Groesbeek

Well today was the worst day of the trip so far, until the last 3 hours, which have made it the best day so far, or at least countered all the bad to bring it back to a neutral day.

So I began the day in Bielefeld, and took 3 trains to get to Arnhem. The second and longest train I had to stand the entire way because there was no other spot for me. Note to self: reserve train spots for weekend journeys. Okay, standing for an hour and a half with 45 pounds on my back sounds awful, but it was only mildly uncomfortable due to the epic awesomeness that is my back pack. So then the train from Arnhem to Nijmegen is cancelled for the next few weeks so I have to take a bus. A bus that takes 2 hours to go the 20 km to Nijmegen. Okay I can deal with that I have some nice scenery to look at.

But then I get to Nijmegen and there is some sort of convention going on, and so every hotel is booked. Believe me, I checked, which means walking for an hour and a half all over town (with my backpack) to talk to every hotel, even bed in breakfasts. In Holland a Bed and Breakfast is someone who rents you the top room of their house and feeds you breakfast in the morning. Kinda weird, I know, so I have tried to avoid it until today when I was really desperate, but no, each of them was full as well. The only room was at a 4 star hotel so far out of my price range it might of well been a hotel on the moon.

Well okay so I resign myself to just visiting the location and then taking a train to another city to stay the night. After getting information from the tourist information booth, I get on another bus, for another hour, as it winds it way through small towns and eventually dumps me near a museum. So I take a guess based on my impeccable sense of direction, which has served me remarkably well so far, and start walking. Nearly 10 minutes later, I find my first sign. Aha! I guessed right. Well then I continue walking and it turns out this sign deals with distances a car would be experiencing. Half an hour later, and I am still walking. Keep in mind this is hour 5 or 6 with my backpack on and kilometer 15 or 20 that I have walked, and the charm is starting to wear off.

And now for the good. I arrive at Groesbeek and this is the largest and nicest memorial I have been to thus far. All of a sudden I remembered the reason I was here. It wasn’t to get angry at trains or hotels, it was to visit these sites and see how the soldiers from my hometown are remembered.

This war cemetery has over 2000 graves and is home to 16 fallen soldiers from Regina. At first I had the impression that there was a lot of graves, but I didn’t really get a sense of it before I began walking around and finding each individual. There are an incredible amount of graves, and even walking amongst them doesn’t give you the sense of scale. It isn’t until you start going through and trying to find certain people that you realize just how many grave you are walking past. For each person that I found, and I found over 10% or the people from Regina who died in the war, I was walking past over a hundred that I was looking for. The sheer number of graves was astounding, and I know that this isn’t the largest commonwealth grave location nor is it the only. Saying the words “there are 2000 people in this cemetery” doesn’t really convey how many people that is.

So I was able to find everyone who I was supposed to at this cemetery. As I was leaving, an older man with two children asked me what I was placing on the graves. I explained what the poppy symbolizes to the people of Canada, and gave a poppy to him and each of his daughter. We got to talking about what I was doing (his English was very limited but we eventually got it figured out) and he was so impressed he offered me a ride back to town rather than take the bus. I took it and while we were driving we talked about why he came to the memorial and why he brought his daughters each year. He ended up even offering me a place to stay for the night, which I declined, but it meant a lot to me to see just how much it meant to the Dutch man what I was doing. He spoke about how grateful everyone in the town still was and the celebrations they have at the beginning of May to commemorate the end of the war and the sacrifices made.

I then got on a train and arrived in ‘s-Hertogenbosch( I have no idea how to say that) and found the only hotel in the entire town. It was a bit expensive, but it was the last room in town, and there is an incredible jazz festival going on here all night long. Did I mention it was named the best hotel in Europe in 2000. That’s pretty amazing for the price I got.

I learned an important lesson today: know when to plan ahead. I went into this with the idea that I would just wing it and find places to sleep and things to do right then and there. But I know realize that there is a time and place to plan ahead, particularly weekends, but that you still shouldn’t block out each timeslot of the entire trip. If I had planned everything to a T, I never would be here listening to dueling saxophones while drinking cappuchino and a ball of whipped cream, and chocolate. No literally a ball of whipped cream and chocolate: