After a 13 hours flight from Singapore, we finally arrived at Amsterdam on the 1st of Feb. The weather was cold and we had luggages to bring along. A train ride from Amsterdam to Maastricht (where we will be staying for the next 5 months) will take approximately 3hours and the tickets cost 30 euros. For some reasons, we couldn't take a train directly from the station in the airport, and had to take a bus ride to some other train station to catch our train to Maastricht. As we walked to the bus stop, we could feel the extreme temperature and wind blowing against us.
Having stayed in Singapore for most of our lives, all 6 of us were freezing in the cold and finally decided that we should just stay in the airport building till the bus arrives. A tip for such travel in future is to collect the bus travel schedule and wait in heated places till the bus arrival time, since their bus timings are rather accurate (surprisingly, we do not have the kind of situation that we have to wait half hour for a bus and suddenly 2 or 3 buses come at the same time here).
As expected, being our 1st journey here in Netherlands, we simply enjoyed ourselves in the 1 hour bus ride to the train station. Farms and industrial parks may be found along the way and the feeling of excitment resides in us. We learnt something new at the train station when the conductor inform us that the train to Maastricht will be split into 2 parts at Utrecht station, where the 1st half will go to Maastricht while the 2nd half will go to some other places. By theway, something never fail to happen to me everytime I travel on a train. I am always arriving at the train station just 1 or 2 minutes before the train departs and have to carry all my things and run to catch the train.
3 hours on the train was a get to know each other session, with topics like "where are we going to travel to during the school holidays" or "what modules are you going to clear at this place". Upon arrival at Maastricht station, the disembarkment threw us into the cold weather again. We decided to take a picture at the train station before leaving for our hostel. We used the timer function on the camera for this shot and as some of you may expect, our hands were shivering when we are pressing the camera buttons. After we see the camera flash-light come on, everyone just grabbed their things and run into the train station again, hidding from the cold again.
While waiting for a cab to take us from the train station to the hostel, we saw something dropping from the sky, it was begining to snow. Being the typical Singaporean who never see snow for a long long time, all of us started to take pictures!
