An early
start for all – brekkie scheduled for 0730 so we had a chance to say goodbye.
When chatting about it on Wednesday we agreed that an easy brekkie of toast and
coffee would be wisest as Simon especially tends to be on auto-pilot that
early!
Simon
couldn’t help himself and still went to the bakery for fresh buns as it was a
‘special occasion’ – cute! Harking back to our many road trip breakfasts of
leisure...
With brekkie
enjoyed and last things transferred between computers it was time for goodbyes.
They were made short and sweet before emotions got the best of us. As Simon and
Maren ventured off to work we cleaned, collected and packed the last of our
gear. Strapped our packs on and were ready to hit the road again.
Experienced
U-Bahn travellers we arrived at central station without a hitch. A delay in our
train leaving Hamburg had us running to make our next connection from Osnabruck,
Germany to Schipol, The Netherlands. With this journey being the longest of our
connections we thought we’d sit in first class. We were never fussed with where
to sit, but as we had paid for a first class ticket and it’s coming to the end
of our train journeys, we thought why not?
It was here on this trip an event took place
that still upsets us. An hour into our 3 hour journey, pass the border and now
in The Netherlands, our train runs over what we thought were stones placed on
the tracks by kids, but then to find out that we had collided with a person.
The railway area turned into an organised sea of train staff and emergency
services personnel. Collection, clean up, and train repairs had us there for
almost 2 hours. The train crew were professional and kept us updated frequently,
even in English. Once cleared our train was in good enough shape to get us to
the next stop where we caught connecting trains to get us to Goes.
Almost 3 hours late, we arrive and get picked
up by Dino and Jeanine who gracefully missed “Voice of Holland” to pick us up.
Happy to be back, we settled in as if we had never left. After Dino was in bed
we ‘grown-ups’ shared stories from the last month over coffee before heading to
bed. Here we had front row seats to the greatest airbed ever seen. It has an
electronic self inflator and inflates to a height above our knees (i.e. almost to Roni’s waist!). Giggles and
excitement had before we all turn in for a well deserved rest.
