Down South

The Netherlands is composed of 12 provinces. “the Randstad,” a metropolisis/megaloposis (or, as Wikipedia refers to is, a “conurbation” of a little over seven million residents), includes Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, the Hague, and other smaller cities in between spans across North Holland, South Holland, and Utrecht provinces (for comparison, the Randstad is about 3200 square miles with a population of a little over seven million; the Phoenix metro area is about 16,500 square miles with a population of about 4.2 million people). I’ve spent almost all of my time in the Netherlands in Amsterdam, and the few times I’ve ventured out have been into one of these three provinces (like to Haarlem, Utrecht, and a few castles and bike trails). I had the opportunity to visit a different part of the Netherlands when the psychology department at Tilburg University (located in the town of Tilburg, population ~200,000, in the province of North Brabant) invited me to give a talk. Tilburg was especially notable to me for two reasons: I applied for a job there last year, and it was the university that used to employ Dedrik Stapel, the infamous social psychologist who fabricated large sums of data.

So, going to Tilburg allowed me to experience Dutch domestic train travel in a new way. This type of travel is routine for people living in the Netherlands – I have several friends and colleagues who grew up in different parts of the country, and they visit home frequently. And many people choose to live in Amsterdam but work in another part of the country, or vise-versa.

Morning scene from my apartment 

The trip begins with a short bike ride (~1 kilometer) from my apartment to Amstel Station, a small train/metro station close to the Amstel river. I have to catch a train from there to Utrecht, where I’ll need to switch to another train that goes directly to Tilburg.


Looking south from the train platform at Amstel Station.

The train was ten minutes late, just as it was the last time I took it to Utrecht. This naturally meant that I missed my connection to Tilburg, and that I’d need to wait another thirty minutes until the next train arrived. After looking at the train maps, arrivals, and departure times, I realized that I could take a different train that departed in five minutes to a town called s'Hertogenbosch, and that I could grab a different connection from there to Tilburg. Plus, I’d have a 15 minute wait in  s'Hertogenbosch to briefly walk around the train station and see a small part of another Dutch city.

I did this, and I quickly walked around what was indeed a very small part of  s'Hertogenbosch. But what I saw was quite similar to the other small Dutch cities I’d ridden my bike through while seeing the countryside or on my way to a castle. It had small roads with lots of bicylists, modern shops housed in the ground floors of classically designed buildings, and cafes advertising whether they primarily serve Amstel, Heineken, Juliper, Grolsch, or (shudder) Bavaria.

Fountain outside of the train station in s'Hertogenbosch.





River passing through s'Hertogenbosch.

Streets of s'Hertogenbosch.


s'Hertogenbosch train station.

I arrived in Tilburg around 11:45am – about two hours after I’d gotten to the train station near my house (and about thirty minutes after I would have arrived had my first train not been delayed). After giving my talk and spending a few more hours at the university, I took another train back to Utrecht. But I did get off the train at a stop in the center of Tilburg to walk around the city briefly before going home, since I figured that I might not make it to that part of the country again.

When I mention Tilburg to Dutch people who live in Amsterdam, they often derisively repeat the city’s name back to me before saying something like, “Ughh…it’s so boring!” or “why would anyone ever want to (live/work/visit) there?” Though I had heard from a few people that the center of town can be very nice.

The Little Devil cafe, serving Grolsch and Jack Daniels.

My (very brief) impression was more consistent with the majority view. Some of the buildings looked similar to those in  s'Hertogenbosch, but there were also many large, blocky, “post-war” style buildings. Apparently Tilburg was heavily bombed by the Allies in World War Two and, much like Rotterdam (and, well, a lot of Europe), it had to be rebuilt. And the rebuilding effort did not replicate the aesthetics of some of the older structure and style.

Streets of Tilburg.




Native English speakers should probably be able to figure out what this means.

Tilburg, like all Dutch cities, was preparing for the weekend’s festivities. This will serve as minor foreshadowing….