Day 24 - Saturday May 13, 2017 - Amsterdam

We’re up and out early and walk over to the station for the 7.37 train to Hamburg. As we’re early, we have plenty of time for a coffee before heading down to track 6. The train arrives but the doors don’t open so we all stand there. Eventually, someone who knows what they’re doing pushes the (rather subtle) button and the doors open and the steps descend. We scramble aboard and find our seats.

We leave on time and are soon rolling through the suburbs on our five hour trip to Hamburg. The announcement says we should arrive at the ferry in two hours, at 9.35. Yes, the ferry. This is one of the few remaining train trips in the world where they have to put the train on a ferry, connecting the Danish island of Lolland with the German island of Fehmarn, both of which are connected to their respective mainlands. Plans are under way to build a tunnel but it’ll be another few years before that is in place. Once we reach Hamburg, we have about 20 minutes to change to the train to Osnabruck and then an hour or so there before taking the train to Amsterdam, arriving about 7 pm. It’ll be a longish day but after all the pounding around we’ve done in the last three weeks, sitting back and watching the world go by is not without its attraction.

We roll on to the ferry – or maybe it’s more like a lurch and a clatter but they get the train on, just like loading a long lorry. We have to leave the train and go up into the passenger part of the ferry; they lock the train so we are assured it’s ok to leave the luggage on board. The train must be the last part to board – lots of cars and lorries already on board and as soon as we’re off the train and climb up a few decks, the ferry sets sail. The ferry is crowded but Anne-Margaret gets in line at the cafe while I grab a seat. Two hot chocolates and a sandwich, followed by five minutes out on deck and the 45 minute crossing is over so we head back down to the train.

We lurch and clatter off again and pull into the station on the German side – and there we sit for 20+ minutes. A solitary announcement in German includes a phrase that can only translate to “technical problem”. This does not bode well, as we have a 26 minute connection in Hamburg. Eventually, without further announcement or explanation, we lurch off again. Looking online to try and check departure and arrival times, it appears our connecting train (which is ultimately going to Stuttgart) has been re-timed since we booked the tickets to depart Hamburg four minutes later, so a bit of additional leeway. It’s coming from elsewhere in Germany and has been running for a couple of hours but has had a ‘technical failure’ so is also running late, so there’s hope for us yet. In the event, our train gets a move on and arrives in Hamburg only 10 minutes late but the connecting train is now 25 minutes late so we end up standing around on the platform for 40 minutes waiting for it to arrive. Fortunately, the connection in Osnabruck is scheduled for 78 minutes so, even though we’re 30 minutes late leaving Hamburg, we should make it in good time.

After sitting somewhere outside Osnabruck without explanation for five minutes, we eventually pull in and, given the lack of any understandable announcement, carefully check that there is a sign saying ‘Osnabruck’ before we alight. Not sure what I was expecting but somehow I anticipated it would be a bit larger and more grandiose – or at least have some boards announcing what trains were leaving from which platform and when etc. We arrive at platform 2 and the ticket says we depart from platform 12 so we follow the sign down to 11 and 12 – platform 11 is a bit of a desolate wasteland but platform 12 looks somewhat better. As we have half an hour to wait, we venture into the little cafe on the platform, where Anne-Margaret practices her German on the lady owner. A hot chocolate, an espresso and two ice creams – though I have to say that, in the case of the espresso, she forgot the coffee. The ice creams were nice, though I stll think Anne-Margaret should have had the curry bratwurst…..

Although delayed by five minutes or so, the train to Amsterdam arrives soon enough and we clamber aboard. On the first train, we had the two aisle seats of a (facing) block of four and had nobody in the window seats. The seats were fairly spacious and comfortable though it took us a while to figure out where the power ports were – up underneath the luggage rack, against the window and somewhat behind the seat. Unless you’re sitting in the window seat or have a long cord (which we did) it was not a very practical arrangement. On the train from Hamburg to Osnabruck, we had two seats side by side (airplane style). Although they were leather, they were rather hard and not as spacious as on the train from Copenhagen. Only a single power port, this time between the seats. The carriage we were in on the train from Osnabruck to Amsterdam was of the old fashioned variety – compartments of six seats (three and three facing each other) with a corridor along one side of the train. We stop at Rheine and then at Bad Bentheim – where all goes silent, the air conditioning stops and the power ports stop working. As we sit there thinking ‘now what?’, we hear someone in the bistro car say we’re waiting for the Dutch train to arrive, as we’re at the border. After a few minutes, a sudden ‘thump’ announces the arrival of the Dutch locomotive and eventually everything starts to hum again and, in due course, of we go again. These frequent, often unexplained, stops and delays are becoming rather tiresome and I think we’ll be glad to reach Amsterdam.

