Eindhoven Coffeeshops Are Goed!

I just got back from Eindhoven's coffeeshops late last night and, what can I say, they are pretty good!

I took advantage of Ryanair's free flights deal (actually it cost me £8.02 due to credit card charges) to fly to Eindhoven for a day trip. At those prices (plus bus fares on both sides), it would be folly to pass up this opportunity! And another channelite, Sir Ian of Tokesville,  was also able to join me for this trip!

The flight left London Stansted at 6.55 so I had to take 2 buses to get there and leave at 2am to be on the safe side!! An hour of winks were managed before leaving. A few more on the coach to the airport and during the flight itself. I was apprehensive about falling asleep in a coffeeshop.

Arrived just before 9am and quickly on the 401 bus (route map here) which runs direct to Eindhoven bus station (just north of the train station). Takes about 20 minutes and runs maybe 4 times an hour. Costs 3 Euros for those interested. Goes from airport at one end to bus station at the other so no need to keep eyes peeled.

We tried to head straight for the Pink coffeeshop and after getting lost (my map was not good enough) and eventually finding the road but not being able to see it, we learned from a local that it was closed, as were several other coffeeshops, due to having too much gear on the premises. I can only assume that it is completely closed because we saw not a single sign of where this place might once have been.

Wandered down a few minutes and we found the Grasshopper coffeeshop. I have no idea if it is related to its Amsterdam namesake but this place is far better. It might look a little sterile in the pic above but it was a great, social place (except the seats were hard wooden ones which I did not like). I ordered the most expensive hash on the menu for a massive €12 ;) Not sure but I think it was called Twizla. Smoked a couple of joints, saw the obligatory babe with small dog (man these Dutch women are so fine!!) and cute bartender, also chatted briefly and practiced my Dutch with a local "Nederlander" who even said to me "U sprekt heel goed Nederlands" which I was quite happy about.

After this we walked in a daze looking for more coffeeshops. According to my self-created map, there were several in the vicinity. One was Coffeeshop Begijntje, due to the lack of minor road names on my map and my forgetting to note the exact address, we walked across several roads trying to find it. Alas, no luck - I have checked this out just now and I know the street it is on and we never saw any place by that name. Apparently it looks more like a pub - in fact, most of the places on this road "Stratumseind" remind me of Leidseplein in Amsterdam and this could be the centre of nightlife on a Friday and Saturday night is my guess. But definitely no Begijntje.

Luckily, further down this street was another place Appotheker, De Bakkerij. We passed this up for now and carried on further down the same road to find Coffeeshop New Wave. By now it was about 12.30 and this place had the shutters down. We assume it must be another victim of closure.

Again, we were lucky that Euro-Garden was only a little further away. All this time, the area of Eindhoven that we have been walking through is a total mix. You won't see any of the old architecture that you see in Amsterdam (which is not even that old anyway, when you compare to other cities). Eindhoven is relatively new looking in comparison. A mix of shops, residential blocks and offices. Not exactly pretty but much nicer than what I had expected. I have heard people dissing Eindhoven before and expected some ancient industrial monolith with soot everywhere ;) In fact, I got the sense that this was more like the real Netherlands, and not at all bad either.

We found Euro-Garden which had an interesting modern look to it. 80% of the shop is enclosed in a glass wall (Ian calls it a "bubble"). Therefore, one can toke tobacco inside! I ordered the Super Silver Haze from the digital flatscreen menu from a cute ethnic chick (Surinaam?) and we toked away inside the smoking area. Most of the seats here were much better, I do like a good place to park my tush. Another obligatory dog, this one was definitely a puppy and it was going bezerk, cute dog though. Other customers in coffeeshops often want to stroke a dog and it ignores them but this one was begging for attention! In an example of how people can get different vibes from the same coffeeshop, I really liked this place: not too many people, comfortable place, airy, not too noisy (a little like the Siberie, if you like, minus the Siberie's hard seats) yet Ian did not rate it himself.

Next we decided to go back towards centrum and this is where we got really lost. The map we were using was my own, created on Google maps. Unfortunately, it barely features the irregular minor roads (of which there are a lot in Eindhoven!) so you could have to walk a fair distance to even know where you are. We started to get lost and I asked an old lady for directions. I practised my Dutch with the expectation that she would simply point the direction or break into English due to my obvious English accent (surely). "Waar is de kanaal?" I said. She replied in Dutch and I understood maybe 10% of it, heard a few words I half-recognised like "helemaal". Anyway, she pointed one way and off we went. Basically, I knew the road we were on and it went either north or south. We just needed the correct direction. Basically, we ended up going into some suburban residential area, this was clearly not the right direction!!

Ian asked a "punk" the right way and finally we were on our way closer to centrum. We took a quick left and we were back at Grasshopper, Ian's favourite place (a close 2nd for me). Many joints were consumed there, by Ian at least. I constructed a joint of system and I was totally fucking monged. I just sat there, eyes darting about slowly, trying to get over this extreme stoned experience so I could later have another joint. I wasn't going to have a whitey but another joint would surely have sent me there. And, to think, I had not even been using that much in my joints so far - maybe a third of a gram - first day intolerance I guess.

After this we had an hour to kill, we decided to check out Appotheker/De Bakkeri. Turned out to be a kicking place. Reminds me of Excalibur as there is a lot of rock playing and it looks very similar and "wooden" inside. A cool place that we would both recommend. I managed to pool the last of the weed and hash and smoke my last joint. Het was heel goed! Ik was zeker stoned!

Off we walked back to the bus station and the short journey back to the airport for the flight at 7.35pm. You'd think it would be an easy process to the gate (being a small airport) but they have a convoluted system where your gate is finally called and THEN you go through passport control and are kept in pens like cattle!

Anyway, all in all a pretty good trip. I did not feel tired at all and went to sleep at a normal time when I returned. Somehow, my eyes-closed-not-real-sleep trick worked! I would recommend anyone visit Eindhoven at least once to see something different to Amsterdam. Maybe not at regular prices, but at these cheap flights (Ryanair often do free or £10 flights-when they have a promotion on their main page, just keep searching flights until you get the ones with "Special Fare" flash next to the flight of your choice) then it is a no-brainer. If I lived near the airport on my side I would go regularly but the 2am start for me is just too much unfortunately. Anyway, don't knock Eindhoven till you've been there, it rules!

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