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Some pleasant Surprises with Alcohol and Cycling
(sometimes at the same time)
The plan this morning was to wake up nice and early so we might indulge ourselves with some slightly more normal bacon than the porky salt they tend to serve at meal times (and that's only when it's actually available). Unfortunately, 9:30 is apparently a little to late in the day to hit the breakfast menu, and we were forced to settle for the cereal and bread that has dominated our breakfasts for the past few weeks.
After breakfast we decided we would bike out to Eldburg and stop for a little shopping trip in Nunspeet. But before we could even get into Elspeet we were stopped by out first surprise of that day as Semi after Semi (mostly without trailers) drove past, horns-a-blarin' and decked out in patriotic Dutch decorations. So we asked a local what was going on and, from what we could gather, every year they parade mentally challenged people around the province/country as a special day just for them (I'm not sure why they chose Semi's as the vehicle to parade these people around in, or if there's is some sort of significance to that choice... But it was quite uplifting to see just how much the Dutch people respected their mentally challenged population (we could learn a lot from this culture)).
So once the line ended and our ears quit ringing from all the horn antics, we decided to continue on to Nunspeet (only to have to wait at an intersection while the entire convoy passed in front of us yet again). But eventually we found our way out of Elspeet and were on the path to Nunspeet, the next destination on our little adventure. The primary reason for stopping here was to get "Stroopwafels" and a purse for Taliah. But while we were getting our Stroopwafels we couldn't help but notice all the awesome sounding beers they had for sale (and with names like the "Amsterdam Maximator", "Gulpener Gladiator" and my personal favourite "Grolsch Kanon", how could one possibly go wrong? I mean any beer that draws an allusion between the fire-power of old school artillery and the raw strength of their brewing might has got my approval). From there, it was a pretty short mental jump from "these sound amazing!" to "Why not try a few?" So I wound up getting those along with a 1870's release of a dutch standard I've been seeing a lot of called "Amstel Bier" and the store's bargain beer which is literally just a red and white can that says "BEER" on it (only 0.39 euros). But before I could reach the register, I couldn't help but stumble across the special Fall recipes (and what are the odds that those will be there too much longer), so I added a 6-pack of "Grolsch: Herfst Bok" to my basekt o' booze and continued to the register silently contemplating if I really wanted to lug four litres of liquid all the way to Eldburg and back. So I thought I would check if I could just buy two of the beers from the 6-pack instead of buying the entire pack only to run into the first cashier in all of Nederland that doesn't speak any English. Luckily the gentleman behind me noticed the language breakdown and began translating my inquiry to her. So I thanked him for his help even though I had to purchase the 6-pack in it's entirety and he asked if I was just doing a test trail of dutch beers (to which I said yes). He then continued to pay for his 8 Euro crate of 24 beers while we made our way out of the store.
So then, just in case I didn't have enough alcohol in my backpack we decided to wander across the street to see just how different the selection was between supermarket booze and the selection of alcohol in an actual liquor store. The difference was clearly the hard liquor (and they maybe had a little classier wine). But about half the store was hard liquor and there was one that particularly caught my eye. It was in a ceramic bottle and appeared to be a Netherlands specialty liquor which was somewhat unique to them. So I decided to ask someone about it only to find out that it essentially tasted very similar to vodka, which made me far much less excited about it (although, upon further research I've come to find that it's actually Juniper flavoured and one of the predecessors of Gin... which actually would have made me more excited had I known that). But the gentleman paying for his liquor purchases at the time had one too many 10% off coupons, and what kind of self-respecting Mennonite could turn down a bargain like that? So I decided to spend the money I was going to spend on this pseudo-vodka in the ceramic bottle (that I now know is essentially ancient gin) on a nice bottle of Cognac instead.
But now my backpack was considerably heavier than I had intended it to be this early on in our venture. So instead of continuing on to Eldburg right away we decided to eat our lunches (which consisted of two sandwiches; one normal and one Reeses style (chocolate spread and peanut butter (as their peanut butter tastes surprisingly similar to the peanut butting in the middle of Reeses peanut butter cups, just a little less sweet)). But the two flavours became inseparable and kind of failed as a Reeses substitute. As we were eating our sandwiches, we saw the Mennorode van pull up at the train station (where we were currently eating our lunches) and someone we had never met emerged from it and wandered around for a while before eventually approaching us to ask if we had heard any news on the incoming train... Which we had, but given our limited dutch all we knew was that it was;
a. arriving in 5 minutes
b. 5 minutes late or
c. 5 minutes early
So we tried to explain when the train might be arriving and introduced ourselves... but he didn't really seem to care who we were (I don't think he had clued into the fact that we weren't part of the massive spiritualist group taking up the entire centre this week and were actually the Canadian trainees here for the year).
