Four days have passed since anything transpired on this site. I shall recount the most distant of those days, as I recall it.

The morning in Amsterdam was rainy and gray, cool and brisk. In the busy street in front of Princess Hostel, bicycles upon bicycles flew past, commuters on their way to work. Taking it easy, and seeking breakfast, three tourists strolled into the old part of town, stopping briefly at a common little cafe called Uncommon, just to replenish the caffeine content in their veins.

Turning right to cross one of the beautiful old bridges and then left to follow the canal strewn with idle boats tarped for the winter, they pressed on motivated by the prospect of Dutch pancakes waiting ahead.

The route passed directly in front of the Anne Frank house and so these tourists stared up at the old brick house, contemplating the horrors of wartime and the reality of the history here. The museum is a bit of modern architecture juxtaposed against the brick. They hadn’t been able to secure reservations for the museum, so they continued toward breakfast, a short way ahead.

The Pancake Bakery deserves its reputation (Google reviews). A man’s pancake if you ever saw one, the namesake cake is dinner plate sized, and cooked with all the trappings of breakfast inside. Mine had strips of bacon, Gouda cheese, and mushrooms. Poffertjes are fluffy chewy little pancake bites dipped in butter and powdered sugar, and pretty decent for a dessert at breakfast.

We had the rest of the day and part of the next to reach Hamburg. Rotterdam is a modern Dutch marvel of a city, due to its being somewhat erased in The War and rebuilt. We trained there, and walked through downtown. The rivers and bridges there dwarf the ones in Amsterdam and Haarlem. It’s more of a port city, I think.

We tried to go up the tallest building in town, but were somewhat thwarted by it being closed. Finding an open door with an elevator, we proceeded to go up to the highest parking garage in the building. Decent views of the city unfortunately were hampered by the iron grates on all sides. At this point, my poor choice of footwear had taken its toll, and my feet were screaming in pain. So of course we took the stairway down. Ah well.

Charging forward through Rotterdam, we crossed some cool bridges, and found the complex of cube houses designed by some famous architect. The cubes sit high in the air, perched on their corners. This creates a unique floor plan on all 4 or so floors. We stood outside of the international Chess Piece Museum, a tiny glass fronted building among the cubes, claiming the largest collection of chess pieces in the world. Feeling too stingy to pay admission, we puzzled over the 3-way chess board out front for a bit. Back to the train station, past some public art installations created with WWII debris, we caught the train out of town.

Here’s the part of the trip I will likely regret. Since I was 16, I’ve owned a 1987 Volkswagen Scirocco. The sticker on the door sill says “Manufacured by Karmann of Osnabrück.” The town of Osnabrück is right along the railway between Rotterdam and Hamburg, so I proposed we should spend the night there and see if we can tour the VW factory and museum, where they allegedly house a lot of minty old Sciroccos, Karmann Ghias and other cars built at this location. We did spend the night there, at a very nice modern home-share, but our luck on the VW factory wasn’t so great. We realized too late that it only showed open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and tours were by reservation. Since it was Monday, we nearly gave up, but then I called the number on Google Maps. They didn’t speak das Englisch, but with simple words like “Osnabrück Factory Museum open?” I got the fairly clear impression that it actually was open to the public after all. We spent all of perhaps 40 minutes walking over there and alas, the first information proved to be correct. The security folks were very friendly and gave me a big thumbs up on owning a Scirocco, but even this couldn’t convince them to let us in. I told them I’d called, and they smilingly and apologetically said “Sorry, I think it was wrong information.”

On to Hannover. A city leveled by the war still preserved a portion of its majesty in its beautiful town hall. Even there, some rebuilding was needed. There were some great 3D maps of the city and buildings, showing the state of the city in the 1600s, directly before its destruction in 1939, after rebuilding in the 50s, and “today” which was obviously a bit dated by now. Perhaps the 80s or 90s? We’d also visited the shell of a church, of which mostly only the steeple and outer wall remain. Our planned visit to some gardens was cut short abruptly when we realized the walking time was much too long to catch our train. I also thought I could get re-shod quickly at a shoe store on the way out, but again, we ran short of time and made a hasty retreat. On the way back through the train station we saw no sign of the beggar ladies who had accosted us on our way in. That was a bit interesting, with some grasping at our arms and explanations of why they didn’t need money, but rather groceries.

We caught our train in time, and made the trip to Hamburg. A couple train switches later, we arrived in the general vicinity (maybe 1-2km away) of Johannes’s grandmother Ruth’s house. Finally out of the European cities into a quieter neighborhood, we met Johannes there and settled in a bit. That evening we dined on various delicacies, the highlight of which was Mett (look it up). Far better than you think!

Now the main trip begins.