We’re using ‘my3’ sims from the UK on which we have a data ‘add-on’ and on which you’re supposed to be able to roam in the countries we’re visiting but the service has not been great. In Denmark, we were on 3 DK (and 3 SE in Sweden) and then it switched to some company called E-Plus once we were in Germany. We cross the border into the Netherlands and the phone service switches from E-Plus to KPN NL. The 3G phone service in Finland, Estonia, Sweden and Denmark was a bit slow but it worked; the E-Plus service in Germany was hopeless, ranging from impossibly slow to non-existent. Let’s hope it gets better in the Netherlands. It’s all a very marked contrast from the NTT Docomo sims we were using in Japan, which provided a good 4G connection.

We also seem to have our ‘POSH’ problem again. Although we’re heading west and therefore the sun should be facing us, it’s slightly off to our left – and of course we’re on the port side of the train, so the air conditioning seems to be having little effect. However, one advantage of the change from a German train crew to a Dutch crew is that the announcements are now in Dutch, German and English; in Germany, if they existed at all, the announcements were generally in German and that was it.

We finally arrive in Amsterdam and make it out of the station in search of a tram. We need a # 1, 2 or 5. The first one to arrive is a # 2 and we push our way on board with everybody else. Given that it’s 7.15 on a Saturday, it’s not surprising that it’s crowded. I somehow get ahead of Anne-Margaret and, spotting two vacant seats, plop myself down, waiting for Anne-Margaret to catch up. She does soon enough, but not before she has run over someone’s foot with her suitcase; it’s unfortunate he was wearing sandals…..

We got four day (actually 96 hour) transit tickets before we left home so that part was easy and we didn’t have to muck about trying to figure out how to buy a tram ticket. The rules seem to be you get on at the back or the front but not in the middle, which is for exiting passengers only, as evidenced by the no entry sign on the outside of the middle doors and the little gate on the inside of those doors, which presumably only operate in one direction.

We got off at Leidesplein (along with half the tram) and walked the couple of blocks to the apartment, finding the apartment with no difficulty. The host lady was out (although, as instructed, I had texted her from the tram and she had responded) but her young daughter let us in and left us with the keys etc. The apartment is on the first floor and they live upstairs on the second (and third) floors. An old canal-side building, the stairs up to the first floor were very steep and those up to the second floor perhaps even more so. The studio apartment is very nice – one large room, with a seperate bathroom. The bed is at the front, which overlooks the canal, with living space in the middle and a spacious and relatively new kitchen at the back.

After freshening up, we went out to see if we could get supplies and something to eat. There are a couple of supermarkets in the neighborhood but, from our online research, it appeared that, at 8.30 on a Satuday evening, they were closed. The cafe on the corner closed at six so we walked up to a recommended restaurant, Buffet Van Odette, a block or so away. That looked very busy and after standing around for five or ten minutes while we endured the haughty disdain of the proprietress, we were informed they had no room. We were probably not sufficiently ‘dressed’ for the occasion. As we stood outside the door, hopefully awaiting the return of the proprietress (who, after our initial inquiry, seemed to have decided to ignore us for a while) a very well-dressed man (with a stupid little dog on a lead, which I was very tempted to kick as it went by), along with an even more over-dressed woman (who looked like a cross between Barbara Cartland and Debbie Harry in her prime) wafted in past us. Clearly, we were not going to make the grade and, not unexpectedly, the proprietress eventually deigned to return and so advise us.

We walked back in the other direction, towards Leidesplein. At that point, I recalled the comments I had read earlier in the day, in the Lonely Planet guide, about Dutch service – effectively saying it’s usually “cold/unsmiling/aloof/offhand – don’t take it personally”.  I think we just experienced that first hand. [We’ve now made an online reservation at Buffet Van Odette for Monday night – hopefully we will make the grade and the proprietress will look kindly on us.] There were now hordes of noisy people about (but then it is Saturday night). The street we walk up is lined with restaurants, a lot of them steak places of one sort or another, Most of them have (generally unsavory looking) touts outside and the noisy, generally unpleasant looking groups of people everywhere just left me thinking “This is horrible. Can we go home?”

Eventually, we randomly picked a Heineken cafe where it looked like we could at least get a drink and something to eat. We pick a table and sit. And sit. Eventually Anne-Margaret flags down a waiter who takes our order. The beer is good but the food is abysmal. My wienerschnitzl (yes, I know, what was I thinking?) clearly came out of a packet, was over-cooked and dry and the lettuce on the plate looked older than me. Anne-Margaret’s fish and chips (it was, admittedly, a limited food menu, the beer menu being much more extensive), was not much better. We exit as quickly as possible and head for home. We walk back the way we came, having passed a small supermarket. We stop in and get some basic supplies (wine, bread, milk, jam – though not the cannabis chocolate) so we’ll have something for breakfast in the morning. With that, we return home for a glass of wine and bed.

Nightlife is not our thing so we try not to be disillusioned by our first brush with the city. We’re here for the city itself and the museums – we’re a few hundred yards from the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh and Stedilijk Museums, all of which we already have tickets for. Tomorrow is another day.