Sleepless in Limburg, #1

Yes, the bicycle thing is turning into an obsession.

Now, faithful readers of this here blog no doubt knew this already. But for this weekend, the Netherlands' only decent weather forecasts were for Limburg, that southeasternmost, male thingy dangling from Roermond down to Maastricht. I hadn't been there. There were only two problems: (1) I had had very little sleep since flying over from Chicago, and (2) the train rides to Limburg from mid-Netherlands were longish.

You Americans: Stop laughing. Three hours on a train to cross most of a nation is too a long time. Is too, is too, is too.

The sleep deprivation was my own fault. Friday night, I had stayed up too late, finishing the first edition of the SuperDuper bike map (BIG version 1.5 Megs // SMALL version 150 kB--Both updated through May 31). So I'm groggy Saturday morning, but I need only ride to Naarden-Bussum station.

Someone is having a birthday party this morning. Or maybe--ha ha--they're taking this on the train to Pinkpop.
 

Pinkpop actually may be a problem. Pinkpop is this holiday weekend's open-air concert, held in the sprawling suburban landgrab called Landgraaf, which is in Limburg. It promises to draw thousands of beer-sotted teenagers through the train system in just the direction I'm going. Today all the train stations--even those hundreds of kilometers away, echo with announcements about how to get to and from Pinkpop. I brace for the worst, but that's hours away. (Foreshadowing:) my day will see worse than that.

This must be the place: Maastricht, a strategically located town dating from the Romans, a different feel from the rest of the Netherlands. For one thing, there are hills. For another, Belgians, though I didn't see any short, blue ones.
 

Maastricht has a decidedly French/Walloon feel, at least compared to more northerly Dutch cities (that is, all of them).
 

 
 

 
 

Not the usual Dutch scene (OK, the cliffs are in Belgium.)
 

I headed south to the corner of Limburg, and headed east. There was no way to tell when I passed from the Netherlands into Belgium and back, which was OK. What was not OK was that the weather forecasters lied: the wind was now against me. And I climbed, and climbed. The GPS placed me at 40 meters above sea level, then 60. Then 80 turned into 100, into 150, into 250. And not in a straight line...

...there were some pretty spectacular, distinctly un-Dutch downhill grades, too, easy to break the speed limit (or your neck) on a bicycle.
 

Now, we're not going to turn this blog into a series of picture-postcards, however the Netherlands tempt us--but please indulge me once in a while. This south of Epen, on my search for the Netherlands' southernmost point.
 

The Netherlands' northernmost (mainland) point is marked by a monument (picture -->here<-- from post of 24 April). And the Netherlands' easternmost point is punctuated by an antique boom (picture -->here<-- from post of 8 May). By contrast, the Netherlands' southernmost point is on private land, unmarked, locked away, quite inaccessible.

This is as close as I could legally get. The best maps do not even agree (which is odd), but to the best that I and my GPS and the ANWB maps could determine: the southernmost point in the Netherlands is somewhere between the two trees in the center of this picture. (Best triangulation: 50.75169N 5.91327E, within about 50 meters).
 

This is where the day's ride got weird. It seemed very hard to ride the bike. It was hot. Off a forested road 300 meters inside Belgium (I think), I changed into short pants, and that helped. The wind strengthened against me, and the hills seemed very hard to ascend--more than once I had to push the bike up. I don't know why I stopped and grabbed my front tire, but it was soft. Oh, no, this is not good. It's a holiday weekend, and I'm a long, long way from the nearest train station. I pump it up some, and pedal back north to Epen. The only fietsverhuurwinkel (bicycle rental shop) refuses to help me out, but the woman tells me there is "een fietsreparatiebedrijf op Machlen" which I figure out is the local pronunciation of Mechelen, 4 km north. I pump again, ride again, and it's getting close to 4pm. I imagine how I would want to go home early if I ran a shop today. But I find the place in Mechelen, and they are very helpful--indeed they seem happy to have any business today. I sit on their steps (which did not appear to have been swept in this or the last century), drink most of my remaining water, pay the 6 euros 70, and find my bicycle out on the busy sidewalk--unlocked, key left in the lock, and GPS still perched on top. Nothing stolen. Europeans: this would never happen in the US--the half-life of the bike or at least the GPS would be about 30 seconds. I head south to resume along the main road across Limburg's south border.

However difficult the Netherlands' southernmost point was to find, the Netherlands' highest point was, uh, a little easier.
 

And just a few meters away from the highest point--another geographically interesting point--Drielandenpunt, where Germany and the Netherlands and Belgium meet. The Dutch built this tedious amusement park in their corner. You can get drunk in three languages. And someone built a tower right on the point, so after lounging under the Brand beer sign in the hot sun, you can ride the queasy elevator up just in time to regurgitate your beer diplomatically and equally onto three nations. Drielandenpunt is 50.75408N 6.02093E, if you're interested.
 

And it's time to find a train station. I am now exhausted from the hills, the wind against me, and from the soft tire's fighting me without my knowing it. North along the border to Kerkrade Centrum, a fancy name for a horrible end-of-the-line, open-air station. Which has no schedule posted. None. I remember Nieuweschans and the poor German woman who (without knowing it) had missed the last train home to Germany. The memory gave me new energy.

It was, after all, only a few kilometers north to the next stations. The worst case was Landgraaf, close by, where I might possibly get Pinkpop puke on my pants but at least they'd be running extra trains (as announced this morning in every station for 200 kilometers).

By now all the shops are closed, and I'm desperately dehydrated. I'm actually nauseated, and I have to stop twice in 4 kilometers just to lay down on a park bench. Two km short of Landgraaf station is the hysterically unpronounceable Eijgelshoven station. I wait with three drunk teens with metal in their faces and hair in colors not found in nature. We board. I'm still laughing about "Eijgelshoven", and they think I'M crazy. They get out at the next station, Landgraaf, which is otherwise very quiet--Pinkpop hasn't let out yet, thank you Jesus and Mary.

For my connection north, I mistakenly ride to Maastricht station and its World's Nastiest WC. To save 50 eurocents, two brutal-looking Pinkpoppers catch the WC door as I and my bike squeeze out the greasy door. But they hold the door for me. They greet me: "Goeie Avond." They go in, unpaid, but hold the door longer, so it doesn't bang against my back tire. And I marvel: what other country has such a polite and ultimately harmless criminal element?