by Joan
We woke up the next morning to discover we were camping next to two other bicyclists: two guys from the Netherlands who were riding through Germany for a few weeks. They told us they were a little shocked at how few bikes there were in Germany. We actually thought Germany was loaded with bikes.
But later, when we crossed the border into the Netherlands, we realized what they were talking about. Every man, woman and child rides a bike in the Netherlands. There are hundreds of bikes everywhere. In Germany, there are just a lot.
I forget the other tourists' names. Unfortunately, I think I got off on the wrong foot with them because I told them about how frosty the Western Germans were. They had no clue what I was talking about. All the Germans they had met the previous day (our campground was just 90km or so from the border) had been nice. I tried to explain that the Eastern Germans had been super friendly, so maybe it was all relative. Eventually, I realized that I was just bumming them out, so I shut up.According to my strange journal--where I listed what we ate and how much we spent, but nothing else--we ate a croissant, lunch in the town of Rheine, and some ice-cream before we crossed the border into the Netherlands.
As soon as we crossed, we headed for a gas station so we could call MaartenJan and Karin. We bought a phone card. Every other time on the trip that we bought a phone card, we wasted our money, because we couldn't get it to work. I'm happy to say that the Dutch card actually did work, on a phone that was right in the gas station. We called MaartenJan and Karin and got an answering machine. So we left a message, saying we'd try again in the morning.
Then we headed to a campground near th
e town of Heneglo. It was around 9 p.m. and still light. But since it was so late, we had to wait around for a long time before we could roust anyone. (Trivia: camping was 16.5 Dutch gilders, or roughly US$8.50, compared to about 25 marks, or $13.50 in western Germany, and about $9.50 in eastern Germany).The next morning, we headed into Heneglo to try MaartenJan and Karin again. It was about 9? in the morning. MaartenJan answered the phone. I figured he had received our phone message from the night before, or that maybe he had seen some of the emails we had sent for the last five months, saying that in fact, we were coming to his wedding. It turned out he had only received one email, four months earlier, and none since, because his email box was broken. Later we also learned that he didn't even get our phone message, because of some screw-up at his phone company, which stores his message.
MaartenJan was ver
y sleepy. He said he had stayed up until 3:30 a.m. trying to fix his email box--ironically so he could see if we had emailed. He asked us to call back in an hour. So we did. Still assuming that he had received our phone message, we got right to the point: should we show up in a week, just before the wedding, or should we show up right away, like say, the next night? He thought about it for about two seconds and told us to come right away.Eric and I were stoked. After traveling for a long time among strangers, we would finally be meeting up with someone we had met before. We were also stoked about all the bike lanes in Holland. We were having a great time riding on them. They were lined with trees, and almost totally flat, since Holland is almost totally flat. (Holland is so flat that the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam is under sea level, and the maps mark peaks of, no kidding, one meter).
So after talking to MaartenJan, Eric and I just kind of coasted along the bike paths in a dream, stopping in nearly every town. One town, Goor, looked especially pleasant.
Next: Good times in Goor
