Day 59...In a beautiful pea green boat. (or something) - 24th August

Spent the morning in Bremen. My throat is way sore, but my fever is better. Nate was a dear taking care of me yesterday.

We were doing some posting when I thought I saw a race fight this morning about 2 metres in front of me. I was sitting waiting for Nate when there was a shout and a big German guy came running up and grabbed a skinny black guy by his face. They started shouting things at each other and the black guy looked terrified. He got shoved down to the ground, just as another big German guy came running out of nowhere and kicked him. Then they pushed their knees sooo hard into the back of his neck and sat there, that I though perhaps they were doing a citizens arrest. Then they whipped out some handcuffs and I finally clicked that they were wearing the same looking jeans and flannel shirts - they were undercovers! They dragged the guy up, spitting out concrete as he went, and marched him away. Hmmm.

Bremen town itself was really cute and old-school with cobbled stones and churches. A few homeless people and punks abounded for such a cute town, which we couldn't figure out. We went to St Petri Dom church as I heard there were mummified bodies in there, but there were none. It was cool in itself though. The church was really old and beautiful. Ornate in a stone carving kinda way, rather than paintings and curtains. They had done excavations of the church and found bodies of monks from long long ago. There were some amazing displays of their cloths and hats and coins from centuries ago (the church was built around 1200 years ago). A friendly German man came up and we managed to decipher from him that the church wasn't bombed during WWII as the spire was so tall - planes used it as a marker for bombing other spots. Pretty handy eh?

We then drove as far aas we could into The Netherlands (Holland) (which meant we only just crossed the border!) It became quite different quite quickly. In The Netherlands they have not only their own bike lanes, but their own bike lights too! And everyone is riding around. Fantastic. You'd have to feel fit and happy to do that all day long, it really is a good idea. I'd love to bike when I get back, but would prolly get smacked out by a car or something.

We stayed in a tiny town on the edge of the border. Our hotel was this cute pub which was full of old local men who stared at us as we came in. The room was pretty nice, with its own bathroom which we are finding a luxury. The pub felt like Oma's house - lots of brown and stuff.

We walked down the street to this really cute Dutch restaurant which was also brown and Oma-ish. We had passed the Grolsch factory on our way into Holland, so Nate ordered a Grolsch with dinner. The waitress could speak a bit of English which helped us, as we couldn't be bothered to learn Dutch just yet. We are still recovering from German. We've just managed to get the hang of this German thing, now we have to start all over again! Plus the "cchh" sound in the back of the throat would just kill me at the moment. Her accent was so different to German, she rounded her 's's so she sounded like a whistle! hee hee.

We walked home, enjoying peering into all the Dutch homes with their lit up windows on the way. And dodging bikes too! They are everywhere. It looks weird too, as the bike lane takes precedence, and so the cars have to park outside the bike lane. So it looks like they are parked in the middle of the road!

Off to bed we went, and watched a bit of TV and wrote. Good news for Dutch TV! Unlike German and Swiss, they have some English language channels with subtitles at the bottom. So we can watch some TV again! Joy.