Fulda to Amsterdam
While y'all are celebrating Memorial Day, we have had a long day of
driving. It started out with a hilarious event. Lonnie couldn't
remember whether he had paid for our hotel room or not. He went to the
desk to pay, and only the maid was there. No one at the hotel spoke
English, so he showed the maid our credit card. She, in turn, had to go
and find the owner of the hotel. When the owner came, she was wondering
why Lonnie was trying to give her his credit card again. She finally
went to the desk and showed him the receipt from last night, still
wondering why he was trying to pay again, I'm sure. So Lonnie just
looked at them, hit himself in the head and said, "Dumbkopf!" Both the
German ladies and I thought it was hilarious!!
Then, we hit the road. I decided that we must take the back roads. If
we're driving on the Interstate, we could be anywhere. You cannot get a
feel for the people and the culture if you travel on the Autobahn all of
the time! So we traveled the back roads and some of the way back
roads. It was a lot of fun. We drove through a lot of little quaint
villages. I saw an Antique store, but it wasn't open today. We saw
several old castles perched on the hills and even drove up to one in a
town (not sure we were supposed to do that, tho - on The Amazing Race we
probably would have received a penalty). We gave a teen-age girl in one
of the small towns a chance to practice her English when we went into a
grocery store and ordered something to eat. Then trying to understand
where the bathroom was became a real challenge. The cashier told us
where it was and said that we needed a key (all in German, of course).
She did not give us the key, tho, so we were at a total loss as to where
it was. We went into the "Euro" store (their equivalent of our Dollar
Store), where I bought some Crossword Puzzle books to help me with
learning the language. We asked the girl there about the bathroom, and
she, in German, explained that it was at the grocery store. We went
back to the grocery store and asked the girl who is learning English.
She told us where to go again. Finally I just held up my hands to
Lonnie to indicate that I didn't have a clue. That is when the cashier
realized that we needed the key and brought it to us. Good thing we
weren't in a hurry.
We eventually had to get back on the highway, which is where we are now,
so that we can get to our hotel in Haarlem tonight. We called to make
reservations, and they said not to bother with reservations because
they have plenty of rooms! Totally unusual for this time of year! (And
totally not true, as we found out when we got here!)
We saw our first fatality on the highway today. It was a trucker. We
are still not sure how it happened. The entire left side (driver's
side) of the cab of the truck looked like it had been blown away. The
driver's seat, however, looked like it was in perfect condition. The
rest of the truck looked fine, also. It was really strange. Don't know
if they will show it on the news in the Netherlands tonight or not,
since it happened in Germany.
Well - we made it to our hotel around 8:40PM and it looked like it was
about 3 in the afternoon. I love the long days of sunshine here. The
GPS quit working, so we weren't sure if we would be able to find it.
This is the same hotel that we spent a couple of hours trying to find
last time (and that was after we had checked in earlier in the day).
Tonight we came straight to it. I think Lonnie has been driving too
long, though! Today in one town we passed a McDonald's and a Subway.
We were talking about food, so I mentioned them. A little while later I
said something about the Subway again, and Lonnie acted like I was
crazy. He thought the entire time that I was talking about a real
Subway in the town that we were in instead of an eating place. Then
when we got to the hotel, we took the wrong elevator (even tho we knew
better - or at least I did) and Lonnie started to go into a conference
room where they were holding a training session. The man sitting there
told us that it was a training session, but Lonnie wanted to go see the
train. He thought that was what the man was talking about (that maybe
the train now came to the hotel). I laughed so hard that I nearly had
a problem. We thought that no-one noticed we took the wrong elevator,
but, sure enough, the girl at the reception desk saw us and asked about
it later. I told her that Lonnie never listens to me. We had a good
laugh again. Yeah, we probably would have been eliminated from the
Amazing Race today, but you never know!
We had a wonderfully delicious meal in the restaurant. The hotels over
here are where the great food is. I had a chicken filet stuffed with
wild spinach (not sure about the difference between wild spinach and
tame spinach) on a bed of grilled vegetables with a ciboulette sauce.
It was absolutely exquisite. The best meal I have had so far - except
for my gesnechzles. Now the sun has gone down (it's 11:30PM) and I am
ready to go to bed!
We have a lot planned for tomorrow. Haarlem, then Amsterdam.
'night all
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