Erasmus Adventures - Stuck in Giethoorn

Yet another month is on the brink of completion, and a lot of adventure came with it.

While the turmoil of the first month is certainly gone, and we are much more settled, it doesn’t mean that our lives have slowed down for one bit.

🧭 What we’ve been up to

Classes have been going on as usual, and not a lot has changed during the week. We have tried our best to stick to the routine and keep living a healthy lifestyle whilst having our fair share of parties and going out. I would say that, for the most part, this balance has been a huge success.

Things have started to pile up, especially thesis-related things. Until now, there was no real work to do, but it’s getting really complicated really quickly. So far, I have managed to keep up, but I see this becoming a problem if I don’t tackle it soon enough.

On the other hand, it has been a series of wild rides on the weekends. In the last post, I said that we intended to explore what the rest of the Netherlands had to offer, and boy did we achieve that.

We took advantage of the fact that NS, the railway operator here in the Netherlands, has a subscription in which you pay a fixed monthly fee of 35€, and it allows for unlimited travel during the weekends in the entire network.

That means that for the price of a single journey (the cost of a trip from Enschede to Amsterdam), we would visit all the biggest cities here. And we sure did it.

Initially, we had some problems getting the cards because the company that produced them, OV, failed to deliver them on time.

Nonetheless, NS was kind enough to give us free travel coupons while the card wasn’t working.

🗺 But where did we go?

Week 1 - Starting Strong

We had done a rough outline of where we wanted to go before the month started so that we could group cities that were closer together.

The places we visited on the first weekend were Utrecht on Saturday and Zwolle plus Giethoorn on Sunday.

What can I say about Utrecht? It’s much smaller than I expected it to be, but it’s still a “big city” here. This view may be a bit skewed because we only went to the center and not much more, but we still saw a lot of what the city had to offer, and it was all near each other.

Here are some of the highlights that I remember the most:

• The train station is gigantic and one of the prettiest I have seen. A lot of trains make connections there.
• Most historical things are based around a very small center where the Dom Tower stands, the most emblematic landmark of the city. Sadly, we couldn’t go to the actual tower as it was under renovation, but we got to visit the excavations below it, which I highly recommend.
• There are some beautiful canals, much like the rest of the Netherlands.
• The market was small but had some very interesting stands. Of course, we had a stroopwafel when we got there.
• In the afternoon, since we had seen most of the things we planned before lunch, we went to the De Haar Castle. It is a bit far from the city but I recommend making the trip there. It is just beautiful, and the gardens are enormous. This is also where we bought our Museum Card, which is incredible if you intend to visit a lot of museums around the country.

I remember getting home and feeling exhausted from all the walking, but it was certainly worth it to go there.

However, the day after is where the real adventure begins.

On Sunday, the plan was to go to Giethoorn. For those who never heard of it (I was one of you), it is considered the Dutch Venice. It is a city in the middle of nowhere, in which there are very few roads, and everything is connected via canals.

As such, if you wish to travel there, you do it by boat or on foot/bike. It’s really a small magical place that pops up from out of nowhere, but it is beautiful.

We got there by bus, after traveling to Zwolle, a really tiny city that didn’t have a ton going for it but was pretty as well. We heard that to get the full Giethoorn experience, we needed to rent a boat and travel the canals ourselves. And that we did.

We got on the boat and drove through one of the regular routes they offer, which ends in a big lake. I could immediately tell that the place was super peaceful and perfect to live a slow life, but tourism is also essential to them.

It felt like one of the places where people go to live out their retirement in peace, like Florida in the movies. When we got to the big lake, we were all just enjoying the nature and the tranquility that the place had. Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end, and we had a boat to return.

We got to the “dock,” parked the boat ourselves (for some reason, the staff had just left), and started assessing how to get home. This is when the day got interesting.

