weekend in Groningen
Apr. 18th, 2011 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyThis weekend we (Joel, me, Martijn, and Wendy) went to Groningen, to celebrate Martijn's birthday with his family. We took an evening train up and arrived in time for typical Friday dinner -- steak or fish with fries -- and had a lazy evening (I don't remember much after dinner other than being very tired and excusing myself to go to bed as soon as was polite). Monday morning his sister, Gerdien, and a high school friend, Anouschka, came over, we had apple tart, and then we walked around downtown; saw a couple of neat old water towers, walked through some parks and gardens, and ended up at the church on the main square, where we climbed to the top of the tower, 261 steps (I counted, though the guidebook said only 251. Humph). We stopped for a tea/coffee break after that before meandering back home via the fishmarket (where Joel and I decided we were too hungry to wait for lunch and got a portion of kibbeling. Mmmmmm, kibbeling...).
At lunch I exercised my newfound ability to sleep for short period of times in any location (normally I can't catnap, since it takes me 15-20 min. just to fall asleep, and then I sleep for about two hours), by falling asleep in my chair at the table. But I needed the nap -- when I woke up, the four of us headed back downtown to the Martinikerk where the Groningen beer festival was being held (yeah, a beer festival in a church. I like the concept too. It was especially fun to see rows of people sitting in the choir rows, drinking their beers and talking). The church was very beautiful, and even though I split my tokens between Martijn and Joel, I allowed myself a small taste of everything they got, and thus still enjoyed myself greatly. I did have one very brief strange moment. We were standing around talking when all of a sudden I came over feeling odd, and took about two steps in the direction of the bathroom when I realized I was about to pass out. I managed to get back to Joel, and crouch down with my head between my knees, but even when I stood up after awhile I still felt a bit weak kneed, so I hopped up on a ledge and sat there for a good long while. And Joel came back from one of the brewery tables with an excellent beer (Apeldoornse's Martineus) and some cheese, which helped.
We were there about three hours, and when we got home we ordered Chinese takeout. There was a football game Martijn wanted to watch (FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid), and so we all curled up on the couches. I watched the first half, but then fell asleep during intermission and slept through all the second half too. I don't feel too bad about that.
Sunday morning the rest of Martijn's family showed up -- his grandparents, some cousins and aunts and uncles, more siblings and partners. His grandfather, who speaks way better English than we do Dutch, cornered Joel and I, and I had a grand time talking to him throughout the day. He's a real card. We spent a very pleasant morning out in the garden, enjoying the sun, eating apple tart, and playing with the neighbor cats who wandered over. (Martijn's nephew Sam is about 18 months, and my vocabulary is about good enough to be able to converse with him. "Poes!". "Ja, witte poes, met bruin spotjes." "Poes!" :)
The rest of the day was a big family outting to sight-seeing spots around Groningen. We saw two hunebeden, one of which is in almost pristine condition, the other of which has collapsed in a few places but was no less fun to climb on. From there, we went to Westerbork concentration camp. Westerbork was originally built as an asylum center for Jews fleeing Germany; when the Germans took it over, they turned it into a deportation center. Over 100,000 people were deported over the course of the war, to Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, and Theresienstad. This is the camp where Anne Frank was interned before she was deported. Very little of the camp is left; the commandant's house, outside of the barbed wire fence; the fence itself; the ditch around the inside of three sides of the fence; part of the rail line; a watchtower; and raised mounds to mark where the barracks had been. There is some talk of trying to rebuild some of the barracks as part of a museum, using in as many cases as they could the original wood (they have excellent records about where the wood from the original barracks has gone, in part because when the camp was dismantled in the 1970s, many of the barracks were simply transported to nearby farms for reuse); but there is opposition to this because some people don't like the idea of having a "ready made" concentration camp on hand, even partial, in case World War Three ever happens. It's a curious dilemma.
It's about a 2km walk from the parking lot/camp museum to the actual camp, and at the start of the walk there's a sign asking you to please turn off your cell phone, because there's a row of about 11 radio telescopes along the edge of the camp, and they don't want the phone signals to interfere. It's strange to see the telescopes looming over the memorial built in the center of the camp; it was also strange to have seen, in one day, technology from 5000 years ago compared with such recent technology as radio telescopes.
It was about 4pm when we finished walking back from the camp. We were dropped off at a nearby train station and just missed a train back to Amsterdam so we stopped in a cafe for about half an hour. I slept a good hour on the way back, and Joel and I got home about 7:30. The entire weekend we had beautiful sunny weather, though Saturday was a bit cooler and windier than Sunday, and it was so nice to have to spent so much of the weekend outdoors walking around. Though my legs definitely felt climbing the tower!
