Saturday in the Netherlands

It has been fun to see some familiar faces in a not so familiar place. Janelle Robinson and her two kids Riley and Sydni picked me up at the train station in Aachen last night and brought me to their home in Eygelshoven in the Netherlands. Janelle is from my good ole home town of Scobey and was so nice to have me come visit and stay. This morning Janelle and I went for a nice run around town in the brisk morning weather. Then we walked to the big street market just a couple blocks away to get some things for brunch. There were tons of vendors with fresh fruit and veggies, material items, meats, cheeses, and cooked food. My exploratory heaven J Was funny to hear some the vendors screaming in the Dutch language about what they were selling. After eating our beautifully assembled brunch of bread, cheese, olives, fruit, eggs, and apple fritter pancakes from the market, we headed out for the day. First we dropped Janelle’s daughter Sydni off at SnowWorld to go snow boarding for the day. It is the world’s largest indoor ski resort with a couple huge slopes, a fitness gym, bar, restaurant and hotel attached. We went in and checked it all out and it was pretty crazy. Then we drove to Stein to watch Riley play in a soccer match. We sat in the sun watching the boys play and a few other people drank there afternoon beers and smoke their cigs around us, which is becoming an all so familiar sight these days. After the game we headed to Vaals. It is noted for being the location where the borders of three countries intersect, giving its summit the name Drielandunpunt (“Three-Country Point”). The touching countries are Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. There is a tower on the Belgium side that you can go up and see the panoramic view of the beautiful countryside. Amazing! I thought about walking the staircase to the top of the tower but after about 2 seconds of debating with myself I decided I would just take the elevator. I didn’t want everyone to have to wait a couple hours for me to accomplish the task. (Some of you may not know that I am a “little” afraid of heights.) I’m glad I decided to skip the stairs because they were grated so you could see everything below and I actually felt like I was going to lose my stance just from going up on the elevator. Pretty Creepy! But I made it up and took some pics without getting too close to the edge or stepping onto the part of the balcony that was grated as well. Wow, just typing this right now is making my legs tingle. Anyway, it was a great day! More to come tomorrow.