next euro trip will be done by car! an eco friendly one =)

friday feb 10: this was a real stressful day!! so i left marieke and anthonys in the morning, again after they had already left for work. the night before i had been looking for a host for arnhem but i kept getting declined from people, but someone advised that i put a post on the last minute need a couch forum, so i did and a guy named dirk who apparently hosts a lot of people (he must be pretty famous cause another one of the people i messaged even told me to message him saying he is real friendly and has space for my bike) said he would host me. i had seen his profile when i did the search the other night but i didnt message him cause he said he gets home from work at 8 pm but since he was my only option, i accepted. and anyway it turns out that this day was his day off so he was home all day, so that was good. but arnhem was over 50 miles from utrecht so i didnt want to spend too long in utrecht, although i did want to check out the railway museum, as recommended by anthony who said his uncle or whoever had came to visit him had really liked that museum. and i hadnt bothered to look up directions to arnhem the night before because there was still a lot of snow and ice on the ground so i still wasnt going to use the cycle network and any back roads, and i had seen one of those red cycling route signs for arnhem right near marieke and anthonys place, so i had assumed i was good to go. so that morning i went to the railway museum. it was way bigger than i had imagined! it was almost like an open air museum (well it did have some things outside, but the majority were inside) and the first part you walk in is a 19th cent booking hall, probably for the train station in utrecht. there was quite a difference between the 2nd class and the 1st class waiting rooms, and they even had the royal waiting room from the hague, where the queen waited!! then you exit the lobby and cross the railway tracks with signals and signs and a train on the tracks, so i was a bit taken back at first, i thought it was a still working station!! so then you enter this big hall and thats where most of the museum is. they had some old trains in the main part of the hall, some steam, some diesel and some a bit more modern and electric. unfortunately a lot of the text explaining the usage of the trains when they were in operation was in dutch, so i dont actually know what they were really used for. i did play a game on a computer screen about guessing which trains from the pics provided ran on steam, diesel or electricity, and i made the top 5 (4th place!). other parts of the museum had collections of old memorabilia related to trains, so old parts, models, passenger attire and worker uniforms, badges, signs, etc. one section had old posters and advertisements for trains when they were in their heyday so those were awesome to see. and one really cool part was a mock coal mine that you go througH! There was an audio tour in english and the nararrator is a guy called john middlemiss from newcastle lol just when i thought i escaped the ugly english accents! but yeah this guy  was the first engine driver in the netherlands. then you go thru a mock 19th century english mining village which was cool. then the tour ended with the first steam locomotive in the netherlands, called the arend, on the amsterdam platform. and then you go thru the building which was set up to be the station and that was the temp exhibition space and they had some old paintings from the 19 & 20th cent of trains in landscapes and people aboard trains. they were quite pretty so i was annoyed that the descriptions werent in english. actually out of all the dutch places ive visited, id say utrecht was the least "english friendly". so after that i continued walking around the museum, i went to another section which had a theatre (but performances were in dutch only!) and another old train car, but a real fancy one called the orient express from the late 19th cent when train travel was starting to pick up. there was a screen near it that was playing old silent films, so i was watching one about a woman being bound to tracks by the bad guy so she calls for her dog and she gives him a note to give to her husband to come and save her (how she wrote on the note when she was tied up, i still havent figured out). but it was a race against time if the husband could get to her and free her before the oncoming train squashed her like a pancake, but i never got to finish it (now ill never know how it ends) cause an employee there who was dressed in an old conductor outfit comes up to me and asked if i am waiting for the train. so i asked where it is going, thinking that its a virtual reality ride or something but he said he lets people onto the orient express train car at certain times, so i said i would go on it. he asked where i was from and i said new york and so he said "oh so the languages you know are english, english and english" and i said yup!!! so then a school group came and he let us all on