Ikea!

Today, we made a trip into Hengelo, the town to the northwest of the university, to visit the nearest Ikea and buy a few items for our apartment. Our place is furnished but there were still a couple of things that Roxi felt would make it home, chief among them, a new shower curtain. It ended up being a cold and rainy day, but we rode the bus to the store (there is actually a bus stop called "Ikea") and made our way around the large showroom looking for those items we needed. For those who've never been to an Ikea before, all of the items have Swedish names but the signs usually also list the names in English. Since this is the Netherlands, all those translations were in Dutch. This was both good and bad; good because it helped for us learn more about the language, bad because if we neede more information, we were pretty much out of luck. But we made do and ended up getting the shower curtain and a few other odds and ends.

Closed on Sunday!

Today we learned that just about every thing is closed on Sunday except for a few restaurants and bars. It made for a quiet day in Enschede but it didn't stop us from figuring out a bus route that we are sure to use frequently. It also gave us the opportunity to have a couple of drinks at an Irish pub and get some Chinese food for dinner.


Mural near Enschede Station.


Vertical sundial on Grote Kerk.


Heart shaped light cover in Oude Markt.

Frozen Campus

Roxi and I met with her post-doc adviser and several other colleagues on Friday just to touch base and talk a little bit about our stay here. Roxi's office is getting set up and by next week she'll have keys to her building. After our meeting, we returned to our apartment a different way than we have gone before to see other parts of campus.


Cubicus Building and it's Cube frozen in the pond.


It almost looks like someone threw the cube into the already frozen pond.


Cubicus Building


Hogekamp Building


Clock tower sculpture in a frozen pond.


Standing on a frozen pond.

Canal Skating

We haven't seen anyone ice skating on frozen lakes or canals since we have been in the Netherlands, but apparently it is traditional in years that are cold enough. Friday we met with several of Roxi's new colleagues and were told by one that this was the first winter in twelve years that the Dutch canals have frozen and people took to their skates. It must have been a sight to see if the picture that accompanies this story is any indication. Perhaps we'll have the opportunity to give it a try in the coming weeks.

Afternoon in Enschede

We spent our first full day sleeping half of it away. Roxi got up first but I was just wiped out from the previous day of travel so I slept in until about 1:30 pm. The rest of that day was spent taking care of essential errands like groceries, signing the apartment lease contract and getting internet. The sun sets around 4:30 pm here so we really didn't have much daylight left after taking care of those things.

Similarly we had some errands to attend to on our second day, but we took care of most of them in the morning. It was a beautiful day compared with the rainy night of our arrival and overcast first day. The sky was clear by noon and the sun was as high in the sky as it could be at this latitude and time of year. So after noon, we took a train into downtown Enschede with hopes of getting bicycles (the preferred mode of travel around here) and getting a Dutch bank account set up. We made the mile and a half walk to the train station taking in some of the campus sites on our way.


Campus as seen from the main entrance.


University of Twente - The Entrepreneurial University

After the quick five minute train ride into town we quickly found the bicycle shop. Unfortunately they didn't have any second-hand bikes at the moment and new bikes were bit out of our budget. They were very nice and told us they should have used bikes in a few weeks. As it turned out, we also didn't end up getting a bank account as we forgot to bring any of our US banking information with us (d'oh!). In the end it was okay though because we got a chance to walk around the Oude Markt (Old Market) area of town and did a lot of window shopping.


Enschede Station


Street in the Oude Markt.


Sweet shop


Cheese shop


Sculptures on the roof of a theater.


Grote Kerk (Large Church) in the Oude Markt.


Grote Kerk in the Oude Markt.


Ceramic love seat




Het ei van Ko (Ko's Egg) Fountain in Oude Markt. See a live webcam of this area here.

So we didn't get bikes or a bank account, but we got to see part of Enschede. Plus we went to a liquor store and bought several bottles of local Grolsch beer. I'd say it was an afternoon well spent!