On our last afternoon in Amsterdam, we wander into a little cafe with bright white walls and vintage movie posters in a language that I can't recognize. It's Swedish. The owner strikes up a conversation, asks me what I'm doing here.

"Ah, Maastricht, very chic," he says. "Everyone is so stylish."

And then he continues, without pause, "A bunch of farmers down there. All of them."

It's a good description of this town where you can stroll from designer shop to shop in the city center, walk twenty minutes from those carefully kept cobblestone streets until the road turns to asphalt, tidy three story houses turn to apartment complexes, and the sidewalks eventually turn into dirt paths and pastures. I can walk ten minutes from my dorm and find a field of cows.