Today I managed to get through the day without the desperate overwhelming need for a nap between 3pm and 5pm, and even managed to come home and do work (i.e., putting photos on FB) rather than just slumping on the couch in a stupor. Of course, it's not quite 10pm and I'm considering going to bed soon, but this still counts as a success compared to the previous week and a half where I was leaving work early every day and then doing nothing but sleep or doze or read on the couch until going to bed early. I'll take what I can get!
At lunch I exercised my newfound ability to sleep for short period of times in any location (normally I can't catnap, since it takes me 15-20 min. just to fall asleep, and then I sleep for about two hours), by falling asleep in my chair at the table. But I needed the nap -- when I woke up, the four of us headed back downtown to the Martinikerk where the Groningen beer festival was being held (yeah, a beer festival in a church. I like the concept too. It was especially fun to see rows of people sitting in the choir rows, drinking their beers and talking). The church was very beautiful, and even though I split my tokens between Martijn and Joel, I allowed myself a small taste of everything they got, and thus still enjoyed myself greatly. I did have one very brief strange moment. We were standing around talking when all of a sudden I came over feeling odd, and took about two steps in the direction of the bathroom when I realized I was about to pass out. I managed to get back to Joel, and crouch down with my head between my knees, but even when I stood up after awhile I still felt a bit weak kneed, so I hopped up on a ledge and sat there for a good long while. And Joel came back from one of the brewery tables with an excellent beer (Apeldoornse's Martineus) and some cheese, which helped.
We were there about three hours, and when we got home we ordered Chinese takeout. There was a football game Martijn wanted to watch (FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid), and so we all curled up on the couches. I watched the first half, but then fell asleep during intermission and slept through all the second half too. I don't feel too bad about that.
Sunday morning the rest of Martijn's family showed up -- his grandparents, some cousins and aunts and uncles, more siblings and partners. His grandfather, who speaks way better English than we do Dutch, cornered Joel and I, and I had a grand time talking to him throughout the day. He's a real card. We spent a very pleasant morning out in the garden, enjoying the sun, eating apple tart, and playing with the neighbor cats who wandered over. (Martijn's nephew Sam is about 18 months, and my vocabulary is about good enough to be able to converse with him. "Poes!". "Ja, witte poes, met bruin spotjes." "Poes!" :)
The rest of the day was a big family outting to sight-seeing spots around Groningen. We saw two hunebeden, one of which is in almost pristine condition, the other of which has collapsed in a few places but was no less fun to climb on. From there, we went to Westerbork concentration camp. Westerbork was originally built as an asylum center for Jews fleeing Germany; when the Germans took it over, they turned it into a deportation center. Over 100,000 people were deported over the course of the war, to Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, and Theresienstad. This is the camp where Anne Frank was interned before she was deported. Very little of the camp is left; the commandant's house, outside of the barbed wire fence; the fence itself; the ditch around the inside of three sides of the fence; part of the rail line; a watchtower; and raised mounds to mark where the barracks had been. There is some talk of trying to rebuild some of the barracks as part of a museum, using in as many cases as they could the original wood (they have excellent records about where the wood from the original barracks has gone, in part because when the camp was dismantled in the 1970s, many of the barracks were simply transported to nearby farms for reuse); but there is opposition to this because some people don't like the idea of having a "ready made" concentration camp on hand, even partial, in case World War Three ever happens. It's a curious dilemma.
It's about a 2km walk from the parking lot/camp museum to the actual camp, and at the start of the walk there's a sign asking you to please turn off your cell phone, because there's a row of about 11 radio telescopes along the edge of the camp, and they don't want the phone signals to interfere. It's strange to see the telescopes looming over the memorial built in the center of the camp; it was also strange to have seen, in one day, technology from 5000 years ago compared with such recent technology as radio telescopes.
It was about 4pm when we finished walking back from the camp. We were dropped off at a nearby train station and just missed a train back to Amsterdam so we stopped in a cafe for about half an hour. I slept a good hour on the way back, and Joel and I got home about 7:30. The entire weekend we had beautiful sunny weather, though Saturday was a bit cooler and windier than Sunday, and it was so nice to have to spent so much of the weekend outdoors walking around. Though my legs definitely felt climbing the tower!
Today I managed to get through the day without the desperate overwhelming need for a nap between 3pm and 5pm, and even managed to come home and do work (i.e., putting photos on FB) rather than just slumping on the couch in a stupor. Of course, it's not quite 10pm and I'm considering going to bed soon, but this still counts as a success compared to the previous week and a half where I was leaving work early every day and then doing nothing but sleep or doze or read on the couch until going to bed early. I'll take what I can get!
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