Interesting day in Arnhem, Netherlands

It's still five weeks away, but I've been doing some planning for our trip back to Canada. We left on October 12th of last year, so by the time we get back we will have been away for 10 months which is the longest we've ever gone without seeing any of the family.

I haven't booked the flights yet, but now that we won't have to do the quarantine we will probably arrive back there sometime between August 12th and the 16th. The estate auction at Ruth's father's house is on August 21st and we want to be there in time to help get ready for that.

Vaccination details, and parked by the river

Around 9:30am we drove over to the small city of Arnhem (pop 160,000). It was only about a 45 minute drive. Our vaccination appointment was for 1:36 pm (yes, exactly!) but we were badly in need of a laundromat and we had found one about 1.5 kms from the vaccination place.

But it was right downtown and we had to find a parking spot for Max!

Vaccination scheduled for today!

We tried to get vaccinated in Albania, Poland, and Germany, with no success. The reasons were varied. Even by the time we left Albania on June 10th, they were vaccinating citizens only and unless in specified groups you had to be over 60 (we are 59). Poland was simply confusing, and there were language issues, and we ran out of time there trying to figure out their system. We didn't try very hard in Germany, but it seemed they were still intent on vaccinating only their own citizens.

Here in Netherlands, 90% of native Dutch speakers can also speak English. And many official government websites also have English versions so you don't have to rely on Google Translate. So when I read that there is a procedure to follow for foreigners on Dutch soil to get vaccinated, I started looking further into it.

Back in the Netherlands

We headed out from the big motorhome camping area in Goch, Germany at just after 10:00am. We made our way across the Germany/Netherlands border and arrived a short time later at our overnight spot just outside the town of Grave, Netherlands.

As I had read, there is absolutely no security presence at the EU country borders so far. In fact at this crossing, there was very little indication you were even crossing into a different country, other than the difference in the road markings and language.

Getting the hang of RV'ing in Germany

We would probably have spent another night at the Rhine River watching the barges go by, but our toilet tank was getting full. 

That's the problem with these types of cassette holding tanks... they aren't very big. It was easy to deal with in Australia because there are so many public toilets and a lot of our wild campsites enabled me to pee outside because there was nobody around. But here in Germany, that's not so easy.

Sitting by the Rhine River watching the barges go by

Friday morning, we left Max in his overnight spot just outside the city of Bocholt and walked into the city. Not that there was anything in particular we planned on seeing, but you never know what you might come across. 

Plus, we needed a new camera bag because the zipper finally let go on the cheap one I had bought at a Walmart quite a while ago. Surprised it lasted this long.

I was a bit disappointed

It was a rain day yesterday. Never saw the sun at all, and even though it stopped raining around 2pm, it was overcast and cool. July 1st and the temperature never got above 15C (60F).

Good opportunity to be able to test out Max's battery system though. We have two 100 amp hour 12 volt AGM batteries, and two 100 watt solar panels. Obviously the solar panels didn't do us much good yesterday, but even by the time we went to bed last night the batteries were still reading 12.4 volts, so lots of power remaining.

We love castles!

And here in Germany, there are said to be as many as 20,000 castles! Anything from little known ruins, to fully restored fairy tale style medieval fortifications, and everything in between.

So any detour to visit one of these castles doesn't usually involve too much of a route change. Yesterday, we drove a whole 41 kms (25 miles).

June Expenses

We started the month in Albania, having no idea how the month was going to go. Would we end up in Germany? How would we get there? Would we be able to get into our new motorhome? What would it cost to get the motorhome set up?

So it was really tough to come up with an approximate budget at the beginning of the month. But as you know, we did make it into Germany and we did get into our new motorhome. So June expenses include not only a our normal day to day expenses, but also the figures for capital expenses for the motorhome itself.

Problem solved for now, and back on the road to a nice free forest campground

We sat in the parking lot at the RV dealer until about lunchtime when our service tech David came and got Max to try to repair the sliding pantry door. Did you know that the name for this type of door is called a "tambour door". We had never heard that term before.

As I expected, this was not an easy problem to fix. He ended up having to break the door to get it out, and although that sounds extreme, I couldn't figure out how else it could be done. 

Travel smoothly with the help of these apps in 2021

Whether you’re going on a fishing adventure to New Zealand or exploring everything Warsaw has to offer, we all take our mobile phone devices with us in today’s smartphone-obsessed world. It’s understandable, too, of course. Today’s mobile phones offer a range of functionalities, be it taking high-quality images or simply enabling us to locate the best nearby hotels in a foreign location.  

For many modern-day holidaymakers, the smartphone devices of today offer a range of other benefits also. Instead of solely using devices to track down family or friends who are staying nearby or for entertainment purposes like watching a Netflix movie or playing slot games like Chests of Plenty, travellers are downloading an array of travel apps too. Some apps enable a journey to go more smoothly, while others help you get the most out of an adventure abroad. The options in this space are comprehensive too, as developers aim to tap into what is proving to be a popular category of apps. 

Hopefully it will be a quick fix, but I'm not betting on it.

A bit of a frustrating day yesterday.

We left our free overnight spot early Monday morning. We had forgotten that on Sundays the shops are almost all closed, and we had run out of milk so figured we would go into the nearest town that also had a motorhome service point where we could empty our toilet tank.

That turned out to be the town of  Vreden which was in the wrong direction to where we had wanted to be going, but it was only about 12 kms (7 miles) out of our way.

We never thought there would be flamingos in Germany

Sunday afternoon we went for a walk to see the flamingos at Zwillbrocker Venn. One of the trails to the conservation area actually starts right where we were parked with Max.

This area is famous because of a colony of nesting flamingos. It is the furthest north colony in the world. We never would have thought there would be flamingos in Germany.

Arrived in Netherlands... and the world's largest camping gear store!

It was only a 50 km (30 mile) drive from our RV dealer to the Netherlands border... and another 10 kms (6 miles) after that to the world's largest camping gear store.

I am calling it "the world's largest", although that has not been confirmed. But now that we've been there, we don't see how there could possibly be anything bigger! It is quite the place.

Have a look at these European RVs

We relaxed for the morning, but then around noon we got Max packed up and ready to go. We had a 2:30pm appointment for him at the service department, but wanted to pick up a few grocery items before we left.

Of course part of the process of getting ready to go includes the emptying of our toilet casette. The European system is quite different from the North American system.