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Dashing through the Netherlands
As yesterday, I got up and walked to the tram station near my hotel.
As you go by the customer site, you can look in the building and see out giant robot freezer. OK, I can see it, but I know where to look...
It was grey, a bit damp and about 15C/60F. So, I waited for Mike outside where the weather was just what I like. It really does seem to be the weather I was built for.
We bundled the part I crossed the ocean to help rework into Mike's car and took off across the Netherlands.
I'm not saying Mike sped. I'm saying I didn't think the speed limit was 150kph.
But, we made good time across the Netherlands.
It is very flat.
There are lots of windmills.
We began taking smaller roads.
There were sheep.
The road got one car wide.
The place we went to get it machined was very nice.
When we were done there, Mike suggested we go to the other customer in the Netherlands and see their machine as it was only 40 minutes away.
So, back in the car.
It is the biggest machine we've ever sold. It cost tens of millions of dollars; has millions of samples; is going to run for at least 30 years.
So, where is it?
Yes, it is down an alley behind a super warehouse store.
When we were done there, we only had the 3 hour drive back. Even though it was about 3:30 in the afternoon, we stopped for lunch. We stopped at the hotel near the second customer site as Mike knew it had a restaurant in the lobby.
"Are you open for food?" he asked the woman working there.
"I am the only employee on duty in the whole building, but I will make you lunch," she replied.
It was quite good.
We didn't get back on the road until after 4, so Mike decided to take a short cut across the North Sea.
If you look at a map of the Netherlands you'll see a big ocean inlet in the north. There is a dam across the top of that and a road across the top of the dam.
Did I mention lots of windmills and flat?
As Miked lived on that side of Amsterdam I offered to take a train back to my hotel so he wouldn't have to drive an hour past where he lived then back to drop me off.
A very quick drop off later and I was at the train station.
It took a bit, but I found out which platform and train.
I looked for perrin_o_ravnos driving this freight train, but I don't think it was him.
I had problems on the train.
I dropped my iPhone yesterday and cracked it. I don't know if I did other damage or not.
When seated on the train, I heard it's ringtone. As I was sitting in a "Please keep quiet" car, I was embarrassed and pulled it out to check. No call, and the ringer was off.
As soon as I put it down again, ringing.
This repeated until the woman across the corridor told the man behind me to shut off his phone.
It hadn't been mine ringing at all.
I also had two older men sit across from me and have a loud conversation in at least 4 languages. I don't know what it was about. I know they were talking about money in Spanish and buying something in German. I know they talked about their destination in Dutch. The only parts in English were when one said "This iss fuuucked up" and the other said "but you have to live with it."
I did get back to my hotel. I was very tired.
I didn't want to bother with any of the places to eat nearby, so I got an egg and bacon sandwich from the stand in the lobby. It was quite good.
I guess it was only about 350 miles today. It seemed like more...
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Thanks for the updates on Frank Adventures in the Low Countries!
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