You see, buses end real soon around here and even sooner in the middle of nowhere (which we were in). As such, we had one last bus left, so we started waiting at the station on the other side of where the bus had dropped us, as it is the logical decision when you want to go back to where you came from. We waited and waited, and, by the time the supposedly last bus arrived, we just saw a bus fly by us, on the other side of the road 😳

We got worried and re-checked our options, and that is when we figured out that there were no more buses. We had no way of getting out of there until 6 a.m. the next day.

That is when one of our friends immediately set up a plan for us to hitchhike our way back to Zwolle (or any city really), where we could catch a train home. We split up both sides of the road and got to work, asking people to stop.

This lasted for an entire 2 minutes until Daniela managed to get a driver. Luckily, he could get us to the train station, but unfortunately. He could only carry 4 people. So, 4 of us got in, myself and Daniela included, while the rest kept trying.

While we got really lucky the first time, things didn’t go well for the rest of them. They kept on for around 30 minutes, trying to get another ride with no success while we were in the city, just trying to figure out how to help them in the best way. While they were still there, we went to buy dinner for all of us so that we had at least something to eat (as all the shops were starting to close as well).

It was getting really dark, and their odds were reaching zero. That is when they had the brilliant idea of asking the people at the casino nearby (there are a lot of casinos here) if they could arrange a ride. Luckily for them, they did! They had to pay a bit to the driver, but at that time anything went. We all met up at Zwolle’s station (they didn’t go to the same as we did) and finally made our way home. We had our dinner on the train (at that point, they were the most delicious sandwiches ever) and arrived safely at home.

Without a doubt, I never faced such an unexpected adventure like this. It was entirely out of this world at the time, and it is already one of the biggest memories I have of this place. While I wouldn’t repeat it, it was a really memorable experience.

And with this, we reach the end of the first week of traveling. Indeed, it is an excellent start to the month.

Week 2 - Expanding horizons

The second weekend was a lot, lot calmer than this one in terms of adventures, but no less fun. We went to Eindhoven and Groningen that time.

I really enjoyed Eindhoven. I thought it was the perfect mix of a small city with big infrastructure and developments, and it is definitely somewhere I see myself living in the future.

Here are some highlights from that day:

• Almost everything in the city is somehow tied to Philips, the lights giant (that apparently does a lot more than just lights). We went to their museum, which explained a lot of the history of the city as well
• Even PSV, the football club, was created by Philips (guess what the P stands for), showing just how much influence they had around there.
• It had a lot more of an industrial look to it and seemed “more modern” than the other cities, an aspect which I found really enjoyable
• They have one of the best bars I have ever gone to, whose name I sadly forgot, where there were a ton of games, karaoke, and really good food. We had dinner in it, and it was a really fantastic experience

Overall, it is a city that I truly loved and wouldn’t mind going back to in the future. It is probably one of the Dutch cities I would see myself living in the most.

Groningen, on the other hand, seemed a lot more traditional. I felt that it had a different architectural style from all others, and I also liked the experience a lot.

It was also a new record for me as it was the northernmost point that I have ever been on in the world.

This is what I best remember of the city:

• Their University seemed a lot more integrated into the city than ours, and it had gorgeous, classical architecture
• There was a really beautiful, multi-purpose building there called Forum Groningen, which I found really interesting.
• Their museum was really quirky and interesting from an architectural standpoint, but it also had some really beautiful pieces
• Even though the city is small, it has a lot of stuff packed into it. For some reason, it reminded me a lot of Coimbra, being a student city and all.

🇩‍🇪 What’s Next?

While not everything is certain for the future, we hope to keep going strong with more weekend travels like this. Tomorrow, we plan to head to Maastricht and even stay there for the night to visit Aachen, our first German city, on Sunday.

So far, it has been an absolute blast, and we hope to keep exploring what the Netherlands has to offer.

However, we have a much bigger country next door that has the potential to even beat the Netherlands: Germany. With all of its natural beauty and, more importantly, its extensive train network, we hope that we can venture out through all of it and discover the beauty that Central Europe has to offer

For now, we are off to another week of classes. Bye 👋!