Another Small Museum Trip

This morning we decided to accept the coffee offered by our Airbnb host, even though neither of us is a coffee drinker. It seemed polite.  She brought it to our room with two lovely pieces of pound cake.  We added sugar and milk to the coffee and it was still strong but tasty.  Our room is on the second floor of a house that usually has multiple students in it, but they are all on vacation so the house is very quiet.  It is a little hard for us, as Americans with different expectations, to have to go out into the hallway to use the bathroom, but there is no one here so we shouldn't really care.  The room is full of furniture: inside the bay window there is a nice wooden library table with a leather chair, then in clockwise order there is a large IKEA wardrobe that we have not opened, a mantelpiece with hot beverage supplies on it and a gas heater below, then a white IKEA dresser (again unopened), then a chaise longe (lounge?, longue?) that I love but do not know how to spell, then a long thin IKEA mirror, then a pair of night tables flanking a queen sized bed with a memory foam mattress.  We each have our own comforter (no top sheet) with duvet cover.  The light fixture about the bed is exactly the same one as in Rebecca's apartment.  IKEA. Doesn't that sound like a lot of furniture for one room? The floor is wide pine boards that look real. All the floors creak. The house is like the other houses on the street, brick with red tile roof and accents of stained glass above the bay windows. To get to the second floor, there is a staircase with 20 narrow steps -- I am very careful on these steps as I think of our friend who recently fell and broke her leg and shoulder, on steps that she knew very well.

 

We went to Rebecca's house and got organized for our expedition of the day.  Jon had wanted to go to an American cemetery for WW2 soldiers but that plan got revised (when R. and I said, but what would we do there?) to a trip to a WW2 museum in nearby Beek.  We took a 40 minute bus ride north to a small town and spent about an hour or so in the museum. Most of the signage was in Dutch or maybe German but each sign included a section in English.  The museum told the story by a series of dioramas made of wax soldiers wearing uniforms, carrying weapons, in various scenes. Lots of artifacts.  My main take-away was to be reminded how horrible war is, and how many people all over the world died.  R. and Jon have a lot of facts and analysis stored in their brains, and there was a lot to discuss.  The Jewish part of the story had two rooms.  As R. pointed out, their version of Jews was blonde people since this is a blonde part of the world.  The museum definitely had a different perspective than a similar one in the US would have had -- the Americans were not center stage in any way.  Millions of Russians fought and died, playing a very big role in ending the war.  Pearl Harbor did not take up much space in the museum.

There is a circus in town in Maastricht and R. and Jon had some curiosity about it, so we decided to bustle back to find out whether we could go, but on the bus ride back Becca learned on her phone that all the tickets were sold out, so we didn't have to figure out how to race to a circus. That was fine with me. Instead we wandered from the train station to a very crunchy restaurant that Benjamin and R. had found when he visited, called The Broth Bar.  It felt like what we expect in the Netherlands -- progressive, health-conscious, clean, authentic, friendly.  Multiple babies around us with their dining parents. The bread was inedible, it was so full of grains.  We ate the beetroot hummus off the top, tried to eat some of the bread and put the rest in our pockets to feed the birds. My chicken broth was delicious, R's ramen was made with lentil noodles (ugh) and zucchini noodles (better). Jon's pea soup was yummy. 

We walked across a pedestrian bridge back into the part of town that has R's school and home. There were more crowds in the street than before -- maybe because the Christmas market is over.  The streets feel like streets in other European cities we have visited. 

We don't have this at home, unless it is manufactured at Disney World. The lights at this time of year make it especially charming, and there are people eating outside in heated tents (just like San Sebastian and Lucca and Rome etc.). Jon really wanted to try a waffle, even though R. assured him they were better in Amsterdam. He asked how he would know they were better unless we ate one here, so we got a sweet, chewy waffle from one of the many stores. Now we will have something to compare (it was delicious).

Time for naps and knitting and crossword puzzles when we got back to Becca's.  Finally Jon roused himself and went shopping for a few more ingredients for dinner.  The goal is to leave no leftovers in her fridge when we leave for ten days.  We had some fine garlic green beans and fried rice and a big salad.  

Tomorrow we hit the road again.  Maastricht was a fine place to land and get adjusted and it is very nice to be here with R. who knows how to use the bus system and how to get around effortlessly. She even collects up the bus passes after we get off the bus so we won't lose them (they are the kind that you add value to, and they have future usefulness so she is protecting her investment).