Safely in Maastricht

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Well, we left for real this time, and got to Amsterdam and Maastricht safely. The flight was just as good this time, only this time actually finished it. I got less sleep than last time I flew to Europe on a plane, though.

After moving just about every piece of furniture in the house that could be moved, I left on Thursday in the afternoon. We landed in Amsterdam at 8:30 AM their time, where we claimed all our bags and trooped out to a waiting bus. It took until about 1 PM to travel through the entire length of the Netherlands, down to Maastricht, with a stop for lunch at a truck stop. It was actually quite nice, a small sandwich with ham, crispy bread, and cheese, and potato soup.

Once we got to Maastricht, we unloaded everything, and trooped in to assign keys and sign papers. We agreed to meet in the lobby at 3:30 PM for the start of another adventure: shopping. Since we were now five days behind, we had to contend with the Pentecost holiday extended weekend on less-than-fair terms. All stores would be closed Friday through Monday, so we had to quickly stock up on food for the next four days. Since everything was written in Dutch, this was quite a job to decipher everything and then decide whether I would need it or not. But I managed to get four days worth of food, and it was even edible.

Then we all went back and had dinner at the cafeteria. Since we were later than we should have been because of the volcano, our professor had to order dinner tonight and brunch tomorrow, but that was all the food from the cafeteria we would get until classes start on May 31st. Dinner was some kind of sweet-and-sour dish with rice.

Some students elected to start traveling right away, which they could do since we had nothing scheduled until classes. My Internet does not work, something else that will have to be fixed after the holiday is over and everything starts up again on Tuesday. Time to go to bed and stock up on sleep!

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