Week 1 Pt. 2 – Monday August 9 – Wednesday August 11

August 9

We are in Vlijmen a second day today. We had to get a gas can in town and the store didn’t open until 1 so we figured we’d just stay here instead of trying to bike and getting to camp super late. Normally we wouldn’t take so many days off, but it’s okay for now, we have time. Good news though! NO MORE SANDWICHES FOR DINNER!!!! Now that we have a gas can, thanks to our future riding partner, Sara, we can eat warm dinners outside of the bread, meat and cheese category.

We went to breakfast at Happy Italy in Vlijmen this morning and got pizzas. We were expecting self serving sizes but these pizzas were definitely sharing sized and we both got our own, so we are going to be good until tomorrow for sure. We’re fantasizing about all the meals we can make with our new stove besides sandwiches so that’ll give us more time to think of the perfect ‘at camp’ meal.

Apparently our trip is very interesting to the world, I expected our fame to remain in the computers of family friends at home who wanted to read about the trip on this blog. I got a message on Instagram today from a social media news company from the Netherlands who is going to do an article on us pretty soon. I am not sure when it will be out, and it will be in Dutch but when it is up I’ll include the link here for everyone to throw into google translate.

‘Adam and Henry Stun The Internet’

We are planning on going to Düsseldorf by Thursday to stay with my old exchange student Ilias for a couple nights, then from there we are going to make our way to Paris.

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August 10

We made our way out of Vlijmen this morning around 10AM, as usual. We ended up staying in town until 11:30 or so, as it was Henry’s day to choose where we would stay and he had to download maps. We went to the town of Tilburg for Henry to download maps because it was a little bigger town that we had yet to explore and it was close to our campsite.

Tilburg was a really cool town, we ended up dubbing it ‘Little Amsterdam’ because the layout was so similar. In the center of Tilburg there were small alley like roads along canals with road front stores just like the city center of Amsterdam. Amsterdam may have only been six days ago but we were still reminiscing on it while in Tilburg.

Today was another rainy day, we decided to ride anyways though because we had taken enough days off because of rain already. It was clear in the morning but sprinkling most of the afternoon. Thankfully, today is the last day of rain for the Netherlands, and as the Dutch have been telling us “Wednesday is the start of the paradise weather”

Although it was raining, the ride today was still as good as any other. We rode 80 Kilometers from Vlijmen to Miejel.

When we got to Mijiel we went to ALDI before going to camp and bought the ingredients for our first camp meal, now that we finally have gas. Our first meal was simple, just some pasta, but it felt good to be able to cook instead of eating out and spending tons of money. The ingredients were only €3.65 for Penne noodles, meat sauce, and peppers and cheese.

After dinner we took a walk through camp and were invited into a camper for cold beers. We talked with our new friends about the differences between cultures and our trip for about an hour before heading back to our campsite and going to bed.

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August 11

Today we left camp at 2PM because our clothes got soaked with dew in the morning. We left the Netherlands after one more stop at the Albert Heijn grocery store for some stroopwafels and lunch. We decided we would do short day today and go maybe 20 miles to the town of Nettetal Germany, Google told us there were several camp spots in town. We showed up to the first on and it was abandoned. We went to the second site which was the only non-abandoned one in town and we pitched our tents then went to a restaurant for a drink and some WiFi.

While we were enjoying a nice Biergarten a man showed up and told us that if we didn’t leave our campsite in 15 minutes he would call the police.

So, we biked back to camp where that jerk was already taking down MY tent with our things still inside. We got there and sent him to his truck, we finished taking down our tent, packed up and got escorted out of the campsite. All he needed to do was ask us to leave and we would have, he did not need to threaten to call the police.

A rough start to Germany, but it got better. We got turned away from two other campsites before 9PM and around 8:30 we started contacting Warmshowers. We got a place to stay in St. Tonis with a teacher named Ingrid who gave us a great place to stay on very short notice. Overall the day was 55 miles and we ended around 10PM.

So recap on our first day of Germany – Beautiful scenery, especially as the sun sets. Some very mean people reside here and some very kindhearted people reside here. But the kind ones had a bigger toll than the mean ones so overall we really like Germany so far.