain (Pathé) but the other was a really cute small one with a nice café inside. Today was the last day of the Rotterdam film festival and they were playing special movies all day...also found the University, or part of it. I guess Groningen is quite a bit bigger than I thought. Quick fact: the population is 185 000 people. I guess sizewise it would be somewhere between Sherbrooke and Quebec city.


university...right outside the library, that's why there are so many bikes!

What I figured out is that there are two town squares that have markets in them on Saturdays. Because when I asked people where my street was, and they didn't know, I said I could get home from the square, and I kept getting pointed to this other weird square which wasn't MY town square...I must have asked 5 people for directions and I just kept going around in circles. I think some people just pretended they knew:
Me: do you know where Eendrachtskade is?
Dutch woman: What is it?
Me: A street...
Woman: In the city?
Me: Yes...
Woman: go straight, then right, then left.

Finally some helpful young lads in a 'Koffieshop' were able to procure a map and point me in the right direction. Since I have no watch I had no idea how long I had been out. I thought it had been something like 7 hours, but it turned out to only have been about 4 1/2.



To finish, here are some of the words I have learned so far:
kaas/cheese
broodje/bread
kippen/chicken
vis/fish (learned this by accident when I accidentally bought fish broth instead of veg. broth)
sinaasappel/orange (that one is weird...shouldn't it mean apple or pineapple?)
huis/house
let op/pay attention
koopjes/bargains
schoenen/shoes
winkel/shop
kortingen/discounts
hypotheken/mortgages? (from dictionary.com) (there are 'hypotheker' everywhere...mortgage brokers? banks? I don't know.)