Utrecht

My next work-related trip was to the lovely city of Utrecht. It was my first trip to the Netherlands, and I was most impressed. Sometimes you have cliches in your mind about countries before you visit, and I fully expected them to be untrue, but instead, I really did find charming canals...
...and scads and scads of bicycles. This is from the bike parking lot by the central station, but there were really bikes everywhere, and I was so impressed with the bike path system there - it was really like a whole second set of roads, throughout the whole city, and parallel to the highways near the university. (Since then I've visited more cities in the Netherlands, and I still think Utrecht might have had the most impressive cycling infrastructure, though the whole country is pretty damn impressive in this regard.)
On the other hand, I was expecting people to be taller. I know this sounds ridiculous, as Dutch people really are pretty damn tall on average, but I didn't really notice it when walking through the city all that much. I think it doesn't help that the Dutch people I know through work (or our friend Calin) are taller than the average Dutch citizen. The person who organized the meeting in Utrecht, for example, is over two meters tall. Dutch people think he's tall! Also, unlike the average visitor who might be 5'9" or 5'10", I'm used to everyone being a bit taller than me, and I don't really make a huge distinction between people who are 5'7" and 6'2". (Ask Jeremi - I honestly believe that he's only about 10 cm taller than me, despite all evidence to the contrary.)

A nice thing about the timing of the meeting in Utrecht was that I was able to plan my return trip through Frankfurt, where I was able to surprise my parents at the airport, and accompany them on the train back to Jena that afternoon. But I'll save that for the next post...