sydney reunion in maastricht =)

feb 15: so mayke left early in the morning to go to a job interview in the hague, so i did a walking tour that i had purchased from the tourist info the day before (right before i met up with mayke). So it took me to basically the same sights, it just told me more history than what mayke did. although it didnt take me to the old mill, so that was quite a nice hidden gem! i went to more of the city walls that mayke didnt take me to, and i went inside st servaas basiliek church which was quite pretty with its flying buttresses and everything. the church adjacent, saint janskerk, has a red tower so i wanted to go to the top but the door wasnt open even though i was visiting during their so called opening hours. so after wandering around, taking pics of all the churches and the roman remains and the bridges (sint servaasbrug is the oldest bridge in the netherlands!), and parks, i decided to go to a museum, so i tried Museum aan het Vrijthof, which was housed in a 16th century spanish government buiding. it told of the local history, but i couldnt go cause there was construction work going on on the building. so i went over the Maas river and went to the Bonnefanten Museum. it was a mixture of contemporary and old dutch master art. some of the contemporary stuff was a bit bland, but they had a special exhibition on japanese prints, and those were quite cool. and surprisingly, it was in english (the museum texs, not the prints themselves). so after going round the whole museum, i wandered around that side of maastricht for a short while, and then went back to maykes area. she lived right near the basilica of our lady which had a treasury, so i thought id pop in there real quick. when i entered the church it was reallll dark, as if lit by a few candles! and there was a sign in the corner that said pay E1 for entry beyond this point, but there was no one to collect the money and the door was open so i just went in. the treasury was there as well but it was closed off, so i just admired some of the old religious paintings and left. i asked someone in the church if the treasury was closed and he said in bad english that it was closed for the season, so that was a bit annoying. so then i went back to maykes and she was home from the interview. she said it went well but she was upfront with the boss about her potentially going to brazil so the woman told her to go and enjoy brazil and to give them a call when she comes back and she will practically have the job waiting for her. i hope she meant that and was just not saying it! so then we cooked and ate together and i looked up my directions for the following day. this was going to be my first day in germany so i was a bit nervous again, esp since i didnt know what the roads were going to be like in terms of cycle lanes, and cycle routes. but mayke told me that this part of germany is pretty flat and has lots of cycle signs, although not as much as in the netherlands. i was heading to düren in germany because it was in the middle between maastricht and cologne, but closer to cologne because i didnt want to arrive in cologne too late since i needed to get my party on for karneval!! and so i realized when i was looking up directions, that because we dont have umlauts in the english language, we change the names of places (and we change the names of places that dont have umlauts as well). cause i was on the US google maps looking for düren and nothing was coming up until i realized that in english its deuren. how annoying is that!? so anyway after i looked up directions, i skyped with mike so mayke could see him and then she studied her spanish. they had a mini competition, who knew the most languages. mayke won with 5 that she is basically fluent in. i said i am only fluent in english, but i know the bad words in lots of other languages =) but that wasnt good enough lol. but after the skype sesh mayke and i went to bed pretty early cause she had to go to work in the morning and i wanted to possibly go to the fort sint pieter which was a bit outside of town, since there were no casemates tours going on while i was there.