and he asked them in dutch if he could speak in english and they said no lol but he said in english that he will talk in english because he knows they will understand, at least bits and pieces. so we went onto the train. it was so decked out and looked super fancy!! there was fake fruit and drinks on the table but it was so beautifully laid out and everything, it really would have been a luxurious train ride! the conductor guy said the cost of a long distance journey on this train (one way) is the equivalent of €200,000 in todays money!! so obviously only the very wealthy like dukes and earls could afford this type of train. it made me want to go on a real fancy long distance train ride though! but considering the cost of a damn ticket just from london to leeds, i think ill just have to continue getting around by bike for the time being. then i went to the main hall again and looked at more trains, i went to the outside part where there was a water tower and a signal box. it was a bit cold so i went inside rather quickly lol. there was a catwalk where you can go up to and see the trains from above so i did that and up there were some old bicycles and motorcycles as well.  they had this "scary" ride called steel monsters which departed from some guys attic who had been assemblying his own railway museum with more memorabilia. then you go on a ride in a cart on some tracks in the dark. it was quite cute actually, i thought it was going to be tacky (although it was no haunted mansion at disney!!) so after that i pretty much did everything that my language barrier could allow me to which was fine because it was (as usual) later than i had planned on leaving, so i was in a bit of a rush. so i hopped on lance at 12:50 pm and headed back towards that sign that i said was near mariekes and anthonys that pointed in the right direction for arnhem. so i followed it but unfortunately that was the only sign there was! there was no follow up to tell me which way to turn! so i had this ingenious idea to follow the highway, thinking there will be a bicycle lane along side, since the N200 to amsterdam, which was a pretty busy road, had one. but it didnt. so i tried to follow along side it from the ground as best as i could but after a few miles i couldnt go straight anymore and it just loomed overhead. so i kept riding back and forth to the big intersection with all the ring roads trying to decipher which one i should follow. the direction signs (for cars) for arnhem were also misleading cause they were pointing in the opposite direction which was why i followed it at first but then i realized that was only to get onto the highway ramp. so i just followed along some road on the other side of the highway and turned where i thought i was supposed to turn and ended up following a bike path along the canal, but when the direction signs didnt mention anything about arnhem i doubted myself so i checked the map and sure enough i was heading in the wrong direction. so i continued to try and follow these busy high way intersections but it only took me to roads i couldnt cross cause there was no signal and the bike lane turned in the opp direction to where i wanted to go so that gave me the impression that i couldnt follow the busy roads in the direction i wanted. so i again went back to the busy ring road (this is like an hour later now) and i am super stressed so i decide to just go in the last direction i hadnt tried yet. there i saw a sign for a place called bilby (i think) and i saw on the map that was on the way to arnhem so i followed signs for that. dont know why i didnt just do that in the first place, but in fairness, i would have had more sense to do that if there were NO signs that mentioned arnhem! but no, i had complete faith in these red directional signs that if it mentioned a place it would take me all the way there. so i was finally on my way, and it wasnt very scenic at first, going through a bit of an industrial area. but it wasnt long before i was going through forests. i didnt even really enjoy it cause the paths were covered in snow and a bit hilly so i wasnt going anywhere fast. i remember rob telling me that i would have more trouble going up some bridges than with the hills in the national parks around arnhem so i didnt bother to look up the elevation, but i guess he was referring to De Hoge Verluwe specifically cause there were some decent hills in these parks. and one in particular which had a narrow path and was pretty steep and was covered in snow so i walked lance up there, for the first (and only!) time in the netherlands. i did see a biker ride straight up in though, but im sure his tires and legs were better equipped for the conditions. so the signs in the parks were quite annoying, they were these small pyramid shaped signs close to the ground, so i would definitely miss those in the dark so i was stressing about it getting dark soon and still being stuck in woodland. but it kept pointing me in the right direction for arnhem so thats all that matters. after i got out of the