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Re: IETF 78: getting to/from/around Maastricht

2010-06-30 16:15:31
Some more Amsterdam airport - Maastricht train info:

On 27 jun 2010, at 22:01, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

From there, there's a train to the city of Utrecht every 30 minutes at x.29 
and x.59. This is a 33 minute ride. When you arrive in Utrecht, change to the 
train to Maastricht, which should arrive at the other side of the platform 
within minutes. This train ride takes 125 minutes, for a total travel time of 
2.44 hours. Note that there is usually no snack or beverage service in trains 
and the change in Utrecht is only five minutes, so stock up before leaving 
schiphol. Or take a break somewhere along the route, there's a train every 30 
minutes. Eindhoven is a nice big station halfway between Utrecht and 
Maastricht with at least two coffee places.

It turns out that the train to Maastricht is sometimes split in two in Sittard, 
and the other half goes to Heerlen. When you get into this train, it will show 
where the front part ("voor" or "voorste deel") and where the back part 
("achter" or "achterste deel") go. So go sit in the right part. In Sittard, 
there will be an announcement telling you in which part you are, ask a fellow 
traveler if you don't understand the announcement. (The announcement may be 
repeated in English, German and/or French, but it may not.) You can also ask 
the conductor beforehand, although conductors aren't always seen. If you end up 
in Heerlen, just take the train from there to Maastricht, this takes about half 
an hour.

About the coffee break: there is also another train that leaves schiphol at 
x.14 and x.44. This one stops in Utrecht, Den Bosch / 's-Hertogenbosch and 
Eindhoven (and a few times a day it continues all the way to Maastricht). If 
you take this one, you can change trains more or less in the middle of your 
journey in Den Bosch or Eindhoven, and you'll have 18 minutes to find the other 
platform and get some coffee, a soda and/or a snack at a Kiosk.

Pronunciation:

ch in schiphol, Utrecht and Maastricht (and the g in any word except as part of 
ng) is like in Loch Ness or German "ich". (In most of the Netherlands it's 
pronounced more glutterally, but not in Maastricht where they have "soft g".)

aa in Maastricht is like "aaaahh" when someone kicks you in the shin.

hee in Heerlen is like in "hit" (but ee is usually like in "hey").

U in Utrecht is like ü in German "für".

Ei in Eindhoven (same thing for ij) is something in between ey and aye.

oo is always like the o in hope, never like oo in foot.

d at the end of a word is pronounced as t.

n in words ending in -en is often not pronounced, so the -en becomes a schwa.

In general, vowels are pronounced like in other continental European languages, 
except u (see above), double vowels (and ie in the case of i) are just longer 
versions of the single vowel and consonants are pretty much like English except 
g (see above) and th is just t, there's no sound like the English th. There's 
also no sound like the English g.
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