Day 3: Maastricht the Netherlands

I am not as eloquent as Sarah, but I will try to give you the gist of our third day in Europe.

We took a train from Cologne to Aachen which is the last city in Germany before crossing the western border into the Netherlands. We then took a short bus ride into the city of Maastricht. It was Sarah's favorite place of the whole trip.

When I first got to Europe I was most impressed by the churches, but likes the beaches of Florida I grew to take them for granted. I mean, they all have crazy history, and are staggering architecturally. Our church in TN was built around 1900, and most of the churches in Europe were built by Moses himself. My Dutch is not good, but if Moses didn't build it, it is real old.

After walking around downtown and checking out the Christmas market we decided to walk to the outskirts of town to check out some caves. It was only 4 inches on the map, but it was about a 2 hour walk. The upside is that it took us through a neat residential neighborhood and then the countryside. This is a house and car that I thought was pretty typical of the area. I didn't see any pickups and very few SUV's. Their cars are much smaller. Here is a link to "Smart Car" which is coming to the US. It starts at 11,000. http://smartusa.com/

As we made our way out of town and walked through the countryside, we came across another old church. The farmland there looked rich and fertile. I noticed that in addition to big farms even the average homeowner had a small garden. To match their small cars, they also have small yards. I saw very few homes that were bigger than ours or that had more land.
This is the cemetery at that church.
And finally, we arrived at the caves outside of Maastricht. The tour we took was in Dutch, but this is what I gathered.
* This picture is one of the stations of the cross that was drawn on the wall when church was held there during WWII since they had to meet in Secret.
* The caves were originally built as they mined them for limestone during construction of the city.
* There are many kilometers of tunnels which translates to many miles. The whole town would seek refuge there during bombing.
* Some art was hidden here to protect it from the Nazis.

We walked back into town and ate Thai food. We were exhausted. I asked the waiter what he recommended, but that didn't go so well. The problem was not the language barrier since he spoke English, but rather he just didn't want to bother. I have always heard the waiters in Europe are rude, and this confirmed it, but here is the catch. They don't get paid by tips. They get paid a normal wage, so they have no reason to kiss butt. So I conclude that waiters in Europe are not rude but rather honest and waiters here are just good actors. I would say that a waiter in Europe is no more rude or ambivalent than your average clerk at the DMV.

So, anyway we ate Thai food, and it was really hot.