The next day was Friday and we rented the Merc. Due to usual laziness, we reached the shop only at 3 30 pm. From there got onto the Autobahn! GPS is a Godsend, without which it would simply not have been possible to get out of the parking lot! With it, we were at ease, like driving in the back of our courtyard. The journey was real cool, and we were feeling beyond cool, the least coz we were driving a Merc on the Autobahn!!! Stopped at a couple of places, and then entered the Netherlands, at 8 or so. My plan was to stay with Asgekar at Dwingeloo. We had some trouble finding the place, and eventually reached there only by 10 45 pm or so. At the guest house, mostly there were summer students from all over the world, who were interning at ASTRAL. They were pretty chilled out guys, as would be expected, considering that it was an excellent vacation for them. Especially coz in Holland, weed is legalized! I got offered some that night itself. I contented myself with a beer, instead. Then Chin and H had to drive to Doorwerth. They reached only to find the hostel locked for the night. Unfortunately, they had to spend the night in the car itself, while I was comfortably enjoying the heater in Ashish’s room.
Worth mentioning along the way here, is the way we discovered the numerous appliances on the dashboard of the Merc! Who would have imagined that the car has no knob at all for filling up on the petrol! When the key is in the ignition, you just go and press the lid, and presto, it opens! Discovering this was an interesting exercise, well worth the 15 minutes it took, and the oh-we-are-so-stupid feeling once we got to knowing how this works!
Next morning, looked about the ASTRAL institute, and was impressed especially by the Embedded Systems Group. Although the working there would be brilliant, it boils down to the lack of interest in the eventual goal of all that I would design. Is it ever possible to design something, without really caring about the purpose for which it would be built?
Chin and H reached Dwingeloo to pick me up by 3 pm or so, and we decided to drive down (or up) to the North Sea! The drive was mostly along the Dutch equivalent of state highways, single laned roads, in an impeccable state, with speeds of upto 100 kmph! All along the way, I got a feeling that Indian highways are now catching up with the Autobahns and other highways here. The autobahn is just 2 laned, while the Pune-Mumbai e-way has 3! India 1-0 Europe! We wanted to go to a beach, but Texel is on an island, and we would have had to pay for the ferry onto it, and decided against it. We contented ourselves with a drive to the dykes. A dyke is a tall wall constructed all along the coast of Holland, to protect it from the sea. This is required because most of the country is under sea level, and without these embankments, it would all be flooded. Netherlands, what I will remember for the most part is the windmills, and the number of sheep they have there! From what we saw on the dyke, there are likely, more sheep than people. The dyke was a stone wall. It had many different hues to it. Some coz the humans who built it, found it necessary to color it yellow, and pour tar over it at places. Then the sea played its part by creating layers of colors. Olive Green – where the moss and weeds were growing, Ochre – where the moss had dried out due to summer sun. And then there was the sea itself, a glum, dark blue, playing support to a sky of the same color. Imagine a long wall, sloping out to sea, stretching for miles, and of different hues, with sheep grazing on it. The effect created by it was immemorable.
At 7 pm or so, we started the drive back to Doorwerth, lest we not reach in time again, and have to sleep outside for the night again! After grabbing some sandwiches at the gas station (courtesy Shell) we reached the Stayokay hostel at 10. This was going to be the last night that Chin was going to stay with us, and we decided that the occasion deserved a toast. The bartender was a plump guy called Ric, who was quite chatty.The drinks were really memorable. The first that we tried was Blue Curacao mixed with Sambuca. Curacao I believe is a Dutch speciality, and Sambuka is a Brazilian drink. Ric offered this to us for free! Despite assurances from him that it was not strong, we would disagree, definitely. This was definitely the high point of the night, after which had some Tequila, and Beer, and chatted with a few non-descript foreigners. The drink made us sleepy and we collapsed as soon as we got into our dorms. Unfortunate, coz we missed out on the convo that we could have had.
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