Once we finished our food, we grabbed our bikes and I tried to strap my backpack to the rear of my it only to find out my backpack was now to big and heavy to remain stable on my bike-rack, which meant I was going to need to carry all that extra weight on my shoulders instead of just making my bike that much heavier. So after a painful 7km of biking against the wind we arrived in Eldburg just as the Sun was coming out from behind the clouds (almost as if to say "Congratulations, You've made it intact!"). And as if we hadn't had enough pleasant surprises already, upon making our way to the city centre we realized there was some kind of festival going on this weekend and they had all these old guys dressed up in old puffy shirts with those velvety coats and the big hats shouting at a crowd of people from a gazebo which was set up in the town square (think "Town Crier" kind of attire). Had it not smelled so much like like salted fish and bad cigars I may have stuck around long enough to try and figure out what it was they were shouting at the masses. But since the stores were still open in Eldburg we decided to continue our shopping while we could. So we found a nice little book store and I found a book which more or less consisted of episodes from Spongebob Squarepants pasted almost scene for scene in comic book format... and it was in Dutch! So I figured, since I have up to season 3 nearly memorized, and all the episodes in this book appeared between seasons 2 and 3, that this might be an excellent way for me to gain some ground in my somewhat abysmal attempts to learn dutch so far. But before we got to far away from that store, we couldn't help but do a little double-take at this bizarre post-card which had an illustration of a naked woman leaning on a giant bottle of Catsup. It just seemed like such a weird combination... Especially considering that the Dutch seem to love Mayonaisse way more than they like Ketchup (which I've always assumed is more or less the same thing as Catsup).
Once we had a good laugh at that little discovery we made our way over to the harbour to check out the boats. While the older wood boats were somewhat interesting, I quickly became more interested with the names people out here were giving to their boats. I saw such gems as "Summer of '69", "Dinky", "Basic", and my personal favourite... "Replacement" (which I'd like to think is actually what he named his brand new boat after the last one was lost at sea as opposed to the boat just being temporary loaner or sorts).
After some more wandering around we found our way to the Church only to discover that, contrary to the entirety of Taliah's past European venture, this one was not open to the public at all times. But we did find a cat just hanging around, so we foolishly decided to pet it... And then it decided we were clearly it's new best friends and started following us wherever we went. We even went up a few stairs up onto a platform to get a better look at the church and it actually waited for us to come back down. We eventually wound up running around a corner in an attempt to escape it's gaze, and if we hadn't quickly sped away when it poked it's head around the corner in an attempt to find us, who knows how far away from the church we might have lead this poor little cat.
So, after talking about theology for a little bit (because what else is there to do after failing to get into a church) we found a little pancake house to eat supper at. It probably took me two seconds of looking at the menu to figure out what I wanted... About half way down the first half of the menu was an pancake with the description "Apple and Grand Marnier". How could I possible resist a pancake as elegant and refined at that? And if you're ever afraid that you won't be able to taste that little extra something that drew you to your decision in the first place, this is the restaurant for you. There were at least two bites that were about as strong as straight up doing a shot of Grand Marnier. And the Grand Marnier complemented the Apples, which in turn complemented the pancakes... It was something to behold for a pancake/waffle lover such as myself. After we finished our meals we decided to study a little bit of dutch before paying for our meals (as always my bill was folded into some money-oragami-creation I built while fidgeting... however, much to my surprise, the cashier neither told me to unfold the bill nor did she attempt to unfold it herself... finally the fruits of my boredom are getting some appreciation) and psyched ourselves up for the long bike ride home in the dark.
Much to our surprise our bikes had been knocked over, although upon closer examination, even the tire pumps which had fallen to the ground were still sitting next to our bikes so we're guessing the culprit here was probably the wind as opposed to some mischievous hooligans. Once we got our bikes back into their upright position and turned on our lights we began the trek home only to realize that our lights illuminated a sum total of 0.25% of the path in front of us. Which lead us to the conclusion that our lights were probably just mean to make us more visible to others instead of actually lighting our way. But once we noticed just how difficult and dangerous it is to navigate by the headlights of vehicles passing by we started to second guess our conclusion. Only upon reaching Nunspeet (which is just short of half our journey home) did we realize that we could re-adjust the light to point towards the pavement, which probably brought our ability to see the path in front of us up to about 38.9% (and since that portion of the bike-ride is through a forest dense enough to blot out any hope of a moonlit path, our ability to see probably would have dropped from 0.25% to a mind-boggling 0.01% had we not figured our lights out (at least until just before we would have hit the approaching trees (which surprising enough had already happened to Taliah once today in broad daylight... although her hitting my back tire may have been the cause of that one. Either way we managed our way through the pitch black forest without a single collision)). But by some stroke of luck we wound up making it back to Mennorode all in one piece (although my arms felt like they were about to fall off after just under 20km with about 5L of weight (once you include my extra clothes/rain-gear) hanging off my shoulders). So we curled up next to the fake fireplace with a cup of Earl Grey tea topped off with a bit of cognac (which I had thought was the recipe for Blueberry tea, but apparently I chose the wrong liquor for that particular drink) and watched some TV on my little netbook. After that I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. As wonderful as today was, it was one of the most exhausting days I have had so far.
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