Directions

I still don't have very good bearings over here.  Whenever we drive through and out of town, I recognize everything, but I generally can't tell you which direction is N, and I don't know which way we should leave town when heading towards ____.  I often know "the fastest route from point a to point b" in town, but outside of the comfort zone of Barneveld, I'm useless.

I study my map (thank you google maps), but I still get confused.

There's a big difference in how the towns and cities are built here compared to North America.  In NA, most cities are designed like a grid.  Streets run East-West or N-S.  Of course there are some exceptions (like Hamilton Rd. in London, ON).  In Canada there are also a lot more areas of town.  While there may be a center, there are certainly other subdivisions that each have their own "center" as well.

Here, the cities are built around the center.  I think it's often a church that's at the center.  Most of the main streets in town start at the center, and head out.  Then, there is a "ring" around that-- a main street, that circles the center of the town.  Hardly any of the intersections here are 90 degree angles.  If you look at a map, it looks like a round (slightly deformed) pizza with a major road on the outskirts of town.  Take a look at Paris (France), Brussels (Belgium) or Amsterdam (The Netherlands) on googlemaps.  In Canada, we would say "head West on Commissioner's Rd., then go North on Wonderland Rd....".  Here, if you head North on one street, it's likely that you'll be heading East within a couple minutes, and you'll probably end up heading South shortly after that, mind you, I probably wouldn't notice, since I can't figure out the directions.

The same thing is true of a lot of highways.  In Ontario, we know that the 401 runs E-W (mostly), 400 runs N-S... etc.  But here, it doesn't work that way.  You either follow the signs towards the town of your destination, you know which highways to take, or you use a TomTom.  I think TomTom (or a GPS) is one of man's best friends over here... at least that's true of me!

Here's Barneveld on googlemaps, with the red arrow very close to the church that's in the center of town.  You can see the "pizza" much better with larger cities, though.