A New Week, A New Part of Town

The weather in Enschede last week was been cold and rainy. There were a few parts of days with sun, but it is definitely still winter here. Yesterday was a warm clear day though, so Roxi and I took the bus to a nearby neighborhood with a grocery store that we've been wanting to check out. Although we have a store on campus, some of the prices seem a little high, so we thought we'd see if there was a cheaper alternative off campus. While we were waiting for the bus, I got a few more pictures of some campus buildings.


Dormitory


Bastille (Student Union)


Football Field (soccer to us Americans)


Neighborhood grocery store not far from campus.


More of the neighborhood by the grocery store.


Roxi waiting for the bus to take us back to campus with our groceries.

The grocery store ended up being a great find. It gave us a little comparison pricing for items in our campus store. It also taught us that some things in Europe are just that much more expensive than we are normally used to. For a country with such a large coast, fresh seafood is very expensive. I suppose it's because the local fish from the North Sea is mostly herring and that appears to be a bit cheaper than other things which must be imported. We also took a chance on what seemed like a very cheap bottle of Tawny Port. We're used to having to spend about $40 or $50 dollars for a good bottle of port, but this one only cost about 6 Euros ($8) and it's pretty good!

Later in the afternoon, we went back out to the neighborhood to try some Indonesian take-out food suggested by one of Roxi's colleagues. We took the bus to Jupiterstraat (Jupiter Street) so that we could walk around the neighborhood a little more before ordering our dinner.


The bus stop for Jupiterstraat. We had to take this picture in honor of Roxi's cat Jupiter.


Houses along Juipterstraat.


More houses along Jupiterstraat.

We got our food but found that we had just missed the bus back to campus. It had been a warm day, but as the sun was setting it was starting to get cold. Rather than wait for 20 minutes for the next bus, we decided to try the walk back, which was supposed to be about 30 minutes. That way, we'd be home abut the same time and not just sitting in the cold waiting. The walk wasn't too far (it will be better once we find some inexpensive bikes) but it really started to get cold once the sun set. We were almost back to campus when we saw a sign with the temperature on it.



It's funny because even though the temperature was at the freezing point, it didn't feel like it. Neither Roxi nor I knew how we might fare in such different weather than we're used to in south Louisiana, but this reassured us a bit. Granted, it was still pretty cold and we weren't about to have a picnic, but we realized that we could manage this weather for another couple of months.

The Indonesian food ended up being very good and similar to Chinese take out that we are used to but with some variations. Of course we only ordered a fried rice dish, a vegetarian noodle dish and a sampling of appetizers, but I liked the differences in the way the food was prepared. Next time, we'll get more adventurous and try something really different!