Europe 2010:
Day 9 - Germany and Netherlands

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Europe 2010: [Day 1 - Luxembourg] [Day 2 - Germany] [Day 3 - Switzerland] [Day 4 - Liechtenstein] [Day 5 - Austria] [Day 6 - Germany] [Day 7 - Czech Republic] [Day 8 - Poland] [Day 9 - Netherlands] [Day 10 - Belgium] [Day 11 - England]

	Saturday, July 3, 2010: We checked out and headed toward Germany.
	The very last place we visited in Poland was just before the border: this McDonald's. Suffice to say that we were glad to be leaving the country after dealing with the staff here. Tom remarked as we crossed the border that he's never been honked at so many times in one day, and we saw drivers angrily gesturing at each other too.
	Debbie had a McTost breakfast sandwich -- egg and cheese between round pieces of toast.
	In Germany, we saw many windfarms, which we love.
	We stopped at a huge rest area where you had to buy a ticket to use the restroom but then got a voucher for that amount toward merchandise, so we bought two tickets and then a Diet Coke and candy bars. It was here that Tom finally got to see the amazing self-washing toilets in action, and Debbie got a picture of the cleaning actually taking place. Here is the oval-shaped bowl slowly rotating while the blue thing cleans and wipes the seat. Amazing. This is definitely getting added to the Bundlings Restroom Scale.
	In this photo, there are actually competing castle/fortresses -- one on either side of the photo. You don't see that in Indiana.
	Here's a closer shot of the one on the left. Yes, that's a castle, all right. We can tell because it looks just like a castle chess piece.
	Here's a closer shot of the one on the right.
	Pretty flowers!
	What is this? We have no idea, but it appeared to be a flat-topped, man-made mountain consisting entirely of either gravel or salt.
	Here's some charming German countryside.
	You can tell it is Germany because their Amazon warehouse has .de instead of .com on it.
	Debbie had to have another Shrimp Lemon sandwich at McDonald's so that's where we ended up for lunch.
	Debbie's reflexes were too slow to get a picture of the exit to Lauterbach ahead of us, so she had to get one from behind us looking out the back of our rental car. This photo is for Debbie's Lauterbach relatives.
	Another German town, another castle of some sort.
	Our 9-day streak of sun came to an end as we encountered an hour of rain just outside of Cologne/Köln.
	We crossed the Rhine again for the sixth time of the trip, including Black Forest, Zurich, and three times in Liechtenstein.
	Here's a MAN Roland building. This photo is for Tom.
	The rain got pretty intense for 20 minutes or so.
	By the time we were at the Netherlands border, the rain was gone.
	Maastricht is in the skinny little southern-most piece of the Netherlands.
	We checked into our final Novotel of the trip, and the first to have spacious, free parking.
	As usual, it looked remarkably like the other four with a slight variation in the bathroom layout ...
	... and a different view. This room looked out over the pool, which was filled with kids enjoying the sun and heat.
	We used our GPS to find a restaurant with rijsttafel on the menu. We ended up at a Chinese restaurant instead of an Indonesian restaurant, but it still worked out fine.
	We started our dinner with two Heinekens, of course.
	Rijsttafel is a smorgasbord of Indonesian food (or Chinese, in this case). We were served a tableful of dishes to share. It's Debbie's favorite meal to have in the Netherlands, and we had last had it when we visited in 2003. Delicious!
	The Maastricht train station was across the street from the restaurant, so it seemed like a good place for an updated photo of Orchy in the Netherlands.
	After dinner, we headed to the heart of Maastricht for a little sightseeing.
	With Netherlands still in the World Cup, Maastricht's pubs were covered in soccer signs and flags.
	Seriously. Soccer fever. Everywhere.
	We made it to the Marktplein, the main square of Maastricht. Debbie had last been here in 1987 and tried in vain for several minutes to line up this photo with a similar one taken back then. Eventually we figured out that the statue in the original photo had been moved forward 20 - 30 feet.
	Here's the same scene from a slightly different angle with the apparently portable statue visible on the left.
	This is the Stadhuis at the Marktplein and this is the second photo Debbie attempted to recreate. This one was a little easier.
	Here's a better shot where you can see a little more of the building. It's purty. Day 10 >