OK, apparently I have to correct something I said yesterday. (II won’t trawl for typos just yet, though.) It’s true the building we’re in has hireable offices as well as 3 or four bedrooms. However, the building is scheduled to be demolished. I don’t see a need to do so. While it’s not a hotel in the sense of Ibis, Holiday Inn or other chains, it seems to be in perfectly good condition. (Possibly points off fro not having a lift.) So we assume the land-owners want to. build something taller. Meanwhile, it’s friendly, has an outside bar with a food-truck, as well as every popular indoors bar. So I hope execution is stayed.
Oh dearie dearie me: I’m beginning to understand why Deutsche Bahn’s reputation is going downhill. I love all the marshalling yards outside even relatively small stations, the bookshops that sell real books, the decent coffee, the various accents along the way. But a 6 1/2 hour journey that got delayed and delayed even more as we travelled: no thanks. Were we caught behind a local chugaboom? Or were we the local chugaboom holding up everyone else? Even cyclometer caught the bug, not mapping at all where we were despite restarting the phone:
On one of our previous visits to Noord Holland, we went to Marken, a small island in the IJsselmeer. So we decided to go and see what has changed and how much we could remember. (It doesn’t help that I’m envisaging Reichenau in the Bodensee as I type this.) Cyclemeter captured our bus journeys there and back again, walking around the island, and then my evening peregrinations back in Zaandam.
And while France votes, and the UK starts to get used to a change of government, we are away from it. The first part of round and round is learning how to switch off again.
Well we’re off again, this time without bikes, to revisit the scenes of some of our triumphs de Loreans. Both of us are a little shop-soiled at the moment. I can’t walk more than a mile without my calves starting to seize up, and cycling up any kind of hill is taxing. (Yes, there are hills in the Netherlands.) Elly may speak about her own issues – it’s not my place to do so, at least not here.
I’ll add photos later: this is just to show my follower I’m still here. Or at least that someone can post to my WordPress and Twitter accounts. How can you be sure it’s me doing so? Tot ziens!
What Elly said. Picture to be added later. I have been in so many hotel rooms and lifts in artificial twilight I hardly know where I am!
I know I’m on a DFDS boat that will take us to North Shields, arriving tomorrow morning. My issue is I have yet another cabin number to remember, another route to it to learn, and my brain cell refuses to hold onto any detail at this level of granularity. And why does it feel like twighlight at 16:21 in August? Mein Gehirnzelle is verrucht!
Day 17: arrival in Kiel, trains to Hamburg, Osnabrück and Amsterdam
passing the entrance to the Nord-Ostsee-KanalOh no! We’ve crashed into Kiel!You can’t lean bikes here, but scooters are OK.The bikes are cramped.Outside Osnabrück station – integrated transport!You can’t park bikes outside Hamburg station either.Deutsche bahn, Deutsche Bahn, über alles!Hamburg Hauptbahnhofbikes on the train to Amsterdam
We decided to cycle to Geversduin, to see the location of the hobbit house we’ll stay in some day. (One of Elly’s birthday presents years ago was a stay there. However, plans were scuppered by COVID.)
what to do with old bikesThe Netherlands has a ski-centre!I think this is a water-tower.glow-in-the-dark mini-golf! Who’s been smoking, and where can I get some?I have no idea why I took this photo of a plant.
Day 20: around Zaandam
No cycling – we travelled by bus. We spent our last full day in the Netherlands visiting a windmill museum! That might sound tratsch but it’s actually pretty and informative.
Our hostess left fairly early in the morning to go to her work. She’d shown us the route she recommended to get to the harbour, including the names of the important streets en route. So after a leisurely start, and locking up her house, we set off. I’d programmed a multiple-part journey into Google Maps using the street names we’d been told. Don’t try this at home, kids!
At the end of each journey-part, GM stops showing the onward route and asks if you want to continue route-following. This is no help if you are halfway down a steep street, going quite fast and just want a direction to follow, and really do not need to try to push a button on the jPhone bouncing in your handle-bars. Of fucking course you want to go on, otherwise you wouldn’t have set further ‘destinations.,
in subsequent stretches, GM keeps on changing the direction it is showing, as if it can’t decide whether you want to go on to the next ‘destination’, back to a previous one, or somewhere else entirely.
GM’s sense of distance changes quite rapidly as you approach turns, if it deigns to show them at all, leading to missing turns and longer journeys.
