What to do in Enschede

Author’s note:  This post covers the day of July 10^th.  I wrote it on the train to Brussels on July 13^th.

So I slept pretty late into the morning, about 10:30.  And after Smith left to go to work, I have to be honest, it felt pretty good to be lazy for a while.  I checked up on news, facebook, sports and whatnot.  Eventually though my mind convinced my body to get up and go, that this would be the only time I would be in Enschede so I should make sure I see and do everything possible.  But after spending a few days here, it doesn’t seem like that would take much time at all.

I went to the tourism office here.  Chatted up the ladies there and tried to get any inside info at all about what there is to do and see here.  After them telling me how jealous they were that I had been living in Florida and was just in Brazil (the summer weather here has been predominantly cloudy, highs of 65, lows of 55, and a daily 30 minute rain shower), all I was able to get was 2 recommended restaurants, and suggestions to see the market, the synagogue, and the Twente museum.

So I went to one of the restaurants for lunch, had an open-faced ham and salmon salad sandwich.  It was okay.  Walked around the historic downtown and up to the Twente museum. 

The museum is located in an area of town that burned down in the 90’s in a fireworks disaster.  So this whole area of town has been rebuilt using crazy modern architecture.  Here are some of the houses.

 

The museum was alright.  It was just a history of the area from the ice ages down to modern times.  What did I get out of it?  Well, apparently Enschede is incapable of justifying its own existence.  It was always just a farming community.  Then Belgium separated from the Netherlands and the Dutch lost their textile center of Gent.  So, the government decided to make Enschede the new textile capital of the country.  The way the museum tells it, paraphrasing of course, “Then the Dutch workers began demanding higher working conditions until the industry could no longer and can still not compete with Asia and Africa.”  So, the government then decided that since Enschede could no longer be competitive in textiles, they needed another reason to exist, so they put a university there, making it the only university in all of Holland with its own campus.  And that’s all it is now, a small city with no real industry to speak of, and surrounded by farmland.  But before you say, well it must be a fun college town, know that it’s not really a college town the way we would think of it in the US.  Their college experience is different, so they don’t really have anything resembling Gainesville or Chapel Hill.

The region around Enschede is known by a couple names.  Twente is the name that locals prefer to use, but it is not an official name for the region.  Kind of like “The Triangle”, it refers to a region and makes the locals feel they have an identity, but there is no official border or government body overseeing it.  The official region (our version of states) is called “Overijssel” (I hope I spelled that right).  It’s pronounced “over-eye-sull”, and just means, that it’s on the other side of the River Ijsell.  It’s over Ijssel, no one cares about it really, because not much is going on over here.

After seeing the museum I biked home.  Smith made dinner and then we went to watch a movie.  It was a long bike ride, but we passed the canal, the FC Twente stadium, and a wastewater treatment plant where they tried to do some weird art by labeling every part of the plant with lighted red lettering on a post sticking up from that tank or machinery.  We saw “21 Jump Street”.  Yeah, I know that came out months ago in the US, but neither of us had seen it, and it was the perfect buddy-buddy flick for when best friends reunite.  We were also able to buy beer in the movie theater, which was awesome.  But they had an intermission, which seemed odd for such a short movie, but Smith says that’s par for the course here.  We rode back after the movie, and that was the end of Tuesday.

Meeting Up With Smith

Author's note:  This post covers the day of July 9th.  I wrote it on July 10th, but waited until now to post it so I could have pictures of what I was describing.

After landing at Dusseldorf Airport yesterday morning, I took their skytrain, which is awesome!, to the airport train station.  Got my ticket, had trouble calling Smith, but was finally able to get a connection, but he didn’t pick up and the answering machine message was just a recording me telling me I had reached said number, so I wasn’t really sure I had reached him.

Then I got on the wrong train.  My train was supposed to leave at 9:13, and a train pulls into the station on the platform that my train was supposed to leave from, at 9:07.  So I figured that was my train.  Wrong.  We pulled away from the station at 9:09 and I immediately knew I had screwed up.  So I got off at the next stop in Duisberg and looked at the train schedule to see if my train number was listed, hoping my train would come through Duisberg, unfortunately my train number was not listed.  So I went to the station ticket office thinking that I’d have to ride back to Dusseldorf and catch a later train.  But she said my train was coming through Duisberg and I had 2 minutes to get to platform 10 before it left me.  So I ran through the station, but the train was late.  Turns out that they list trains by different numbers at different stops, which makes it very confusing.  I saw this train referred to my 3 different numbers.  Anyways, made it on the train ok.  Transferred once with no problems.

