Maastricht Part 2

Once it started to get colder Maastricht got a lot quieter, although there are still plenty of people huddling around heaters outside of bars late at night rather than being indoors.

Even then there are still lots of interesting things to do indoors. One of these is a local project called Foodbank that happens every Friday at a cultural freezone space. The space is in an old factory that has been converted into a community space that different social groups can use. At Foodbank, volunteers collect the leftover food from the weekly market and then come together to cook a three-course vegetarian dinner. Sometimes there has been over a hundred people turning up for food and nearly as many to help prepare the fruit and vegetables. As it is free, there are usually a lot of students there. The meals are always satisfying, sometimes unusual (it is made from leftovers after all), and the atmosphere is lively, laidback and friendly.

Figure 1: Me with a giant courgette from the food co-op

Another communal dinner happens every Thursday. This time a smaller group of volunteers prepare a three-course meal which has a more curated menu but costs about the same as a meal deal. It’s run by the InnBetween, a student chaplaincy. Normally I am not the type to go to a student chaplaincy, but it is fairly laidback and they run a lot of interesting events. Environmentalism is a big topic at the university and at UCM, and I’ve been to quite a few interesting workshops about this there. It was there that I found out about a food co-operative set up by students this year that sells local produce- including some giant courgettes.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to visit Eindhoven, another city in the south of the Netherlands, for their annual light festival, GLOW. Eindhoven is a hub for technology and design, with two universities and lots of electronics companies. Overall the vibe really reminded me of Shoreditch- but with a few frite shops sprinkled in. The light festival took over the whole city and there were too many intriguing installations to be able to see it all in one night.

As always it was a good opportunity to try some new foods- in particular I liked a food market in Eindhoven that had dishes from all over the world. Sadly, there were not any British foods- not that I am missing much from the UK. The food in the supermarkets is mostly identical, except for 100g of cheddar being nearly 3 euros. There seem to be a lot of foods that are only available at Christmas on the continent. It’s freezing already so having a hot cup of Glühwein after walking around outside for hours was appreciated!

Figure 3: An Olieballen, a fried food usually made around Christmas

The cobblestone streets of the city centre have slowly been getting covered by more lights and yesterday the Christmas market in Maastricht opened. Whilst it hasn’t snowed yet, people have been saying that it will at some point. I’m writing this before an exciting month- with visits to Leiden, Amsterdam, Cologne and Paris before going home for the holidays.

By: Frankie Osborne