Really, what moron designed GM? Perhaps it’s the same tosser who thought hanging bikes vertically in trains is a good idea. Anyway, we eventually arrived at the ferry terminal, where we both cycled onto the boat, including going up a steep slope to the mezzanine deck. This was helped by slipstreaming from a couple of touring Harley-Davidsons in front of us. After that, there was nothing to do but sleep, eat, blog, sit and get lost on the way back from the smoking deck.
Our wonderful hostess took us into town and then to a triplet of museums on Bygdøy peninsula. Medical issues and the number of people wandering around in the dark, overheated atmosphere may have led to me finding the Fram museum somewhat oppressive, although going onto the boat without first knowing why it was famous first may have contributed. I’m sure the museum has done a thorough job of preservation and presentation of information in non-native languages, but what’s the point when you can’t see it to read it?
I also managed to cause concern by following Elly or her doppelgänger into the next hall via an underground passage (which is meant to be used by visitors), thinking it was the way to the next museum. It wasn’t, and Elly and our host are adamant that they never entered this passage, and that they had to search both toilets for me.
By contrast to Fram, the ship museum next door was light so we could see the exhibits, and get a feel for the harshness of life at sea on tiny, very well preserved boats. Most of them were used for fishing, but I don’t see where the catch would have been kept. There was hardly enough space for the sailors.
The top museum, by my reckoning, featured Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-tiki and Ra rafts. This hit me emotionally, as well as enabling us to get to close to the rafts I could begin to imagine life on boards: how much space and privacy there wasn’t. Then again, Kon-tiki and Ra were actually bigger than I’d imagined. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense to you but it does to me!
Here’s hoping the photos do some justice:
Nobel peace centreOn a ‘bus-boat’View astern from the ‘bus-boat’Another view from the ‘bus-boat’Another view from the ‘bus-boat’We sailed to Oslo on one of theseOutside the Fram museummap of Bogdøy‘person-cairn’What the ‘person-cairn’ Is aboutPolitical refugee from Easter island?About Kon-tikiKon-tikiKon-tikiRaRaRaLocal person-hole. I’m sure there is a story behind the design.Elly, our hostess, and a smelly old fart.
We arrived in Oslo about 10am, and were met by an old friend who is doing post-doctoral work in Oslo. She had been adamant that we would stay with her rather than in a hotel: she’d deliberately rented a house with guest-space when she arrived in Oslo in 2019, but then wegen des Coronas no-one could visit her. It was lovely to have time with our friend and her guidance around town was top-hole.
View of OslofjordView of OslofjordView of OslofjordView of OslofjordView of OslofjordOur cabin was very near the lifeboats – hooray!
Our friend took us through central Oslo, past the town-hall, to the national museum T-bane station (‘tunnel-train’ = ‘underground’, even though most of it is above ground), and then by train to her house in an uphill suburb in northwestern Oslo. After dumping our gear and catching up a bit – it’s been over 3 years since we last saw each other face-to-face – we went in search of the national ski museum, because we are in Norway and therefore north of the arctic circle. We found the municipal ski-jump – also used for the olympics, apparently – and people riding an aerial runway down it, but not the museum. I suspect its exhibits are so old that they and the building have crumbled to dust.
Around central Oslo Around central Oslo Around central OsloOslo town hall Oslo town hallOslo town hall Oslo town hall Oslo town hallFrieze around Oslo town hallFrieze around Oslo town hallFrieze around Oslo town hallFrieze around Oslo town hallOslo town hallOslo town hallOslo town hallI was grabbed by a Slovakian(?) couple, presumably because of my kilt. They had driven to Kiel, took the ferry to Oslo, and were about to drive to Trondheim to go fishing Oslo town hallView from Oslo town halll
We took the T-bane to the final stop on this line (Frognerseteren). Apparently this area was the summer pasture for the Frogner area in central-ish Oslo. We couldn’t see any animals grazing but found a lovely and popular restaurant selling (among many other nice things) vegan cake. Even better, my blood sugar was in a state where cake was welcome.
View of OslofjordView of OslofjordView of OslofjordSki-jumpSki-jumpTroll near the ski-jumpView from FrognersterenView from FrognersterenView from FrognersterenView from Frognersteren
After admiring the view and nattering for a while, we headed back to our friend’s house to cook jambalaya, eat, chat and crash out. (Our friend did most of the cooking, but I chopped vegetables and Elly was skivvy.)
Digital evidence that Bruce might have a life 