A Trip to Tilburg, Netherlands

November 19 - 22

I accompanied Manoj on his trip to Tilburg. He was giving a talk at Tilburg university. We took the Thalys train from Paris to Rotterdam and from there a local train to Tilburg. The trains in Europe are very fast and efficient. It took us only 2.5 hours to reach Rotterdam.

We met up with my cousin Diya's husband, Sarin, in Utrecht Centraal station. The railway stations in Netherlands are very clean, organized, and modern. We found this interesting mobile device charging device at Utrecht Centraal. If you want to charge your mobile phone, you just sit on a swing and start swinging. The power generated by your swinging charges the phone. They call it Play for Power.

Getting to the university from Hotel Auberge du Bonheur involved walking through these lovely woods. It was quite cold, and you can see the frost on the leaves in the picture below. But at least, the trees still had some leaves unlike the trees in the U.S during winter. I sat in a cafe in the university and worked while Manoj was presenting is research to the folks at Tilburg Business School.

Next morning we took a a long walk to Tilburg Centraal station from the hotel. Saw this beautiful holly with berries on the way.

Hundreds of  bicycles are parked outside the Tilburg train station. In Netherlands bicycling is a common mode of transportation.Here the bicyclists have more privileges than the pedestrians. There are many bicyclists on the road, they have separate paths and they don't stop for pedestrians at crossings. In fact, you are more likely to find a bicycle path on the side of the road than a pedestrian walkway. Below is a picture of all bicycles parked at the Tilburg railway station by the commuters.

We also visited LocHal, a local public library that serves as a cultural center. This space was re-purposed into a library from an old factory for train repairs and maintenance. You can still see remnants of the old train shed within the library.

After work that evening, we went back to Utrecht to meetup with Manoj's classmate from his IIM Calcutta Grad School days, Kisley Kanth.

As always loved seeing the new place and meeting people.