Sat Feb 11: so dirk and I got up early and had breakfast. He had shown me how to get to de hoge veluwe national park on Google maps so it was straight forward. It was a sunny morning although a bit chilly. His side of arnhem was actually a bit nice, with a little pond and some "green" space. There was an open air museum near him too which would have been cool to see. But I went straight for the park, which was all uphill! Once I arrived I followed the bike paths thru a mixture of different habitats, and it wasn't hilly thank god! There was grassland, woodland and kinda sandy a bit. There was some info boards that mentioned the big animals in the park (wild boar!!) but the names weren't in English, but it mentioned the best time to see the deer is in the morning and evening. And literally not too long after, when I was riding through some woodland, I saw 3 deer, possibly red cause they were a decent size, run straight over the path and onto the other side. They stopped to look around although they were a bit far away and obscured by trees so I couldn't get a good photo. But wow my first European deer spotting!! So I rode around some more and came to the kröller möller museum. At this point I was frozen, so much that I couldn't unclip my helmet again so I locked up lance and then walked into the museum and showed my museum card at the counter, all while wearing my helmet lol. They had a coat and bag check instead of lockers ( I mean seriously what's the point of those damn lockers with their €1 fee that you get back anyway!? Do the museums hope people will forget their coins and so the staff goes searching the lockers for left behind coins to add to their salary!?) So I had to give the woman my bag, jacket and helmet! Then I entered the art part, nearly everything was in English, hot diggity! The first rooms were very contemporary, so I didn't like them too much. Then it got better with a bit older art, mostly paintings, but also some sculptures. Saw some impressionists, pointillists, and of course their van gogh collection. So all in all it was a pretty good art collection, and they had a sculpture garden so I walked around there for a bit before I got too cold! Saw Henry Moore, Barbara hepworth (from wakefield, Leeds) and lots of other sculptures by people I don't know. It was quite a big garden actually. A few of the artworks couldn't be viewed cause you had to go up and down stairs to get to them, but there wasn't any snow so I don't see what the issue was. So after a bit, I went back Inside, saw some more art and then grabbed my stuff and left. Then I rode to the visitor center which had a really cool kind of small natural history museum attached to it. It had a section where there were lots of video clips of animals in their habitats going about their business, so a mole digging a tunnel for instance (still wondering how the camera was shoved down there). Then there was this section on water consumption and how we are depleting the earth of all its fresh water before it can generate more and as a result many countries don't have clean water, if much at all! So quite a wake up call there. The rest of the visitor center had the usual about the habitats in the park, and the species you expect to see (when its a little warmer than freezing temperatures!), they even had a section on fungus and lichens, I was impressed cause in England the visitor centers seem to leave those out! So before I knew it, it was 5 pm so time to go. The park closed at 6 which was when it got dark anyway, so I rode back to the entrance gate. Took some photos of the sunset too :-) when I was riding through a grassland area I saw another 3 deer frollicing away, they were far away as well, so not quite sure what type they were. Then right as I was approaching the gate (its very dark by this point) I saw a figure on the path. As soon as I stopped, it ran off so I saw it was another deer, probably red. So I rode back to dirks, got a little lost cause I didn't recognize the road I came from in the dark! But at least it was downhill now! There were some real nice houses on this road, which was picturesque in its own right cause it was a bit windy and foresty. I pasted like 2 pancake houses and it really got me craving pancakes even more so than I already was! So i got back to dirks around 7. We then cooked dinner together and talked more about his degree in biology and him working at the zoo. He then showed me some photo books he made, one of his trip to rotterdam and other of the living statues (the people who dress up and don't move on the street as a form of panhandling) festival in arnhem. So apparently this is a big deal cause people all over the world come to dress up and take part in this festival, although most are kids. There are prizes for the best costume. So the book he made was from last year or 2010, and some of those kids looked quite good! So I then looked up directions to my hosts in eindhoven. We had to be up early cause dirk needed to be at work in the morning, but I asked if we could make pancakes cause i saw he had mix in the cabinet and he said we wouldn't have time and he didn't have enough milk, so I was a bit bummed. So I then went to bed, not as early as I had hoped cause of the early wake up lol.
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