On this February I went to a country that I very much wanted to go for so long, i.e. Netherlands. I've spent a fabulous week there, staying with a friend at her house in the city of Groningen. This was my second time abroad, and the first one being 8 years ago (I was in Germany for two weeks in 2004), I was definitely excited and curious about this prospect. I started planning in the last October, and bought my plane tickets when they are the cheapest, which was, coincidentally, the semester break. I got my 'green' Turkish passport, which allowed me to travel to Netherlands (and many other countries) without needing a visa (let me tell you, this is a huge time and money saver). My trip started in the night of Valentine's Day (fortunately, no preoccupations on that day), traveling to Istanbul first. On this bus trip, I was kinda worried about whether I can catch the plane on account of the snowy roads, but I was hopefully on time. After taking the bus to Sabiha Gokcen Airport, I checked in, took some pictures in the airport and then boarded to my plane. It took around 3.5 hours to arrive at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, which I must say an excellent airport. After landing, it's easy to reach to your destination in the country, as the airport has a train station. 
One thing about the trains in Netherlands is that their tickets has very few information about your ride. Here is my train ticket from my first day in Netherlands, which lacks information about things you would expect from an intercity train ticket, such as departure time, platform, seat number etc. This confused me a lot for a moment, but after looking at the timetables and asking people on the platform I found my train (It is hard to find someone who can't speak English there). Later, I learned that you can use your ticket for any of the departures on one day and you may reach to your destination by any way you want, as long as you travel away from your departure station and near your destination. See, quite simple.
After taking a train which passes through Amersfoort (a station mostly used for transfers), I switched trains and after about 2 hours, I arrived at Groningen. Here, the first thing I found unusual was the number of bikes. If you lived in a place where you only see one or two bikes most a day, you would find the number of cyclists surprising. As Netherlands is a relatively flat country, bikes are used frequently for commuting, there are even seperate traffic lights for bikes, not to mention bike lanes are everywhere. The photo in the left shows the Academy Building (Academiegebouw) of the University of Groningen and you can see the small part of the parked bikes. Groningen is a university city, many of the residents are students and most of the places are student-type of places, if you know what I mean. Even though city center looks medieval, inside the buildings are very modern.And I have to say I loved the medieval but organized way of the city and the architecture. Old parts of the cities here are amalgamated to the rest of the modern parts without raising too much attention.
For the first few days, me and my host Funda went sightseeing in the morning and after noon, I wandered around the city alone, taking many photos, stopping by the shops just to see different stuff. After 6 pm, most of the places are closed, of course, except cafes (A reminder, all bars and pubs are called 'cafes' in Netherlands). Nightlife here is, let's just say, active. People start to go out no earlier than 10 pm and places are most crowded around midnight. The place I was staying is neighbored by a street with at least 4 places, therefore you can imagine the noise at the night time (it goes on till 3-4 AM). As the city has a big student population, you can imagine that there are many places to go for nightlife. For the drinks, screw Heineken, the best is Belgian beers.
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| Three Sisters in Groningen, three connected pubs, making it probably the biggest pub in Europe |
On Saturday, we hopped to the train to Den Haag (or its anglicanized name-The Hague), 3rd largest city of Netherlands. The first difference here is the increase of car traffic and change of architecture. You can understand the effects of Dutch Colonial Architecture in New York by looking at the houses in here. Den Haag seemed a dull city at first, as a 'city of officials' and lack of students (there is no university in Den Haag, they are in the neighboring cities, such as Leiden and Delft) but I had great fun time here, courtesy of the Bavaria beers :)
I don't like to write a very long thing here, so I'll call this one here and will continue later for the time I spent in Amsterdam. Here's some nice pictures from Den Haag:
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| Bibliotheek (Library) in Den Haag |
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| Peace Palace |
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| Chinatown |
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| Skyline |
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