delightful

J drove E and I to Aachen today to see both the diploma (translate = thesis) projects for the graduating senior architecture students at RWTH Aachen University and take a bus to Maastricht for a day on the town.  it was a wonderful day.

the diploma projects were very good.  it was really cool to see how different but also how very alike the projects we saw were to the final thesis projects we saw in May at Georgia Tech.  I guess some things transcend the language barrier.  architecture is architecture after all.  my favorite part was seeing some of the unusual and new (to me, at least) ways that some of the students built their models.  I have a lot of ideas now for future models.  fab.

ps.

I hope there isn’t a problem with me uploading a photograph of someone else’s thesis project.  yikes.  I don’t know whose it was though.  does that make it anonymous?

and then

E and I split up for a bit until lunch when we met J.  E went and supported a good friend of hers (who was actually presenting her diploma project, small small world!) and I went into the city center of Aachen to sketch and just be out in the gorgeous day.  I must be really lucky because both of the times I was in Aachen it was sunny and beautiful.  this is apparently rare for Germany but specifically for Aachen because of its geographical and topographical location.

we met up with J at noon where she completely hooked us up with the location of the right bus, the bus times and stops list, maps to both the bus station in Aachen and also an overall map of Maastricht and the wikipedia page on Maastricht so we could familiarize ourselves on the way.  she is darling.  it was so wonderful.

a sad tale

so there we were.  on our way to the bus stop to Maastricht in the (luckily) blazing sun.  it was hot.  we needed quenching.  so we wander into a little shop near the bus stop and pick up these cool .50e icee in a cup things.  I got lemon.  it was freezing cold and delicious looking.

I have to put emphasis on the looking because I took about three scrapes off the top of it before the bus arrived and I was promptly told by an impatient sounding bus driver that I could not get on the bus with it in my hand.

emphasis on the in my hand because E quickly stuffed hers in her bag and walked on while I stupidly and in a frantic to make sure we did not miss the bus launched mine into a nearby trashcan.  E ate hers on the bus.  I was so angry that I wasted my .50e that I would not even take the extra one she got that she continually offered me.

tears are welling up in my eyes.

my favorite

I do believe that I can safely pronounce that Maastricht is my favorite of the cities I have visited since I got to Europe.  reasons why it is at the top of the list:

1. it is breathtakingly beautiful
2. the sky is exceptionally blue
3. the people all are very very nice and they don’t look disappointed when you can only speak English
4. the people are also very helpful and happy to be so
5. it has a delightful balance of extremely historic and ancient architecture and also badass modern architecture that isn’t out of place and overwhelming
6. they have a red tower
7. the amount of cobblestone roads is sufficient to create that old Europe feeling without twisting my knee painfully
8. there were a lot of bikes and also incredibly fast little Vespa scooters
9. they have excellent shoe shopping and the first vintage stores I’ve seen
10. oh, and the Subway we went to was incredibly generous with their vegetables

we spent less than five hours in Maastricht and I am in love with it.

and then

when E and I got off the bus at the main train station in Maastrict we quickly saw a giant map of the city with all the major sights pointed out.  we headed out walking with the intention of trying to see as much as we could.  everything looks out of a scale on a map, you know.

on our way through the east side of the city we stopped at a candy store and picked up some treats.  this was an excellent idea since we had something to nom on basically the whole day.  this was an excellent idea until some of the surprises E picked up made her want to vomit.

we crossed the Maas on the Saint Servatius bridge over to the west (main) side of the city.  we walked through the main Markt, the 17th century town hall and the Mosae Forum shopping center.  we also saw the Theater aan hey Virjthof (the main city theater), Virjthof square with the Sint Servaas Basiliek and this amazing red tower on a church called Sint Janskerk.  this area was actually completely filled with the remnants of a big event that took place last week.  they were dismantling it.  the main thing to say about this area is that not only was it a total wreck but the shops and restaurants around it were completely filled with people.  there were thousands of people dining and having a lovely time at 3:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday.  surely not everyone in Maastricht was, like us, taking a day off of work.  what do I not understand about the work schedules of Europeans?

we walked up to the University Maastricht Arts Center that J had suggested so that we could see a glass block building and on the way found an amazing cathedral transformed into an ultra modern hotel.  the combination of these two was the perfect end to a wonderful trip.  I took a lot of photographs of everything.