The last time I was in northern Germany was in 2005, but it was at night, so I couldn’t see how beautiful it is.  Not as beautiful as Bavaria, but still beautiful.  I crossed into Holland and got off at Enschede expecting Smith to be there.  I put my GoPro on my head and started recording to capture this beautiful moment of college roommates and best friends reuniting…But he wasn’t there.  I walked around the train station but couldn’t find him.  I found two pay phones to try to call him but they wouldn’t take my money.  I tried to go to the Tourism office but it doesn’t open until 1PM on Mondays.  So I gave up, sat down on the staircase and decided to wait 45 minutes until the Tourism office opened so I could ask to use their phone to call Smith.  Then after about ten minutes of waiting, a figure appeared beside my on the stairs.  It was Smith, and HE was asking ME where the hell I’D been!  Apparently every time he has used the train he got off at one of the other platforms, so he was waiting there, but my train came in far away from there, and I’d only walked around the station, not up and down the platforms.

Anyways, we walked to his place.  A small room in what basically amounts to a second floor 4 bed 2 bath apartment.  He lives in a house that used to be…how can I put this nicely…a house of ill repute, except it’s legal in Holland, so maybe it would be a house of good repute.  Whatever.  All I know is it’s a two story house with lots of small individual rooms, each with their own sink, and no real common area to speak of, so you can imagine that it was designed with a purpose in mind.  So after walking through the bottom floor and up the narrow staircase you get to the second floor, which has no common area or living room, one kitchen (in horrid condition), four bedrooms (three currently occupied), one bathroom with toilet and sink, one bathroom with shower and sink, and one bedroom with toilet, shower, and sink.

After dropping stuff off we walked to the university where arrangements had been made for me to receive a loaner bike.  At the university I saw the labs and offices that Smith has been working in for the past 2 years.  Way cooler than mine.  The buildings are brand new and use cool modern architecture.  He works with a $10 million machine using lasers to deposit thin films of material onto substrates and then tests the properties of these thin films in vacuums at near absolute zero.  Pretty cool.

We then joined a party in the break area of his building for a couple undergrads that presented their research project (the final part of graduation requirements here).  There was drinking involved.  Gotta love Europe.  Then Smith went to go work on his $10 million machine while I went to go post blogs and drift in and out of consciousness from lack of sleep/jetlag.

We met Smith’s friend and walked to his place where I picked up my loaner bike.  It is tiny.  I feel like a lowrider, or like I’m riding a clown bike.

After picking up my bike we rode to the grocery store to get food for dinner.  Wow.  You couldn’t fill a quarter of a Publix with the stuff in the store.  And the bread was almost gone.  A grocery store running out of bread?!  Are you insane?!  Gotta love Europe?  Try gotta hate Europe.

That’s why Smith fits in perfectly here.  It wouldn’t bother him in the slightest if the grocery store had ran out of something he was expecting to buy.  Smith’s ability to live life without paying any attention to minor annoyances or the condition of his living arrangement continues to astound me.  In college he was perfectly content living in his basement cave during senior year that stank of a rarely cleaned cat litter box, spoiled milk residue in bowls leftover from cereal, and of cartons of orange juice in various states of emptiness strewn about.  Now his room is cleaner, but the kitchen is in disrepair.  I mean filthy, with a disgusting oil fryer, a stovetop that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a year, a freezer that is frozen shut, and 2 overflowing garbage cans.  In the bathroom, the shower head is suspended by a bar that has a tendency to fall off the shower wall at the slightest touch.  He rides a bike that desperately needs a tuneup.  The chain regularly falls off and it can barely change gears.  And out of all that was done to cook dinner at night, the most time was spent trying to find a second spoon so that we could both eat.  I get it.  He doesn’t NEED to have multiple spoons, but wouldn’t be NICE to have a few?  Wouldn’t it be NICE to have a clean kitchen with a functioning freezer?  Wouldn’t it be NICE to have more than a closetless 10x15 foot room to call your own?  Wouldn’t it be NICE to have a fully functioning bike that you know will get you where you want to go every time? It’s just so different from how I prefer to live, that’s all.

After dinner I crashed.  Slept for 11 straight hours.  It was glorious.