riding solo

After sleeping in, I woke up to a beautiful sunny day in Bonn. Matt and I met up with some of his friends and we headed to the Haribo gummy bear store. We'd expected a factory, but it was like a grocery store with only candy for sale...haha.

We explored some more of Bonn and I saw Matt's school and the cool window design they had to make for a class. We grabbed some delish 50 cent pizza and headed to Cologne to try and see the cathedral again. Sadly, the climb to the top was still closed. We paid tribute to some of the Beethoven sights, too: a statue and his birthplace.

Our last stop was a sporting goods store to find a backpack for my friend Kaitlyn. But this was no ordinary store...it was amazing. It was shaped like a circle, with 4 stories and an open center. The bottom floor hosted a pool where there was scuba diving and the ceiling was like an open sky..it was super cool. We didn't find the backpack but headed to the train station.

So, this was my first time to navigate trains by myself! You should be proud. I did very well. I had to take 3 different trains to get back to Maastricht over 2 hours. I'd hit two of them and was waiting for the last train from Heerlen to Maastricht, when the sign over the platform suddenly changed to "niet instappen." Bad news...this means no stop, which means NO TRAIN. Naturally I was a little confused. A conductor told me, oh yeah, there's no train to Maastricht this weekend.

Um, what?!

Take the bus. He gestured in a direction and provided no further instructions.

Well, there was more than one bus at the stop. Somehow I remembered to pretend that I knew what I was doing, and it must have worked because two people came up to me and asked me in Dutch which bus to take to get to Maastricht. Secretly I was following this British businessman and a Dutch lady, both who said something about Maastricht so I figured I would just do what they did.

When a bus finally arrived, I asked the driver if he was going to Maastricht.

He said, nope. Valkenburg.

Hmmmmmm. Well, Valkenburg is on the way to Maas. And the British dude was getting on. He said we could take a train once we got there. I asked a Dutch student and an English-speaking couple, and they were all nice and said I would be fine. So I got on the bus.

30 minutes later we arrived in Valkenburg and took the train (from the wrong platform) to Maas. Thank goodness! I found a sign inside the train that said for some reason (my Dutch isn't good enough for me to read that part) the train couldn't go from Heerlen to Valkenburg, which is why no train could go to Maas. Makes sense, but it would have been nice to know that earlier!

The point is I made it back just fine. And I spent the rest of the weekend resting and catching up on homework. I'm really glad I decided to do that. I am leaving tonight with Kathy and her parents for Denmark! Hello Hamlet! :)