Like the backpacking trip I'd done six months earlier but unlike most other trips I do, this little adventure was cobbled together at the last minute. I'd wanted to do some kind of trip on an ordinary weekend without missing work, I wanted to go somewhere in the Netherlands because I hadn't been up there in a while, so I started the planning with Maastricht and since I'd long been curious about Liège and Luxembourg I threw those in too. I booked some train trips and lodging, and a week later away I went.
Friday 21 June
Friday evening was going to be spent mostly on trains, though I did not expect it to take as long as it did, or to be on so many trains.
The original plan I had bought tickets for was to take an ICE to Frankfurt (which was replaced with an IC for some technical difficulty or another), another super-fast ICE to Aachen, and then a regional train to Maastricht. And so, when that first train arrived in Frankfurt, it got there just in time for me to watch my next train speed off before my very eyes! It wasn't just me; several of us who needed to be on that ICE ran out of our first train to the next one on the next platform over, desperately and futilely stabbed at the door buttons, and then watched helplessly as the train zipped away.
Someone in the Deutsche Bahn office set me up with an alternate itinerary which would take two hours longer than the first, and would involve six trains rather than three. My second train would be another ICE, only to Köln (Cologne) instead of Aachen.
And so pretty soon I was on an ICE zooming northwest toward Köln at 230 km/h (138 mph). Eventually it became late enough for me to go eat dinner, so I headed back to the BordBistro car. Most DB trains have one of these cars in which you can go back and get a meal anytime you like. Much better than Amtrak's system--and the food is better too!--but that's a topic for another time. I had a rather modest salad; had to save room for beer later.
Between the two of them, the first two train rides (Stuttgart-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-Köln) covered well over half the journey. That is, over half the distance but not half the time. The next four slow, short-distance rides would cover less than half the distance but easily more than half the time. The next train was a DB Regio (i.e. a regional train that covers more ground than an S-Bahn) which took me to Mönchengladbach.
See the four little hops between Köln and Maastricht? Together they probably accounted for 2/3 the travel time.
And then it was a "EuroBahn" which I'd never heard of before that spent a half hour delivering me across the German-Dutch border to Venlo...
Then another regional train (I forget the operator, it wasn't a national company) from there to Roermond...
Then an NS (Nederlandse Spoorweg, the Dutch national carrier) Intercity which did the final hop from Roermond to Maastricht.
Not the train I rode to Maastricht but an identical one. I liked it; it was a double decker and I rode on the top deck. And, unlike most of the other non-ICE trains I rode during this weekend, this one had WiFi aboard.
So by the time I finally step off the train in Maastricht it's after 11pm. First things: I wanted some beer, so I stepped into the first place that looked appealing, an upscale looking bar called Normandy. Nice place; it's on Spoorweglaan across the street from the train station. I had a couple beers there, I can't remember exactly what, but I think the first was one of the Brand beers they had on tap (Brand is the name of a local Limburg brewery). After that, the place was getting ready to close, so I headed over to John Mullins' Irish Pub for some Irish stout and a shot of whiskey before finding the Stayokay hostel where I spent the night.
Stayokay is pretty upscale for a hostel, but like any hostel, you're going to be sleeping in a bunk bed in a room with at least six other people.
Saturday 22 June
I woke up the next morning in a somewhat head-scratching situation. My backpack and shoes were next to the empty bed across the room from the one I was in, while someone else's stuff was right next to me. How...did that happen? Anyway...
Stayokay serves breakfast, and it was pretty good. Just like everywhere I've stayed in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, I could get a delicious bowl of Müsli along with some sausage or eggs, and I added a croissant to that for a little extra fuel for the huge amount of walking I was about to do.
This is one of Maastricht's central squares, called the Vrijthof.
At another central square I found this huge flea market. I think they do this every Saturday but I could be wrong. They had a lot of cool stuff for sale. Not just cheap used jewelry, but things I'd be interested in including old vinyl records, and even bike jerseys. I had planned to come back and buy one of the bike jerseys but I unfortunately ran out of time.
I needed to stop for a while and sip some beer, and I did that in a bar called Hallo Mestreeg. As the name of the place suggests, in many parts of the Netherlands, there is a dichotomy between the national language and the local one, just like in Germany. "Maastricht" is the name of this city in standard Dutch (i.e. the language of Amsterdam and the Hague) while "Mestreeg" is what is called in Limburgish, the language traditionally spoken in these parts. There were many "bilingual" street name signs throughout the city as well. I'm sure Limburgish has probably lost some ground to Dutch in the last century, but I have no idea how much.
It's getting to be the middle of the day and I'd like to stop someplace for lunch. There were a bunch of food trucks and stuff on one of the city's squares, but instead I went into a place that was serving Chinese bowls. The name of the place is Wok to Go. It's on a street called Markt, across the street from the Stadhuis (city hall). Pretty good place, I had a rice bowl with chicken curry.
So now I'm already done with Maastricht. I wasn't in town quite long enough to review it well, but what I saw was pretty nice. I can't say I saw anything really outstanding or must-see; all the cool stuff I did see can easily be found in countless other European cities I've rolled through. So while it's not an essential tourist destination, you won't be wasting your time if you hit it up for a few hours if you're in the area.
After this it was on to Luxembourg, with a brief stop in Liège.
