My bike trip to Maastricht
The pictures are in chronological order, except the first one.
Hi there! I'm an international student in Germany, Hannover. Because Hannover is close to the borders with the Netherlands, I had the opportunity to visit it for the first time 3 months ago in a day-trip in Hengelo, a city near the border, where I fell in love with the Netherlands and promised to return again.
(See this post)
Last week came the perfect circumstances to let me visit the beautiful country again, and this time I planned a 2-day-trip to another city, namely, Maastricht, also near the border.
As I have Deutschlandsticket (free transport ticket in all of Germany), I went with my foldable bicycle to Aachen (DE) with the train, which is 30km away from Maastricht (NL).
I intended to be in Aachen at 10:30am but thanks to Deustche Bahn (Germany's train operator) I barely made it at 12:30am to Aachen.
I booked everything spontaneously the night before I departed, and I didn't research the terrain that I was going to cycle in. It was only afterwards that I discovered that Aachen is 200m above sea level, whereas Maastricht is 50m so almost the entire bike path turned out to be downhill: It was so thrilling!
I then spent two days going around Maastricht by bike, where I visited Sphinxpassage, Het Bassin, Dominican Bookstore, Virjthof and the Grotten Noord under Sint Pietersberg. The highlight was the guided tour in german in Grotten Noord, where I learned that there was a 220km network of tunnels hidden under the city dug from 1300 until 1900. We also saw a drawing of a marine dinosaur whose fossil was found in the caves but was later stolen by Napoléon when the French conquered Maastricht: it is to this date in the museum of natural history in Paris. The tour guide was very upset and said they would eventually get the fossils back x).
Anyway, at 16pm in the second day, I decided it was time to go back to Germany, so I started thinking which route I would take by bike. I thought of the downhill path from Aachen to Maastricht on my way here, and decided not to take the same path uphill because I would die of exhaustion before I reach my goal, so I looked for alternatives. I quickly checked the elevation profile for many German cities near the border and eventually decided to go to Übach-Palenberg, which was only 60m above sea level, and which had a direct train connection to Essen, where I would travel from back home. It was an unforgettable experience.
I'm seriously considering living and working in the Netherlands after I finish my studies because I loved the calm atmosphere there and the friendly people! See you ^^