This was to be a special day for us. in 2008 we had a German exchange student staying with us. We had remained in contact but had not seen him since we put him on the plane to return home. When we started planning our trip to the Netherlands we contacted him to see if we could get together. As it turns out he was taking a semester off from school and was heading to Spain to surf. He would be driving through Eindhoven so me made arrangements to meet. We were not sure of the exact time he would arrive so we were up early to catch the train to Eindhoven.
This was an interesting trip for me because the area we were traveling through was a key battle in WWII. It was described in a book by Cornelius Ryan. “A Bridge Too Far” describes the attempt by allies to break through the German lines into Germany. It had dire consequences for the Dutch.
It was a Sunday morning and when we arrived the town was deserted. We did find a McDonald’s that was open so we went in to get some coffee and use their WiFi. We identified a couple of places we wanted to visit while we waited for our exchange student to arrive. It was still early and most places were not open so we walked around until the Philips Museum opened.
The Philips Museum was really quite interesting. A movie depicting the treatment of the Jews working for the Philips Company was most interesting. Since Philips developed many of the early radios and TV sets it was like reliving my childhood.
After the Philips Museum we walked over to the DAF Museum. Another interesting place to visit. DAF made everything from cars to trucks to military vehicles. We had a minor crisis while at the Museum. My wife had to change batteries in her phone and then could not get the phone to work. Since we were waiting for a call from our exchange student it was critical that we get it working. A young man took a look at it and fixed it.
On the way back to the Central Station we noticed these folks paddling down the river.
At the Central Station we decided to wait for the exchange student at the information booth.
We met up with Martin and then found a place for lunch. We caught up on what he has been doing the last 11 years.
We went for a walk and encountered the silly walk. It was based on John Cleese as a bowler-hatted civil servant in a fictitious British government ministry responsible for developing silly walks through grants. The last shot is another quirky thing we saw in Eindhoven.
They were working on the train tracks so we had to take a bus to Hertogenbosch and then catch the train back to Delft. The nice thing about traveling in Europe is there is almost always a way to get to where you want to go. A couple of times we missed trains and just waited for about ten minutes and there was another train.
Philip Schwarz Photography Blog 