22 May

After a sleep which included getting up to turn the drying laundry, I was up at 7:20 and prepared for breakfast at 8. When I got down there was already two women who had started, but no-one else. Within a few minutes there were two other couples and a few minutes after them, a family of parents with a young daughter and one set of grandparents. Breakfast was quite a spread, with the usual German fare of rolls, breads, cheese, ham and other meats, spreads, cereals and juices, but also after a few minutes, fried bacon and scrambled eggs. I had tea but all the others had coffee.
I have given up greeting people in the language of the country because sometimes they aren’t from there and have as much difficulty using the language as you do, but don’t realise you can speak English (or another language).
So breakfast took some time to get through, and I was ready to leave not long before 9.
Once in the car I set course for the Tourist Bureau at Amersfoort, not necessarily because I was going to go there, but it headed me in the right direction.
All went well until I got near Hamburg. The traffic came to a halt (it was about 10:20) and there were two lanes of trucks on the right and two lanes of cars on the left. I made sure the road was clear and went to change lanes, only to get collected by a Mercedes who hadn’t slowed down and so came into my left rear quarter at somewhere up to 120 km/hr. Fortunately there wasn’t much damage to my vehicle (except the wheel trim), but there was quite a bit of bending of the mudguard on his. We couldn’t stop as there was no emergency lane and the traffic was moving slowly ahead, but I realised afterward, if I had done something, the elderly man driving the Mercedes would have been in trouble, as the speed limit was 60 there (on the overhead signs) and he hit me in the back. Within a minute we were out of sight of each other and I think he heaved a sigh of relief.
It took nearly three quarters of an hour to get through Hamburg, because four lanes had to combine to two to go through the tunnel under the river. Once through, everything moved freely again.
I stopped not long after midday to have some lunch, eating some of the fruit from Aldi the day before.
I continued on and suddenly was in Holland (the Netherlands). The only real sign was the board proclaiming the Netherlands and the two Dutch traffic police on motorbikes who were very busy. I made sure I was well under the limit, as I didn’t want to meet them that way.
By about 2:30, Amersfoort was looking to be a fairly large town and perhaps difficult to park so I looked for another Tourist Bureau in the vicinity and found on in a little city called Woudenberg. I set course for there and found the place all right, but not the Tourist Bureau. After walking up ad down the street twice, I was going to walk with the SatNav but found a police car parked right in front of mine. I asked, found the policeman spoke good English, was given directions to the Tourist Bureau (actually over the other side of the main street – there are more errors with the European maps than the North American or Australian maps). I verified that I could park where I was – no problem, was the reply.
I walked up to the Tourist Bureau and again found someone who could speak English. As the city is so small, they didn’t have a brochure with a list, but there were a few individual brochures and a list from the Internet. The woman rang a few, but none answered. Armed with a few addresses and brochures I set off. The first one was able to take me tonight, but not tomorrow, so I settled for that. I will either visit windmills tomorrow or go to Amsterdam, but either way I will try to find a place for tomorrow evening in the morning.
I had a quick look at the room (split level – lounge area downstairs which can be used as extra accommodation and the bedroom upstairs) and then went back into the town to look around.
It nearly met my ideal of a Dutch town. Well over half of the people were on bicycles, with some having three on a bike (infant in the front and toddler on the back). Parents rode with children, teenagers rode holding hands, some ran the amber warning light (and tried to run the red) and there were large bike stands everywhere – some full, some not so full. I walked up and down the main shopping street, then along a few side streets and to the church, where a duck slept on the grass next to the roadway, oblivious of people going by. There was a moat around the church, so although the duck could get there, I couldn’t.
I drove back to the farm I was staying at (and on the way nearly had a heart attack as a cyclist I waved over in front of me waved back in acknowledgement), unpacked and had a look around, spoke with mine hostess (who watches McLeod’s Daughters on television) and then did my usual computer work. No Internet connection, so no checking email or uploading blogs or photos.