park areas i followed signs for arnhem along  roads but on bike lanes that were shoveled so i started to pick up speed. it was mostly straight forward, although one sign was like bent on an angle and these ones annoy me to no end cause i can never figure out exactly where it is telling me to go. technically it was pointing to a field with no bike path so that obviously wasnt it. i again got super stressed and wished i wasnt so reliant on these signs and just wrote down normal directions as a back up. the bike signs nationwide are definitely the best ive seen in any country by far, but if you are going to do something, then do it right! cause if this was england i would be relying more on the roads and not on the bike paths and so when i get lost at least i can look up on google maps where i am and can back track. but its not so easy, say, when im stuck in the middle of a forest!! but anyway, so there i was a bit lost and nearly wanting to give up, but i saw some people on their bikes riding by so i asked which way to arnhem and one guy told me to keep straight so i did and i eventually saw signs for arnhem again. by the way it had been dark for several hours now, and my water bottle froze again. at 7 pm i stopped to message dirk to say im running late and to eat without me, so i had a quick food break then, but otherwise i didnt eat or drink anything, so i had started to feel a bit weak and tired by like mile 40. but i was really going as fast as i could so i didnt even care that my hands and toes were numb and my nose was drippling!! when i finally arrived in arnhem i had remembered dirk lived near a train station although it wasnt a main one. i saw a street map but it only had the main station on it, which i thought was a bit stupid! so i just rode along the river and followed it till i saw some bright building lights so i knew i was getting close to the center. i asked some guy sitting on a bench where the station was but i pronounced it wrong so he assumed i was talking about the central station so he showed me how to get there, so i followed. when i arrived i saw i was at the wrong station so i just looked up on google maps where this other station was (why i didnt do this in the first place is still a mystery) so i followed the roads to the station and followed dirks directions and sure enough found his place!! i was so happy to be inside where it was warm and to not be pedalling anymore! i rode 54.35 mi, max 21.5 (see, pretty high for netherlands standards!)  and avg 7.3. i arrived at 9:15 pm, riding for 07:23 hours. dirk was nice enough to wait for me to eat so i felt bad about arriving so late but he said it was no problem. so we made dinner together and talked for a bit but not for too long because it was so late and i was tired. but he works at the zoo in the other national park close to arnhem. that park is publicly funded so its free admission, whereas De Hoge Verluwe is private so you have to pay €8.20 to get in!! grr! and i had already gone through 2 national parks this day, and its all pretty much the same, trees are trees! but whatever, i came all this way to see that park so thats where i was going in the morning. so yeah dirk works in the restaurant at the zoo, which he has done for a while. he got his degree in biology but he said he couldnt find a job which he blames on going to the military right after finishing college but i think its because it took him 5 1/2 years to complete his bachelors. at least i think it was his bachelors and not his masters, there was a bit of a language barrier there. he also does private tours of the zoo for weddings and stuff, so he takes them "back stage" like how we had our tour of chester zoo where we went into the rhino holding pens. but he kind of worried me when he said he couldnt find a job cause i thought, oh no here i am with a biology degree, is it going to be tough for me as well? but then again i dont want to work for a zoo or conservation type org, so ill keep my chin up! he does have an obsession with animals, especially turtles. he had so much turtle memorabilia and i dont mean turtle products, but like mugs and figurines and junk. his bathroom was quite interesting too. he had an underwater themed shower curtain, and his toilet seat cover and toilet paper holder had sand and seashells in it, and his shower head changed into several colors like disco lights! so i thought that was a bit odd lol. before i went to bed we watched "the voice" which is another one of these singing competitions, except the judges dont face the contestants so they dont make any judgements about their appearance, which i think is awesome. there were mostly young girls though, and they only sang english songs, so it was strange to hear them sing english but when the song was other, they started speaking in dutch lol. one little girl like 11 years old sang "popperazzi" by lady gaga, so clearly some of their english needed some work! but soon after i went to bed so i can wake up early to go to the national park and visit the kröller-möller museum!