Slaap is goed

Writings

• Zeddam, Netherlands

Today was quite busy—I hope I’m not overestimating the amount of free time I have to write these posts. I’ll eventually figure out how this is going to work beyond just providing less detail—I really enjoy the snapshots a focused piece provides versus a general one.

After a solid night’s sleep (I must’ve fallen asleep in less than a minute), I had my first full day in the Netherlands1 ahead of me. The program scheduled nothing for the morning, so my host family and I briefly visited Emmerich am Rhein, a German city about 15 minutes by car. We walked down the Rhine and the streets of Emmerich until returning to the car and making our way back to the Netherlands. Before we were back in Zeddam, we drove through ’s-Heerenberg2 and saw Huis Bergh, a castle dating back to the 13th century and which we may revisit for longer than hardly a stop.

We mainly travelled by bicycle the rest of day. Bicycles, as you may know, are quite important in Dutch culture, as evidenced by Wikipedia’s decently detailed article on the subject. We biked to Terborg to meet the rest of the group and then went off to tour a farm, get some ice cream, and finally visit DRU Cultuurfabriek, a repurposed iron factory in Ulft). Touring the Netherlands by bike—both the cities themselves and the countryside in between—is an incredible way to experience the country. Not too slow or too fast (like walking or driving, respectively) and woven directly into the culture itself.

Afterwards, nothing too exciting. We went home and later got together for a few more hours, and now I’m here staying awake when I should be sleeping in preparation for an earlier day than today.

Last thing: after thinking about the problem I addressed in the first paragraph, perhaps I should split my posts into two parts. First, a general overview of what happened during the day, and second, a more focused discussion of some topic. Perhaps I’ll try this soon.

Slaap is goed.3


  1. You know, it sounds weird just saying that. We’ve done so much in so little time that it feels like I’ve been here longer than I actually have. Which certainly isn’t a bad thing. ↩︎

  2. And yes, the spelling is correct. The clitic ’s- is shortened from des↩︎

  3. Because that’s about the most complex Dutch sentence I can put together, and I wanted something different from yesterday’s post. It just translates to “sleep is good”. Which it is! ↩︎