Day One - Almere NL, prep work
On Friday June 7th the road trip started, but Paul was unaware. I drove from my house in Zurich Switzerland to the picturesque town of Tengen Germany where I have a weekend retreat camping site and a happy RV unit full of RC units to play with. At around 9:15pm I left and at some 10:15pm I arrived at a rather calm campingsite.
This morning, I got up at 7:00am (which I normally don’t do), and I made it a point to go to the reception to pick up a mail package that was delivered to us this week. Unfortuantely last night I got there at 10:15pm and it was closed, but low and behold it was closed also this morning (opens at 8am). To make a decision, and to further my happy-time in Almere, I decided to pick up the package another day and drive.
I drove an average of 123km/h through Germany and The Netherlands. It was a great trip and I landed at Almere NL at around 2:15pm. I had gained some time and thus when I hit Ede NL (where I used to live and work at BIT), I went to the Mac Car Wash (a hard core car wash), and got the full nine yards on the Merc. The rims were white again, in a somewhat presentable state for Paul who hadn’t seen them yet. Of course I’d have to show him also the rather significant scratch in the Left Rear wheel, all my fault, from parking in the garage in Bruttisellen.
We went shopping, we got Chicken, a staple food while roadtripping (we got a mere 16 chicken leg+breasts - hope it will be enough). We also went to Albert Heijn to cop some groceries, mostly fresh fruit to eat underway. Also some chips, drinks and other necessities.
Because we can’t go with damaged rims, we went to Halfords. Of course because Halfords are kiddie wannabe idiots, they had no idea what we were talking about and everything was “moeilijkleverbaar.nl”. So we went to Brezan which is a profi car repair/tools shop, and doshed out 11.20 euro for a black gloss repair paint bottle. I promptly cleaned and repaired the rims. You can’t hardly see how hard I fucked up, which is nice.
Now that the rims looked nice, we must of course also see to it that all the chips and Gipfli that Alexis almost finished, but didn’t quite finish and thus lie in the car in various stages of decomposition, would be cleaned. We took out, once more, to a car wash with industrial vacuum cleaners, and Sucked The Crap Out Of The Car (STCOOTC). Result was a lookin-as-new! vehicle. I was very proud.
When the topic of dinner came up, I mentioned Rodizio, but our place in Almere had shut down (possibly because they serve insane amounts of meat for insanely low prices!), but Paul had an idea along these lines. We went to Zaanstad. While driving there I got somewhat confused because I don’t know this city as Zaanstad but as Zaandam. Paul enlightened me - it’s the same thing. Consolidation drove several communities to form one City (Stad), one of them being Zaandam.
The place we went to was Castell - and they have a meal for 2+ called Cote de Bouef. It was very tasty indeed, and the owner Ozgur came and said “Hi” as well. But I save the best thing for last – really one of those things that touches the heart[tm] while in itself being quite easy. So, the netherlandics really like their rules and in particular fines. We parked the car around the corner of the restaurant on a public parking lot and paid until 9:23pm. At 9:30pm (just before the desert which was a delicious cheese platter), I ran out to extend our parking for half an hour. But then we chatted with Ozgur, paid and rocked up to our car at 10:15. The parking guard was still there and he walked up to me, so I asked him “hey what’s up do you have a question?”. He said “you guys are kind of late, so I have to give you a fine (60 Euros typically)”. I said hey that’s kind of sad cuz we’ve been here for a few hours and I actually even went back to pay twice and extend. I showed him both parking receipts, and against all odds he replied “you guys came a long way (ZH plates!) and obviously did the right thing having paid twice and applying yourselves. I’m going to delete my report. Have a good night!”.
And with that, I leave you - ready to trip the road, and with a great Zaanstad^W^W^W^Wdam memory (of ~1000gr steak and parking guards). Good night!
Posted by Pim van Pelt at 2:17 PM