Places Around Maastricht: Henriette's Launderette Wassalon

Type of Place: Laundrymat/Wassalon
Location: Sint Pieterstraat 70, 6211 JP Maastricht
 
 
Henriette’s may only be a laundry-mat, but as the only one that I’ve found in Maastricht so far, it deserves a mention. Most people it seems do their laundry in house and students probably have access to shared units in their dorms. Me, I have a little combined washer/dryer unit, but its been on the fritz lately and I was driven to seek out a paid option. After much Googling and a visit to a couple of rental agencies in my area, Henriette’s was my only option. Its a good 20 minutes walk away from my apartment, but I suppose it could be worse.
 
Henriette’s is a small shop with about four washers plus a double sized washer and four or five dryers. The woman working there (Henriette herself perhaps?) was very helpful. For your 5 euros, you also get detergent to wash the clothes in. In fact you cannot use your own detergent. The shop is clean, but there were not many people in and out of there. I was the only one doing my own wash I think. All of the machines were going, so I believe most people who use the launderette are just dropping off their clothing. There was also a cute dog in the shop, but it stayed well out of the way.
 
Henriette’s Launderette charges about 5 euros per wash (4-6 kilos) and 1 euro for 20 minutes of drying. The wash/dry/fold option is 12,50 per load. The dryers are very fast and I found that 20 minutes was enough for most of my clothes. The shop is only open on weekdays from noon until 6 pm. There is also a dry cleaning service, but you can find dry cleaners all over the city.

What Should I Do Tonight? Weekly Events Post at My.Mtricht.com

I’ve bee helping out at the my.Mtricht website lately (more on that later) by adding events to the Event page. Since I’ve discovered several reoccurring activities in Maastricht, I whipped up a quick blog post on that site listing them. These events include dance, music (mostly jazz and blues), and frequent tours. Check out the post What Should I Do Tonight? Weekly Activities in Maastricht here.

Cheers!

Falling Leaves and Culture Shock

I’ve now been in Maastricht for six months and have seen the city pass from spring, into a moderately warm summer, and now into autumn. The leaves haven’t really started to change yet, but there are the occasional patches of yellow or brown. The trees outside my window don’t give me a lot of hope for a brilliant foliage season and I imagine the rain knocks a lot of leaves down quickly.

What has really gotten to me is how much darker it seems outside. While it got warmer and the days longer from April to August, it was unseasonably dry and I got use to the weather being a comfortable constant and the sun going down around 10 pm. Now it is dark at 7 am when we get up and grayer outside with more rain. I don’t know how, but autumn really sneaked up on me and now I’m scrabbling to adjust my brain to the new season.

I’m not typically affected by the changing of seasons. I was born in Alaska and grew up in Vermont and neither are particularly sunny locals in the winter months. But as it gets colder and darker here in Maastricht, I’ve been feeling down and thinking a lot about the stages of culture shock and where I seem to be in that continuum. I think that the change in light and rain frequency is hitting me harder this year because I am also more isolated. Here at 6th months is when the “Depression” stage is suppose to set in and I can feel that. Now that all my distracting holiday trips are over, and the simple excitement of figured out where to grocery shop or buy bulbs has faded, it is harder to avoid feeling down and rather alone.

Of course stages implies that I will eventually come out the other end into the so-called “Acceptance” stage, but they also imply a level of passivity that I’m not terribly comfortable with. If I just passively wait to move from one stage to the next, how will I learn anything? What if it never happens? I’d rather be in control.

Which is why I liked the short post from the Global Coach Center in one of my LinkedIn groups. They suggested thinking about culture shock as a collection of perspectives because a perspective can be changed. Of course perspectives can go from positive to negative too, so by adopting this concept of culture shock you have to accept that you won’t just reach a zen state of acceptance and then be a peace with your new surroundings forever.

Really, I can see where both of these concepts come together. Culture shock does feel like stages sometimes, but if you take control of yourself in those stages you can choose how to handle them.

For me, I’m forcing myself to get out for Maastricht activities more, after a long period of travel, and taking some classes to keep my brain engaged. This month I’m learning about Information Entrepreneurship in preparation for staring my own business (more on that later) and my language course will finally be starting in November. I hope the Dutch course will help me overcome my fear of starting to use Dutch in my day to day activities. And I’m still looking for work, since I’m much happier when I’m working (and getting paid). While I’m feeling down now, I’m hoping that these activities will help me change my perspective and carry me through the dark winter months of our first year as expats.

And as for the dark? Now seems like a good time to get that central fan/light fixture I’ve got my eye on. And maybe a light with a timer that will wake me up in the morning by getting brighter.

Places Around Maastricht: Pinky

Type of Place: Snack Window & Candy Store
Location: Grote Straat, kitty-corner from the VVV.

One of the pleasureable, comfort foods frequently consumed in the Netherlands, especially here in Limburg, is the waffle. These are always the big, Belgian style waffles and usually eaten as a snack or dessert rather than breakfast.   Like Dan says, no day with a chocolate filled waffle can be a bad day.

Pinky serves the best waffles in all of Maastricht. Bar None.  The waffles themselves are quite sweet and can be purchased with powdered sugar on top.  The next step up, and the one I love, is the chocolate-filled waffle with three sticks of chocolate shoved into the still warm waffles fresh insides (pictured). We don’t usually get powdered sugar on top but you can.  The ultimate waffle from Pinky is chocolate-filled with powdered sugar and a swirl of soft-serve vanilla ice cream on top.  Delicious.

Pinky almost always has a line for both waffles and their soft-serve ice cream, which is ok but not terribly inspired.  They also have a candy store with a variety of candies, from chocolate to marshmellow critters on a stick.  It is typically open only until 17:00 (5 PM), expect on Thursdays when they stay late with the rest of the stores.  They are also closed on Sunday.

Creativity & Innovation Conference: Oct 15th

This conference has been popping in and out of my awareness for a while, but I finally sat down to look at their website & see if it is something I want to attend.  The Creativity & Innovation Conference is coming together to encourage people to focus on their creativity and think about how to reach further outside the box through focusing on five themes. It is free and, to my surprise, in English so I’ve decided to attend and check out what its all about.

The 5 themes are:

1. Borderless creativity
2. Co-creation and open innovation
3. Inventive learning
4. Places and spaces of creativity
5. Local creativity

Based on the area descriptions and speakers, the conference is focusing on big areas of innovation such as architecture, city planning, business, and education.  Honestly, it seems a little strange to try and grasp something as amophous as creativity and push it into a conference format.  Maybe that is one of the reasons they’ve had trouble getting attendees.  However, sometimes you have to try to pin things down a little if you want to have meaningful conversations. I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m sure it will be intriguing.

Want to learn more? Here’s the Website.

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