Today was long. I woke up at 7 to go to the train station. My train left from the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station in berlin) a bit after 8:30. The seats on the train weren't incredibly comfortable, but they were good enough to get a few hours of sleep.
The train got to my connection in Amersfoort (in the Netherlands) mid afternoon, arriving about 15 minutes before my next train left. It was plenty of time to figure out where in the station I needed to go, so no stress there. It was a little less than 2 hours going from Amersfoort to Groningen, where I will be for a couple days.
My train got to Groningen late afternoon. My uncle Harvey met me at the train station, and we walked about 10 minutes to get to our hotel. It was pretty cold and cloudy (felt like upper 40s), a bit cooler than I was expecting (especially with it being in the 70s right now in Berlin), but I had my jacket with me, so it wasn't a problem.
The hotel was pretty nice. I was surprized when I sat on the bed and felt springs! My bed in the apartment is very comfortable, but it's foam. I haven't slept on a spring mattress since I got here.
After looking up local restaurants, Harvey and I went to a restaurant called De Gulzige Kater (funnily enough, Kater means the same thing in both german and dutch - a male cat - however, also in both languages it's slang for "hangover". Gulzige translates to greedy.). The food was great. We both ended up getting salads, Harvey's with shrimp and fish, mine with steak.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel, as we were both pretty tired from traveling (Harvey had a 6-hour time change to deal with as well, in addition to jet lag - I was just tired from staying up late last night).
I'm looking forward to exploring the city more tomorrow.
