Amersfoort in Holland

Amersfoort is 750 years old good size town about 40 min drive (without traffic) east from Amsterdam in Holland. It is situated well in the middle of the country and hence they have there multiple companies from different industries. Since it also has got 2 train stations it is easy for people to commute from nearby towns.

I said the driving time "without traffic", since it can cause annoying delays. A 1:45 hour journey between BRU and Amersfoort has taken up to 3:30 hours from me and that is not even bad.

Back to Amersfoort - It has got a very nice old town centre with canals (of course, it's in Holland), narrow allies and squares surrounded by multiple restaurants. Actually there seem to be as many restaurants than there are shops, and I can tell you there are quite many shops.

One could imagine to do at least some shopping while staying there many nights per week for few months, but no!

There are two reasons for it;
1. Long working hours;
Twice we have been thrown out from the office by security since they were going home...

2. Shops closed;
All shops close by 1800 latest, except on Thursdays when some of them are open until 2000. It is nice to see you have good sales and all, but one gets annoyed when seeing them only closed for the 5th time.

What do people then do in the evenings?
80% of people are home doing nothing and 10% in these restaurants. Since there are so many restaurants, they all feel empty with only handful of people.

One strange thing is that many restaurants do not accept credit cards at all! Nowadays I find it very rare in Europe, but it still exists.

Ah, you still wonder where is the rest 10%? Either cycling or camping ;o)

Wanna hear about Dutch lunch?
Their favorite lunch is sandwiches with milk. Normal filling to the sandwich is to have only plain slice of cheese or ham, not both. And definetely no green stuff (salad etc.) In between. Then they even love to have as a "dessert" a sanwich roll without filling, but some nuts or seeds in the bread...

I can tell you it is no joke for someone to run 3 day training with such lunch, particularly if you are on low-carb diet.

Well, luckily the diet is not a strict one, particularly for the weekends - otherwise I would need to drop my pizza, candy, beer etc.

And that is a NO GO!

======

Interested to go? http://www.amersfoort.nl/