Day 25 Oosterbeek, Netherlands - Leaving Germany and Entering Netherlands

Tony's View 

Started out our final day in Germany and I needed to lower our tandem where I had to lift it last night to get it into our Airbnb/Hotel room. 

After heading out, our trail went in the middle of a sheep farm, Joan was saying, "morgen" to all the sheep which is morning in German. Guessing that they didn't know English. What a cool experience.

Went into several churches today and from the outside it looked very old. As you can see from the picture below, from the inside it looked very modern..

Here is another beautiful church we entered today, that I thought I would share. It looked old inside and out. The first picture is a beautiful side alter dedicated to Mary. On each side of her is Joakim and Anne, her parents.

Every Church we went into today we lit candles for many people. My focus today was for my nephew, Ryan, who died almost a year ago. Here are pictures of his candles. He was loved by so many, because of his genuine desire to help others. 

When we were riding, we were wondering if we would know when we entered Netherlands. We found our answer. Interestingly enough there were no signs on the other side saying you were entering Germany. 

If you zoom into the sign, they covered the er with a sticker that says beer. So, we are entering Nethbeerland. Sounds like a great name for a country. 😀😀 Netherlands really takes care of cyclists. Check out this road. The cars have one lane and bicycles have two lanes. They are so smart in Netherlands. 👍👍

They even had streetlights on the bicycle paths as you can see in this picture. Also, in this picture there is a horse and buggy on the bicycle path. They even had several traffic counters on the path. The Traffic Engineers over here have a real job taking care of managing bicycle traffic. 

We got down the road and I decided to trade my dear Joan for another deer. I am so funny. 

Here is a cool bridge of several bridges to go over the Rhine RIver. The bicycle bridge is the best. 

To get really civil engineering nerdy - They were tearing up a part of the bicycle path here in Netherlands as you can see from the picture, and the asphalt thickness is about 9 inches. We don't even construct our roads in Ohio that thick. Bicycle paths rule. 

Right before we got to our Airbnb, which is a neat little cottage in someone's back yard, we ran into a museum about the WWII battle at Arnhem and decided to stop. The huge battle was over this Rhine bridge that you see from the window of the museum.

It was super interesting listening to their videos. This was really the last major battle The Riech won. Because of this battle the Netherlands was not freed for 8 more months. Arnhem and Oosterbeek were destroyed with all the fighting and bombing. 

The video we watched showed all the tactics that were used in this area, and I took a picture showing a couple of the battles. It is hard to imagine what it would have been like living in these towns during the war. War is ugly. Like the video stated, "there is no winner in war, just losers."

Joan's Extras

Oosterbeek seems like a great town. We are staying in a cabin behind the host's house for the next two nights. It's still nice and toasty here, a high of 85 today. We'll see if this cabin turns into a sauna as well. At least they have a hot tub that Tony can always go into to cool off. 🤣