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Published: April 22nd 2008
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Morning: Today we will pack our bags and leave The Netherlands, the land of windmills and tulips and enter Germany, the land of sausages (oops!). We woke up at 9am and quickly got ready and head out to the nearby Vondelpark. It is situated right behind where we stayed so it's really just a few steps walk only. We went into the Vondel church first to take a quick look and then walked to the Film Museum inside the park to have a glimpse of what's on inside. Interesting info and nice merchandise inside but can't afford to buy any of them so took some free pamphlets and newspapers to read along the way cos it was their Amsterdam's film festival too. We started strolling in Vondelpark and it's bustling w people cycling, blading, kids playing, musicians playing their instruments and dog walking. Most of the dogs are not on leash and i think they are in paradise here cos they run around happily chasing ducks and their masters and they are all very obedient too. How i wish Singapore is like this...
Afternoon: We walked peacefully around the park and decided to settle down for lunch before going back
to pack our bags. It's a nice outdoor terrace cafe right in the middle of the park and it's packed w people cos the sun is so bright. We had nice toast and soup and drinks so we left and walked back at about 1pm. Started packing our bags, said our goodbyes to Karen & Maarten and left for the train station. We reached really early there and took an earlier train to Amerspoort. On the train, the nice train conductor chatted w us on our trips and discussed on the rail advancements in Europe. Then without realising it, we reached the station and quickly rushed to get down to another platform. Luckily we took the earlier train so we have abt half hour to spare till the nex train arrives. Bought a quick snack to eat on the nex train and that's when a bit of mess came cos the nex train was almost full when it reached and everybody was rushing to get on the train and finding a seat. Our train journey will be about more than 2 hrs and so we really had to find a seat w our heavy bags in tow. We had no
choice but to run (w our bags) to the last cabin and even that was pretty full already. Found 2 separate seats at first and tried to settle down among the other crowds coming in and also the cabin is stifling hot! Then a nice lady who was occupying 2 seats gave us her seat and she took the individual one instead to let both of us sit together. We are thankful indeed! The unfortunate rest had to sit on the aisle floor or in between 2 cabins where the toilets were. It's quite terrible cos we all paid for the same amount and their train system proves not be that efficient. We reached Osnabruck in Germany and got down to change to our 3rd train to Bremen so we walked to another platform and once again we took the earlier train cos it was delayed for 5 mins. Again the cabins were pretty full so we had to squeeze thru the narrow corridors to find a good seat. Finally found one among the chaos and settled down for an hour before we reached Bremen. We waited for abt 15mins for our Bremen host Simone to come and fetch us
and she drove here so we can finally rest our bags and chatted w her while she drove us to her house.
Night: We reached at abt 7:30pm and what a big house she has! We counted and it's about five-storey high! including the roof terrace. But of course we had a hard time climbing all the way up w our bags. She gave us the entire 3rd & 4th floor to have including a separate bathroom! We were so extremely thankful and straight away she said she can cook for us and cos she's a home economics teacher, whipped up a delicious homecooked healthy meal for both of us! And it tasted heavenly...it's been a while since we tasted such good food. Simone is extremely nice to us and provided us w almost everything we need. We ate till we are full cos she even gave us dessert and her husband Dietrich, even opened a sparkling white wine to welcome us! We are really humbled to receive such royalty treatment. After chatting w both of them and also meeting their daughter Afra, we washed up and get ready to sleep in the nice attic floor...What a blessful day!
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